Summary Week Ended Friday 2nd May 2014 12 Stock Trades: 3 AAL + 49.36 BPS 7 BLT + 34.82 2 RDSA + 2.96 BPS Stocks net + 87.14 BPS Long and short trades, all intraday. I traded 5 days this week. Return on account for the week 2.36 % net. P:L ratio was 3.19:1. No Index trades, I am concentrating on stocks. Thoughts A pretty quiet week. A few poor entries, but a profit is a profit. North of my 2% benchmark, which is good. Over the month of April, my trades were as follows: 18 AAL + 213.94 BPS 38 BLT + 354.78 BPS 5 EZJ + 89.87 BPS 2 RDSA + 2.96 BPS 3 STAN + 35.35 BPS TOTAL 66 trades + 696.89 BPS Return on account for April +12.50 % net. P:L ratio was 4.26:1. I am pretty pleased with the percentage return, although it could have been better. Interestingly, 65 of the 66 trades were intraday trades. Looking forward to more opportunities next week. Stay disciplined. Stay focussed. Stay humble.
Summary Week Ended Friday 9th May 2014 15 Stock Trades: 3 AAL + 33.95 BPS 7 BARC + 156.51 BPS 4 BLT + 41.88 BPS 1 SBRY + 30.52 BPS Stocks net + 262.87 BPS 5 long, 10 short trades, overnight and intraday. I traded 3 days this week. Return on account for the week + 6.75 % net. P:L ratio was 4.35:1. No Index trades, I am concentrating on stocks. Thoughts A decent week. A few poor exits, but a profit is a profit. Again well above my 2% weekly benchmark, which is encouraging. Markets were closed on Monday for the spring bank holiday. BARC was very active after results came out on Tuesday (see chart), and I could have made a fair bit more on it if I had held my long overnight, but that's trading. This week I added SBRY to my watchlist spreadsheet, a stock I used to trade in the past. SBRY has had some decent moves recently. Looking at my spreadsheet, I note that I haven't had a losing week on my stock trading since early October 2013, so I realise that I need to excercise caution at the moment... Going to post this now (Friday) since I think I'm done for the week. Looking forward to more opportunities next week. Stay disciplined. Stay focussed. Stay humble.
I have posted the most recent version of my daily stocks spreadsheet on my blog: http://tradermorris.blogspot.fr/2014/05/daily-stocks-spreadsheet-week-ending.html Just in case anyone thinks that we don't have decent tradable volatility on the LSE.
Summary Week Ended Friday 16th May 2014 11 Stock Trades: 1 AAL + 8.55 BPS 3 BARC + 21.19 BPS 7 BLT + 69.28 BPS Stocks net + 99.02 BPS 4 long, 7 short trades, all intraday. I traded 5 days this week. Return on account for the week + 2.69 % net. P:L ratio was 4.8:1. No Index trades, I am concentrating on stocks. Thoughts A decent week. Again, a few poor exits, but a profit is a profit. Again above my 2% weekly benchmark, which is good. After some analysis, I have decided to increase this benchmark/target to 2.5%, so I just scraped in above that this week, even though it was a pretty quiet week overall. Trading on BLT was interesting this week, it rallied strongly from the 1890s to the 1980s, and I had a look at the price history. There was a high of 1989 in Feb. One thing I never really understand is who is buying near obvious resistance ? Shorts covering their losses perhaps ? Anyway, this was an obvious short level. Unfortunately, I got nervous when the price didn't immediately drop back to the 1960s, and closed for a small profit (always more nervous short than long). Of course, it later dropped back to the 1960s. But that's trading for you. I still don't understand why people were buyers at 1985..... Were they also sellers in the 1890s last Friday I wonder... Oh well... Later in the week, BLT did manage to break out and hit the 2000 mark, although it closed at 1995. I took the opportunity to sell some shares at 2000 that I bought back in Decemeber 2013 at 1763 Once the dividend of around 35p is included, this is a gross return of 15.4% on this investment (trade ?), or 1540 BPS. This is obviously not included in the account being monitored in this blog, but a decent return on a boring large cap stock. It would be nice to do one of those every month. We saw some serious weakness on stocks during Thursday and Friday, although the FTSE actually managed to close positively on Friday . Attachment shows the change on watch list stocks over the last 5 Days. Looking forward to more opportunities next week. Stay disciplined. Stay focussed. Stay humble.
