Spread Blogging – Spread betting tips

Hi all,

For a while I was trying to fight the trend. This is a mistake. Although sometimes swimming against the flow can be profitable most of the time it is just difficult.

That’s why when the market direction is up, there is no point to go short. But… it is not a secret that since March bottom the market was going in one direction with very few corrections. Many people will say that a big correction is due to come and September is a bad month anyway!

They may be right and we may see a change of direction but until that happen, I would not recommend to open a short position. But you can do what I’ve done: Bought some shares that I believe their trend is up but back-up it with a put option for October. You can still find them cheap so for 40-50 points you can have a back-up if something will change.

I myself bought FTSE 4500 put for October a bit expensive at 86 points, but still I am happy with this insurance.

Hi all,

I am toying with the idea to go short on the FTSE since beginning of this week. I was waiting to see if it will break the support at 4290 and it did. All the technical analysis indicators show that the trend is going to change. I even read some articles about it.

It is all nice but sometimes the market has its own way. Yes the FTSE 100 has lost some points this week but today with some good news from the State it bounced back a bit and it looks more positive.

So is it the time to go short? I think that we soon will see the FTSE 100 at 4000 again and even below but I stay prefer to stay out at the moment. If it will go under 4200 I am in…

Hi all,

I am afraid that my plan to take a month off job and focus only on dealing will not go ahead. I am so busy with clients, projects and running a business that i just can’t take one month off. Nice plan though.

I don’t even have much time to check the market on a daily basis. So I have to change my strategy.  So this is what I am going to do for the next trades: Support & Resistance with tight stop loss. The idea is to go with the market. Buy when the FTSE 100 hit a support with 25 points stop loss and sell when the FTSE 100 hit resistance with the same stop loss.

I know that I have said that I don’t like stop loss. And I don’t. But if you don’t have time to follow each tick of the index then you better use them. My plan is quite simple: I will have some losses no doubt, but one winning strike should cover them and create a nice profit.

So here is my order booking:

I will let you know what happen next…

The Dow is 8185 after it has already touched 8250 today. The FTSE 100 is 4189 and the Dax is 4704. Is it the time to sell? I think we are getting near the point when the direction is going to change south. I think that the economies are still in dire situation and there is no real substance for the latest rally.

But the question is when to enter the market and sell? it is a good question which I don’t have the answer but I feel that by somewhere next week the direction will change. It is only guts feeling which you don’t really want to count on but I am quite sure that we will see the FTSE & the Dow below 4000 and 8000 respectably.

What I am going to do is wait and see. Once I see that on both side the atlantic the indexes are down by more than 1% I am in. Selling.

Hello all,

I have bought today a put option on the Dax. Why the Dax? The FTSE 100 didn’t jump as high as the German one or the Dow. While the Dow jumped from 6500 to 8000, and the Dax from 3600 to 4500, the FTSE was much more solid and jumped from 3500 to 4000.

So if I am right and the market will change direction, my logic says that the FTSE will slide slower than the other two. So I left with 2 options. The Dow options seem to me expensive so I’ve decided to choose the German index.

Bought it for 36.3. The lowest price today was 30 but I missed the bottom. I guess you can’t catch the bottom. So I have 4.5 weeks and my target is to double the money. I will keep you updated.

Hi all!

I am not that impressed with the last rally. It is nice to see the market changing direction, but I don’t think that this is the end of the bad period. But I do think that the rally will continue for one or two days depends on the Goldman Sachs results tomorrow. If I am right then I will buy a put option on the FTSE 100 and maybe on the Dow Jones as well.

So I am looking to buy the PUT 3750 for May. I think by Tuesday it should be cheap enough. The nice thing about options is that you know how much you can loss. In fact every time that I buy one I consider it as ‘lost money’ and I am always looking to double my investment. Sometimes it works, sometimes not, but I have more than 50% success which is enough

Hi all,

I am back from my holiday and as every holiday it was short. I tried not to follow too much of what’s going on, but I couldn’t ignore the bounce that the markets had. As I said I put my FTSE 4000 Call option for April in my friend hands because he holds the same option.

But I didn’t know when he closed the position. On Friday when I saw that the FTSE 100 is around 4100 and the option price is almost 200 I couldn’t resist the temptation and gave him a call. “I am sorry, but I closed the position a bit early at 99″. Dam! still I understand why he did it and it was wise to do so.

