Diary of a swing spread better

[Lightning McQueen]

Hi Don,

When the market is trending, my strategy is to follow M Rivalland's way coupled with RSI and moving averages just to gauge the market's sentiment and avoid entries when the market is overbought/oversold for long/short.

For day trading, I am testing out 90-120 minute support/resistance lines with at least four touches. If the line is breached, I'll watch for a good opportunity to join the crowd.

I also look at patterns like triangle, head and shoulders, double/tripple bottoms/tops...

But the key thing is money management, I would think. Losing fingers and winning arms

Later,

Hung

Hi Hung

Not keen on patterns myself too subjective for me. like your idea on 90 - 120 min time frames hope you will post the findings.
money management, mmmm dont have any plans on this front yet will see how it goes as I move along

cheers

Don

 

[hungvir]

Hi Don,

I actually have traded off the 90-120 min support/resistance lines and found that it's more effective when the DOW has moved up or down quite a bit (50-80) points then breach the lines. The steepness of the line is also important. For me, the breaching of a 45 degree S/R line seems to be significant.

Will surely keep you posted.

Best,

Hung

 

[hungvir]

Will buy MKS if it rose above 568 tomorrow. I am actually a bit late in catching the new up swing, but just by 8 points. Stop loss at 543.5.

The Sunday Times said Deutsche Bank has upgraded their price target to 625p a share and this is their fifth upgrade in the last nine months.

And if you're one of the 63,000 working for M&S, a bonus is coming your way. According to the Sunday Times, everyone including all floor workers will share the bonus pot of 60 million pounds.

M&S's profit is predicted to top one billion in 2008, a decade after it slipped from that level.

Bought MKS Jun at 553, stop loss at 542.

I assume there'll be some resistance at 600.

 

[hungvir]

Stop buy order for Prudential at 684, stop loss at 653.5. The gap is filled and I am happy to go long with a good price and quite a decent place to put a stop loss.

Fins only accepts phone orders for PRU. Their spreads is just one point higher than CMC.

Will buy June contract. Pru will pay dividend in August and the share price will be adjusted accordingly.

Bought PRU June at 680. Stop loss at 656. I jumped the gun to buy at cheaper price and narrowed stop loss.

 

[hungvir]

Placed in limit sell orders for PRU and MKS at 750 and 600 respectively. Just in case the price jumped and reversed intraday. Will make sure to turn them into trailing stop orders.

 

[Lightning McQueen]

Oil futures rising

"Light, sweet crude for May delivery rose 37 cents to $67.00 a barrel in electronic trading on the New York Mercantile Exchange by midday in Europe. May Brent crude futures on the ICE Futures exchange jumped $1.04 to $66.95 a barrel."

dow futures are rising slightly on the news which could be bad news for me at the mo
although the indexes quoted by CS are falling perhaps someone could explain that for me

good trading today everybody

Don

 

[Lightning McQueen]

Bought to close the dow 11187 at 19.58 for a profit of £1080

Bought to open the dow 11183 at 20:04

well im long now and down loads already

cheers

Don

 

[hungvir]

What a profit, Don! Congrats!

It's a classic thingy today with the DOW. The support line that held for 180 minutes was broken and the DOW could not head up because of selling pressure.

My kids are off school so not much time for trading. But I'll still do EOD analysis to keep in tandem with the market.

Later,

Hung

 

[hungvir]

My two long positions lost me pennies today. But I have confidence in these two guys

 

[Lightning McQueen]

What a profit, Don! Congrats!

It's a classic thingy today with the DOW. The support line that held for 180 minutes was broken and the DOW could not head up because of selling pressure.

My kids are off school so not much time for trading. But I'll still do EOD analysis to keep in tandem with the market.

Later,

Hung

Thanks Hung

much more work for me in the analysis department, when the strategy said sell i was only looking at £200 for most of the day until 2pm when the price broke down and i took my chance.
The long trade seemed ok until it all went pete tong and fell off a cliff

anyway how did your PRU & MKS trades pan out?

cheers

Don

 

[hungvir]

Ha ha, I know what you're going to ask and already posted the answer

By the way, I found a perfect laptop, Lenovo ThinkPad T60 and hopefully my friend will be able to bring it here from the States. I am going to Bangkok for some months in July and need to have a laptop anyway.

I thought of buying a tablet one to compete with my wife (she'll be given one for free by her school when she starts teaching in September) but it's way too expensive.

 

[Lightning McQueen]

Ha ha, I know what you're going to ask and already posted the answer

By the way, I found a perfect laptop, Lenovo ThinkPad T60 and hopefully my friend will be able to bring it here from the States. I am going to Bangkok for some months in July and need to have a laptop anyway.

