Hello
I am new to this forum and have read many posts with great interest, but thought it was time to put my personally comments about Spread betting.
It seems that you all require some success stories of profitable SP. I am not one of these.
I have been doing this on and off for over 10 years. Sometimes made big, but always lost out.
But recently my business collapsed so I had time on my hands - It was hard to get a job with my expertise (IT Systems developer) in the area I lived in so I needed to do something.
I scraped together £400 and went back into Spread betting using the CMC System. First let me say - I find this system excellent and is one of the best around. I now make a full time living from it making an average of £200 a day from it (still using the same £400 capital).
I keep promising to teach myself technical analysis, but never get round to it - I have sort of adopted my own method of reading charts.
If I was giving tips I would:-
a) Stay reasonably knowledgeable about the daily news.
b) Limit the number of instruments you trade with - I only trade UK100, US30 and German Indices and occasional Bent Crude Oil if I feel good about them - and that’s it.
c) Know the economic daily calendar - This way you will which events/news will move the market and approx at what times. So will see short term trend lines appears before and after each economical calendar event - like Non-farm payrolls and trade deficit balances etc
d) I only trade at £1 or £2 a point. Any bigger then the psychology of it all changes and you will panic more. I have proven this many times.
e) Always have stop loss positions on each - I always set around a 30pt stop loss and stop out early.
f) I try not to have positions open when I am busy doing other things - to many opportunities can me missed. The other day I took my family to the cinema - I missed the important 1:30 USD Initial Jobless Claims report - as a result i missed out on some big intraday profits as there were large swings.
g) Not everyone recommends this - but I watch the screen and if I feel the trend changing I back out and take any profits and then back in again in the other direction.
h) Do not be greedy, otherwise you will lose. Set the daily minimum amount you want to make and try and stick to it. On Friday I had may £243 by 9am in the morning - that was enough for the day - spent the rest of the day gardening and deep waxing the car.
i) If the first in/out trades are bad - i quit early that day, as I feel the rest of the day might be like that.
j) When you profit from a trade - take the money straight out (this is easy using the CMC system) so that you are back to your initial capital.
I am sure there are more, but these are just some simple rules I set myself. I basically trade trend lines - if its going UP then ride it up, if its going down,then ride it down - After a time you will feel when its running out of steam with direction. This is the time to exit. I can be in and out of trades several times an hour.
MAINLY STAY FOCUSED!