Spread Trading for a living

Hi There,

First post for me.. Although I've been reading for a while.

I'm just interested if any people Spread Bet for a living, and how you do off it? I have been paper trading for a year today exactly and kept a full Journal of all my trades.

I use a mixture of Technical Analysis and Fundamentals Trading, mainly to swing trade on the FTSE but I'm always on the look out for opportunities on Individual UK shares.

I have done pretty well over the last year, and infact made just over double what I do working in my current Insurance Job. I appreciate that things may well change when I start trading real money, but I really would like to hear from anyone who does this for a living. Im 25 now and by the time I'm 30 I'd like to be doing this full time.

Am I Crazy?

ffsear said:

Hi There,

First post for me.. Although I've been reading for a while.

I'm just interested if any people Spread Bet for a living, and how you do off it? I have been paper trading for a year today exactly and kept a full Journal of all my trades.

I use a mixture of Technical Analysis and Fundamentals Trading, mainly to swing trade on the FTSE but I'm always on the look out for opportunities on Individual UK shares.

I have done pretty well over the last year, and infact made just over double what I do working in my current Insurance Job. I appreciate that things may well change when I start trading real money, but I really would like to hear from anyone who does this for a living. Im 25 now and by the time I'm 30 I'd like to be doing this full time.

Am I Crazy?

Click to expand...

Hi,

Don't worry - you're not crazy, but be aware that things will be very different when you start trading with real money. You will have to very disciplined to make the same decisions with real money that you would have made on a demo account.

Also, you will probably find that in real trading you can't always buy or sell exactly at the same prices as your paper trading due to slippage and spreads, etc.

The problem with paper-trading is that it can lead you into thinking that you have a killer system when actually you haven't. (i'm not saying that you haven't got a good system, just that you should be careful). I would recommend you take an honest look at your paper-trading results and ask yourself if you could have traded exactly those results with real money. Are there instances for example where you took a bigger risk because it wasn't real money at risk - would you take this same risk with real money or miss the trade?

I think your next step is to start applying your strategy with the smallest amount of capital you can get away with, and then you'll truly know if your system is viable.


Good Luck,

Damian

"I use a mixture of Technical Analysis and Fundamentals Trading, mainly to swing trade on the FTSE but I'm always on the look out for opportunities on Individual UK shares.

I have done pretty well over the last year, and infact made just over double what I do working in my current Insurance Job. I appreciate that things may well change when I start trading real money, but I really would like to hear from anyone who does this for a living. Im 25 now and by the time I'm 30 I'd like to be doing this full time"


The only way to find out is to do it for real... And your question will soon be answered.

Don't just limit yourself to the uk stuff. Look over the pond at the nasdaq and the dow and S&P. Will your methods work on nasdaq shares? The us offerings move further than the uk counterparts. A 25 point move on the ftse will be a 75 point run on the dow.

If you can combine your normal work with your trading, real trading I mean. Then continue to do so until you build a decent size account. You might be ready to go full time by then. But it is a big, big leap. A big difference also of having to trade to meet your mortgage payments every month. In all a very different ball game. But it is also the best job in the world.

Yes. It's 'do able'. And you are only a mere 'pup' You have many years in front of you.

What you need to do now is to work out what you need to 'earn' per month, per week, per day. and you have your targets.

Seeing as you have your results for a full year, you may be able to trade near exactly the same way. But there is a big 'correction' on the horizon, so when it happens instead of going long you will be shorting instead.

Oh! and it's spread betting, not spread trading. They are two different things.

options said:

Oh! and it's spread betting, not spread trading. They are two different things.

Click to expand...

Hi options

Barklays stockbrokers, Man Financial, Finspreads, et el, all now appear to call it spread trading, I suppose it sounds less sleazy than spread betting, a recentish trend I believe and a little confusing, is the other one referred to as trading spreads or something like that.....oh well

http://www.manspreadtrading.com

http://www.stockbrokers.barclays.co...se=publicproducts&usecase=publicspreadtrading

Merci.
Muchos Grasiwhatsits.

I stand corrected.

Damn confusing though.