Recent content by Cable Sal

Choosing candidates Hehe, thanks. I've been busy with the spreadsheets in the last few days, my aim being to boost the number of securities that are available for live trading by January. Selecting new candidates for testing has been a bit of a black art for me, I've put some parameters in...

Where it's all up to Lordy lordy! Has it really been that long since I updated my journal? I knew I'd been letting it slip, but it only seems like a couple of weeks, tops, since I was here last. :o I'd best give a rundown on what's been going on. P&L and bet size I went negative a bit further...

If asked what I do for a living, I tell people about my day job. If asked what I do for a hobby I tell them I trade the FTSE 250*. *caveats: 1. This is my "bland" response, aimed at people who are disinterested in the topic, and don't really want chapter and verse. Sometimes I get the response...

Top of the roller coaster? Oh woe is me! I'm no longer a consistently successful trader. :cry: Well, that's not strictly true - it depends on how you look at it. My three stopped out 20ppp trades have wiped out the profits from my four successful 10ppp trades. Hehehe, my optimism doesn't cave...

Weekend reward tune This weekend my reward for sticking to the plan all week (even though I made an error on the CSR purchase, it was unintentional) was to buy myself a tune that has escaped my collection. The 2007 version of Ecstasy by ATB, a sweet little trancy arm waver.

Trading Model v10 It's been a weekend of hard number crunching for me. It turned out that the little inconsistency about the mid-price triggering stops and limits in my model, rather than the spread high or low, had a huge effect on my profitability. I built in a spread adjustment for the...

First stop Well the two CSRs stopped out today, and some interesting stuff has come about because of it. In reality, they stopped out by a whisker, before the price recovered to quite a safe place, but in the world of my spreadsheet they didn't stop out, their stops were wide enough to allow...

I'm still kicking myself for going long on the wrong CSR contract yesterday, but it seems a good enough lesson that I'm losing on both of them, lol. At their current rate of play they'll both stop out tomorrow and I'll get to validate the long stop cost model for both daily and quarterly...

Re: DOH!! Schoolboy error!! I was so focused on trying to get the best price / spread for CSR, I didn't notice that the deal ticket I'd opened was for CSR December. Oh boy, trigger happy. So, I've just gone long on CSR December. It's not a catastrophe, CSR Dec gave me a long signal last night...

This weekend's analysis is suggesting that quarterly contracts will return a significantly better profit than trading the daily equivalents. (Back-testing is showing >25%.) I've got four December contracts in paper trading, due to go live (if they maintain performance) in early November. That's...

My first 20p bet and this weekend's analysis Time to double the stakes, I did what I was told and went long on Fenner during my lunch. I bought Fenner at 20p per point at 262.15, which was a mile away from the low of the day, but still good enough that I'd covered the cost of the spread by...

Sam: Lol So third time lucky today, Fenner hit its limit, bringing my account balance up to +£5.54 now. :cheesy: Helical is still in there, reaching its highest high of the last few months, an average price of 3 points above yesterday, and closing 2 points above yesterday. If it's going to hit...

Getting back to the original point... Motive is key. Gamblers, traders and speculators all put their principal at high risk in the uncertain hope of making extra money. Investors put their principal at low risk in order to protect it from certain deterioration due to inflation / bank charges...

First profits banked Woo-hoo!! Crack open the champagne, party at my place and everybody's invited!! :clap: Okay, good, I've got that out of my system. Phenominal volatility in the duel AQP shares took them both close to their stops then skyrocketed them both straight through their limits. I...

Ouch, took a hurting today, the winds of the FTSE 250 blew almost everything south. Statistically I was due one though, so no worries. AQP had the worst of it, being a mining stock, a particularly hard hit sector. AQP daily closed at 363.5, AQP Dec closed at 364.2, both below the price that I...