And the bottom line is that I made more than %100 on this option so I don’t want to be greedy. We bought it on March the second for 47 and sold it on 27/3 for 99. Not bad… if my friend would waited another week we would have made 400%. I just love options!

So what’s next? I don’t know. I am still in holiday mood and I need to read what I missed for the last 3 weeks. But I will continue to buy options against the trend.

In one weekend I’ve read one journalist saying that soon we will see the S&P 500 at 500 while other one said we already reached the bottom and the direction is up. Who is right? one of them, that’s for sure. But really when it comes to predict where the market goes or where a share price goes no body knows a thing.

You want an example? voila:

When the oil touched $140 a barrel last summer all the smart people said that soon we will live in a world where a barrel cost $200. In fact most of the analysts where sure that the only way is up. When it crashed and the price was $40, suddenly all the smart people from the city said that soon it will reach $20. In both cases they were wrong and to be honest, most of the time the get them wrong.

I have a friend that says that when analyst tells you to buy it is time to sell and when they tell you to sell it is time to buy. That’s why he bought GE at $5.80 and now it is almost $10.

I was surprised to see on Friday morning at Paddypower homepage that 90% of the opened positions on the FTSE 100 were short. It was obvious for me that after the rally on the Dow on Thursday the direction is up. But this is MY opinion and 90% of the people thought a bit different.

The point is you should decide for yourself. If you think that the FTSE 100 will go up then buy it. Your opinion is not worth less than others. And if you were wrong so at least you can learn from your mistakes.

If you want another example here it is:

Last year I was so busy at work so I didn’t have the time to follow the market. So I thought that giving my hard cash money to a fund manager would be a good idea.

Well it was a difficult year and in less than 4 months they lost me 20%. So one can say it was a difficult year so you can understand why they lost my money. But! they should be professional. They should know how to read the market and how to gain profits when the market is going down. And they don’t. And most of the funds manager don’t know. In the end I took out my money and they sent me a letter saying they are sorry for the lose. Of course they are sorry but it is so easy to lose someone else money.

So I thought enough is enough. I will do it myself. I’ve started to learn a bit and opened an account with spread betting. In no time I’ve lost most of my money that I put into the account. I put £700 and I’ve lost £650. I was depressed and I took it hard. My first thought was to leave it and do something else. But then I took a morning off sat in a nice coffee shop with my notebook and started to think about my trades and why I’ve lost my money.

I came up with 10 reasons why I lost and another 10 rules of what to do and what not to. I put more money into my account and this time I didn’t lose. So I put more money and more money and now I have around 50% profit since October. Compare it with the market it is better. Compare it with any fund and I am still better off doing it myself.

Reading the naked trader gave me a lot of confidence that I can do it myself. In fact I am going to move my pension into sell account and run it myself. I think that only you really care about your money and only you can run it wise. And if you lose the only person you can blame is you. And again no need to blame yourself. Just LEARN from your mistakes and you will do better next time.

Good luck!

After the big fall of the British banks, the oil companies have much more influence on the FTSE 100. This means that the $ against the £ and oil prices set the tone on the index.

Today the oil jumped 9% and the GBP/USD is 1.41 if the oil and the $ can keep this level I would say that the FTSE 100 can go back to 4000 mark very quickly. And in my opinion the oil price on the long run will go up. After all as far as I know it is the most needed commodity and although the green revolution there isn’t any decent substitute to the black oil. So perhaps the FTSE 100 is not all gloom and doom after all.

Hi all,

After black Monday where the Dow hit a new low, it seems that the market is searching for direction. It moves up and down between 7150 to 7400 and change direction very quickly.

This is a good market for short trade because no matter which direction you will choose there is a good chance that if it went against you, it will come back very soon (in a matter of hours in fact). You can see it clear on the graph:

it is the same story with the FTSE. The market is on hold and tries to learn what Obama will do next. But it seems that every time that Obama says something the Dow is down. It is not a bad strategy to sell when he speaks you just need to know his agenda.

I think that the Dow will test a new low around 6500 before it will move up to the 7400-7500 region. But times like this it is hard to predict.