Hello, I'm Malc and, er, I've just got into trading. It's been a long time since I was away from the world of the stock market which I was active in during the '90s.
In those days I used to use MetaStock and had their first attempt at a Windows platform rather than their DOS based affair. Now if anyone remembers the 90s or has been bequeathed a pile of Investor's Chronicles from that time then look up in the back adverts and you will see an advert for Smith & Hodgson Limited selling data for Metastock. That was my mate and I.
That took a number of years of trying to explain to the stock market what a small investor was (no, they had no idea) and that the average small investor wouldn't want to pay £6,000 a year in licence fees to them for the data. Anyway, many moons of wrangling and they agreed to let us sell data on and Smith & Hodgson was formed.
It was doing alright, even getting the odd glowing review in IC when two things happened. The first is that Ted died and the second is that ESI came along and took over the market. But, hey, we were the first!
Anyway, things happened and one thing and another and I slowly drifted away from the stock market even though I do remember going to the launch party of ShareScope and if anyone from Inonic is reading I have to declare that the stain on the carpet was perhaps not me.
I drifted off into horse racing where I make most of my income now. If that has taught me one thing is that it's all about discipline and money management. Anyway, I've been backing horses and selling ratings for over a decade and things are ticking over nicely and I am living happily in North Wales.
Then an inheritance came along. Well, I would have preferred to have had the house but, of course, in today's caring sharing society I had to sell it at rock bottom price to pay for my mother's stay at the care home and I was left with the loose change.
So, what do? Well, the obvious route was to return to investment. I dusted off my old books and re-read them from cover to cover starting with Jim Slater's Zulu Principle. I read some other books on trading that I had purchased in the meantime (I tried my hand at the pre-race markets on Betfair) and just kept on reading.
A lot went into premium bonds and a pile went into ISAs which are doing fine and heading in the right direction and it was when I wanted to get some shares into the ISA and was blocked because they were on the AIM or whatever that I wanted to look elsewhere.
And I found spread betting. For anyone used to Betfair it's very similar except that the markets, even the more frantic ones, are no-where as mad as the pre-race markets. So this was ideal. I inhaled a lot of Malcolm Pryor's books, made charts and then went in.
My first broker was IG and the first thing that I noticed is that the spreads were horrendous. When I wanted to go long on some I couldn't and the same when I wanted to go short. I've got some positions and they are climbing the right way but they have been hampered by a spreads as wide as the Grand Canyon.
So, I opened an account with Tradefair and the spreads are so much tighter. Armed with printouts and stuff from ShareScope I found that it was easier to make something on there than on IG. And I managed to sell something short that didn't have me calling a dealer up.
I will let me positions ride on IG, moving up the stops when it's appropriate and then when the whole lot is cleared, or they expire (I won't renew these in June or September) then I will transfer them over to other brokers.
Anyway, a bit of a long introduction. I really just wanted to say how much things have improved since the 90s when we have the world wide webs rather than to use CompuServe forums to shout at Metastock support. How much easier is it now to have real tme graphs than what we had then.
Apologies for the ramble; just be thankful that you never caught me at the other end of this 'ere bottle of rouge.
I invested in January and so far, so good. I am very happy with the result. Best of all, my wife can wear it, I don't need a bank or a safe to hide it. 