Summary Week Ended Friday 23rd May 2014 5 Stock Trades: 3 BARC + 163.20 BPS 2 EZJ + 75.04 BPS Stocks net + 238.34 BPS All long trades, overnight. I traded 5 days this week. Return on account for the week + 2.76 % net. P:L ratio was N/A as there were no losing trades. No Index trades, I am concentrating on stocks. Thoughts A decent week. A profit is a profit, although my entries were not at the best levels. And I missed some good entries on the miners on Thursday & Friday. Again above my 2.5% weekly benchmark, which is good. Shown are the changes on my watch list stocks for the week. Next week is a short one since Monday is a holiday in the UK. The ES is threatening to break 1900 at the moment. Looking forward to more opportunities next week. Stay disciplined. Stay focussed. Stay humble.
Hi thanks for your posts in ET forum ; i'll be thankful if you could provide me these answers: 1-which online broker do you recommend for trading LSE stocks? 2-are CFD brokers like SaxoBank / IGmarkets trustable ? ( a lot of people complain about lack of ranparency on CFD prices) 3-is there any margin account (leveraged account) for trading LSE stocks ? 4-what your own point of view about CFD vs stock shares ? Regards
Hi, I can't really recommend a broker for you. In the past, have traded CFDs with CMC & E-Trade, CFDs are a very good vehicle for avoiding stamp duty in my opinion, and you can use margin/leverage. Longer term, stamp becomes less of an issue, although still worth avoiding of course.. [I ceased using CMC when they introduced minimum commissions, since I often scale in & out.] I have also traded via spread bets - slightly wider spreads, but again leveraged & free of CGT. Good luck with your trading.
thanks for this reply; i really did not get your point of view regarding comparison of CFD and stock shares .are really CFD's reliable ? (again many people complain about lak of transparency and their stop loss is hit suddenly while actual stock price has not changed)
OK well here's my take.. For the type of stocks I have traded - large cap FTSE 100 shares, my experience is that CFD prices are excellent, indeed CMC used to offer the same prices as quoted on SETS. I haven't had stops hit the way you describe, except the odd error, and then I called the broker (CMC) and got the trade fixed/reinstated. Of course, you will be charged funding on overnight positions, but this is usually pretty cheap, and it would take a few weeks for it to exceed stamp duty on actual shares. I haven't traded with Saxo or IG, so I cannot comment on their prices or their reliability. I also do not trade small caps, so again I cannot comment. If you want to trade CFDs, then maybe open an account, trade small size and see how it goes. No advice intended etc etc...
Summary Week Ended Friday 30th May 2014 11 Stock Trades: 6 AAL + 16.80 BPS 2 BARC + 6.53 BPS 2 BLT + 10.10 BPS 1 SBRY + 10.85 BPS Stocks net + 44.28 BPS All long trades, intraday and overnight. I traded 4 days this week. Return on account for the week + 0.42 % net. P:L ratio was 1.39:1. No Index trades, I am concentrating on stocks. Thoughts A short week due to the bank holiday on Monday. Very difficult to find decent trades and I struggled to make a decent return this week. Well short of my 2.5% weekly benchmark. I missed a lovely rally on SBRY, despite buying near the low of the week. - BE PATIENT !! Over the month of May, I made 44 trades, net + 675 BPS and return on my account of just over 16%. My P:L ratio was 5.2:1. I'm sure there are lots of traders out there making over 20% per month, but it's better than a savings account. The breakdown of the trades in May was as follows: 12 AAL 15 BARC 13 BLT 2 EZJ 2 SBRY This week the ES finally broke through 1900, and the Dax may want to test 10,000 soon. The miners sold off at the end of the week, the mining index falling over 3.4% on Friday. Looking forward to more opportunities next month. Stay disciplined. Stay focussed. Stay humble.