Best Thread Capital Spreads
Vorbis
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No problems here.
capitalspreads
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Ian
the 'juicy' stories i remember are generally the ones that cost us money. I am one of those people who remembers the bad trades (from our point of view) rather than the good ones.
when we were just a small start up back in 2004/05 we had one client who put in about £5k and in the space of just a few weeks/months built it up to £450k. He was trading in Dax/FTSE/dow when the spreads were much wider than they are now and he appeared to just 'have the knack'. We were a bit suspicious (thinking he might be front running orders) but it turned out he was a BT engineer from Brentwood who was just very good at running profits and cutting his bad 'uns.
He took 350k out (and probably paid off his mortgage) just as we put him onto 'marked risk' (which as usual was the kiss of death) and started to match hedge all his trades... at which point he lost the 100k he had left !
So not only did we lose £450k to him in the first place but then made nothing when he then handed us back £100k ! Not our finest hour.
Or back in 2008 when everything was going bananas and the Irish and Germans made shorting Bank stocks illegal. We had one client who was very short Anglo Irish so we asked him via email/phone whether he was naked short ... but had received no reply after a week ..... So we closed him out. A couple of weeks later he 'came back from holiday' and complained and then proved a) that he had ben on holiday to somewhere with no internet/phone access and b) that he had the equivalent long in stocks. All of which took another few weeks
By which time Anglo Irish had imploded and we had to reimburse him the difference. Ouch
But our finest one was a lady from birmingham ringing customer service to say that there was 'something wrong with her account'. The girl on CS asked what the problem was and the Lady said that her account was showing a 20k profit. Thinking that someone must have put a trade in incorrectly the girl looked at the clients account and saw that she had put a couple of hundred quid in her account and bought £1 a point in Google on the day of the float. She had not logged into her account since that day and was completely unaware that Google had rallied $200 (or 20,000 cents.... or £20,000). The customer services girl said that she had never in her whole life had such a happy phone conversation !
To be honest things are much more prosaic these days. With all the checks and balances markets do not tend to go haywire as often.... ...Systems are more robust..... We analyse activity to the nth degree..... everything has policies and procedures...... In other words everything is much more 'corporate'.
Personaly, I spend most of my time in meeting after meeting / committee after committee / etc etc
coming on here to respond to queries is just about the only 'fun' thing left in our industry !
Cheers
Simon
the 'juicy' stories i remember are generally the ones that cost us money. I am one of those people who remembers the bad trades (from our point of view) rather than the good ones.
when we were just a small start up back in 2004/05 we had one client who put in about £5k and in the space of just a few weeks/months built it up to £450k. He was trading in Dax/FTSE/dow when the spreads were much wider than they are now and he appeared to just 'have the knack'. We were a bit suspicious (thinking he might be front running orders) but it turned out he was a BT engineer from Brentwood who was just very good at running profits and cutting his bad 'uns.
He took 350k out (and probably paid off his mortgage) just as we put him onto 'marked risk' (which as usual was the kiss of death) and started to match hedge all his trades... at which point he lost the 100k he had left !
So not only did we lose £450k to him in the first place but then made nothing when he then handed us back £100k ! Not our finest hour.
Or back in 2008 when everything was going bananas and the Irish and Germans made shorting Bank stocks illegal. We had one client who was very short Anglo Irish so we asked him via email/phone whether he was naked short ... but had received no reply after a week ..... So we closed him out. A couple of weeks later he 'came back from holiday' and complained and then proved a) that he had ben on holiday to somewhere with no internet/phone access and b) that he had the equivalent long in stocks. All of which took another few weeks
By which time Anglo Irish had imploded and we had to reimburse him the difference. Ouch
But our finest one was a lady from birmingham ringing customer service to say that there was 'something wrong with her account'. The girl on CS asked what the problem was and the Lady said that her account was showing a 20k profit. Thinking that someone must have put a trade in incorrectly the girl looked at the clients account and saw that she had put a couple of hundred quid in her account and bought £1 a point in Google on the day of the float. She had not logged into her account since that day and was completely unaware that Google had rallied $200 (or 20,000 cents.... or £20,000). The customer services girl said that she had never in her whole life had such a happy phone conversation !