I thought of buying a tablet one to compete with my wife (she'll be given one for free by her school when she starts teaching in September) but it's way too expensive.

yes very funny got your post in first
nice laptop, got to be good for trading. Not disappearing into the wilderness I hope with no internet connection what about your diary

cheers

Don

 

[hungvir]

Hi Don,

I hope I still be able to keep this diary. I'll be much busier there in terms of work though.

Mind you I'll still have broadband in Bangkok. May be a bit difficult when I travel from there to places like Vietnam or Burma.

The only thing I'll miss is that I won't be able to trade the DOW. I'll be in bed soon after the open.

Best,

Hung

 

[Lightning McQueen]

Found this post and thought it might be useful in the quest for strategy success.
Beginners guide to Spread Betting by asht2w

http://www.trade2win.com/boards/showpost.php?p=185325&postcount=1

 

[hungvir]

Very useful, Don. Thanks!

The only thing in it that I think would be hard to do is ''Trade with that virtual £10,000 as if it was your hard earned cash...''. It's simply not your hard earned cash and the emotion won't be the same.

Also, I you don't think you'll have £10,000 to trade, starting with £10,000 won't help. Ideally you should be able to put into your virtual account exactly the sum that you'll have available for trading. Better if you trade for real with just 1p with Finspreads.

Have a good night!

Hung

 

[JillyB]

''Trade with that virtual £10,000 as if it was your hard earned cash...''. It's simply not your hard earned cash and the emotion won't be the same.

I totally agree, there is nothing more nerve wracking than trading with your own money, whether it is £100 or £1,000. A demo account, whilst having its uses, can't give you the same heart-thumping reality of pressing the button on your own money.

Hope you don't mind me gate-crashing the thread. Excellent posts, if you don't mind me saying.

Do you prefer trading the Dow? It seems at the start of the thread you were trading stocks.

 

[Lightning McQueen]

Very useful, Don. Thanks!

The only thing in it that I think would be hard to do is ''Trade with that virtual £10,000 as if it was your hard earned cash...''. It's simply not your hard earned cash and the emotion won't be the same.

Also, I you don't think you'll have £10,000 to trade, starting with £10,000 won't help. Ideally you should be able to put into your virtual account exactly the sum that you'll have available for trading. Better if you trade for real with just 1p with Finspreads.

Have a good night!

Hung

Hi Hung

Yes agree with you hung, learn in the school of hard knocks, thats ok if you have a strategy thats ok and the confidence to go with it as yourself and others that post to the diary, but I have noticed a lot of visitors to the diary are newbies as i was when i arrived here without a strategy or an unproven one.
once the strategy is honed to success on a demo account so will come the confidence to have a go with real money on a real account. its all a question of scale really I believe that £10,000 is ok for testing purposes as it allows high stakes magnifying errors in the strategy so we can sort it out. Then scale down for the real thing.
Then the demons of emotion can then be tackled on fins at 1p building higher levels of stake as emotions permit.
I believe us newbie traders would benefit from splitting up the process a bit rather than trying to learn it all in one go and becoming another loser in the statistics, what is it? 90% are losers. I dont really want to be one of those

have a good day tomorrow

Don

 

[Lightning McQueen]

I totally agree, there is nothing more nerve wracking than trading with your own money, whether it is £100 or £1,000. A demo account, whilst having its uses, can't give you the same heart-thumping reality of pressing the button on your own money.

Hope you don't mind me gate-crashing the thread. Excellent posts, if you don't mind me saying.

Do you prefer trading the Dow? It seems at the start of the thread you were trading stocks.

Hi JillyB

sorry hope my last post didn't appear rude leaving you out as i must have been still writing my reply to hungvir when you posted

Don

 

[Splitlink]

Congrats on that Dow win, Don. That will show sceptics that it is possible to make good wins spreadbetting.

Split

 

[hungvir]

I totally agree, there is nothing more nerve wracking than trading with your own money, whether it is £100 or £1,000. A demo account, whilst having its uses, can't give you the same heart-thumping reality of pressing the button on your own money.

Hope you don't mind me gate-crashing the thread. Excellent posts, if you don't mind me saying.

Do you prefer trading the Dow? It seems at the start of the thread you were trading stocks.

Hi JillyB,

Thanks for your post. This is now more like a discussion forum than a diary.

I do like trading the DOW because many technical indicators work well on it. I assume many people trading DOW's components are 'technicians'. It moves quite a lot in matters of hours and I don't have to do a lot of research on it.

Normally I just go to money.cnn.com to have some sense about what kind of sentiment it is on the day then day trade the DOW if it suits me (ie if I can afford 100 per cent concentration).

And when you day trade, you have nothing to think about at night. No surprises in the morning.

Best,

Hung