Posts Tagged ‘FTSE’

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!