To be honest things are much more prosaic these days. With all the checks and balances markets do not tend to go haywire as often.... ...Systems are more robust..... We analyse activity to the nth degree..... everything has policies and procedures...... In other words everything is much more 'corporate'.
Personaly, I spend most of my time in meeting after meeting / committee after committee / etc etc
coming on here to respond to queries is just about the only 'fun' thing left in our industry !
Cheers
Simon
B
Black Swan
Cracking read that Simon..
Greed and fear. Classic :clap:
Physicsman
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Definitely a fine post Simon! They are fun! More please! :cheesy:
capitalspreads
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bluap84
big profits only seem to happen by accident for me (the big losses are always by design!)
if i trade for myself i generally lose money but one time i made a reasonable sum was when i had a 'bet' of £20 a point in the FTSE with (ahem) 'a competitor'. I thought that i closed it out for a small profit but discovered a couple of days later that, by mistake, i had only traded out of £1 a point! By this time it had moved 150 points in my favour and i made a completely unjustified few grand.
Simon
big profits only seem to happen by accident for me (the big losses are always by design!)
if i trade for myself i generally lose money but one time i made a reasonable sum was when i had a 'bet' of £20 a point in the FTSE with (ahem) 'a competitor'. I thought that i closed it out for a small profit but discovered a couple of days later that, by mistake, i had only traded out of £1 a point! By this time it had moved 150 points in my favour and i made a completely unjustified few grand.
Simon
Simon
I spose thats always the way, Im a total noob to this, and i currently have wait for it!! £50 in my capital spreads live.:-0 Im running a little experiment with myself. place £1 pp on Desire DES:LN to go up, this morning in profit £4.50 since the highest point of the stock was around 160 in October 2010, its bound to rise again.
im sitting on my hands, learning with a demo account while i watch my live one grow. Just wish your charts were as pretty as CMC's ha:cheesy:
If only that could be true!
LOL well i bloody hope so! I bought in at 85p years ago. So as long as it goes past 85p id be happy :clap:
You wouldn't be the only one
Ross talking of Desire, what do you think about the the RHK merger rumours.
'Buy on the rumour...' etc.
capitalspreads
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this is not advice
and this forum is not one where we discuss 'the market' .. there are lots of those out there
but desire petroleum is one of the most ridiculous stocks in a ridiculous sector. They have been drilling in various parts of the world (generally picking up on the latest oil equivalent of the "Colorado Gold Rush" rumours before desiding where next to go) for more than a decade. Raising money every now and then to keep going.
Let me remind everyone that, so far, they have actually found nothing in all that time.... Zip.. Zilch. They must have the most persuasive capital raising team in the world.
Aside from banks in 2007/08 our clients have lost more money in this equity than any other share. Not bad for an Aim listed stock. The company has probably used up more print ink in newspapers than it has found crude oil !
no doubt they will now announce a major strike in the next few days !!
and this forum is not one where we discuss 'the market' .. there are lots of those out there
but desire petroleum is one of the most ridiculous stocks in a ridiculous sector. They have been drilling in various parts of the world (generally picking up on the latest oil equivalent of the "Colorado Gold Rush" rumours before desiding where next to go) for more than a decade. Raising money every now and then to keep going.
Let me remind everyone that, so far, they have actually found nothing in all that time.... Zip.. Zilch. They must have the most persuasive capital raising team in the world.
Aside from banks in 2007/08 our clients have lost more money in this equity than any other share. Not bad for an Aim listed stock. The company has probably used up more print ink in newspapers than it has found crude oil !
no doubt they will now announce a major strike in the next few days !!
Lets hope...its entertaining reading up on DES though i must admit.
i wasnt seeking advice i was simply asking for an opinion
Couldn't agree more. DES collapses when everyone suddenly realises it has nothing, then doubles in a few days on some vague buyout rumour. Now it's down again, probably en route to 0p. No doubt there are some 'lucky' people making money out of all this, but the rest of us should steer clear.
