Recent content by olivertomahawk

After many years of “sort-of” trading; buying some underlying stocks, placing some spread bets on various markets but never having a coherent strategy I took the plunge in June last year and wanted to see if I could actually make some money spread betting the UK markets. I work in the financial...

You will need more knowledge and experience than money! Sorry, no quick answer here, I don't have the silver bullet that I can give to you, that you could follow, and you become a millionaire (or whatever it is that you want). it doesn't work like that. I have done well, partly due to luck...

Thanks for the replies. Hoggums - yes, that is the tricky part - working out the strike price. I am still playing with the idea and doing various back tests on my portfolio to test the outcomes. In the meantime, I have reduced my short on the FTSE 250 dramatically. BobbyBB - Thanks. Yup, I...

Hi everyone I am looking at hedging strategies for my spread bets. I currently have a short on the FTSE250, the index I am most highly correlated to, but I also wanted to look at buying an option. I checked on IG Index’s site this morning to get prices for buying a PUT option on the FTSE100...

Hmmm, interesting strategy. Does this not end up with you effectively hedging yourself though? Most stocks go up in a bull run and down in a bear run. I know I am over simplifying this but that is ultimately what will happen. It's very difficult to bet against the trend, maybe you get a few...

It does - I really need to think about a hedging strategy but by the time I was getting around to it, my experiment was over! This obviously was a phenomenal result and I hadn't expected even close to how quickly I would double my money. That's why, like I have said, I consider myself extremely...

No - I was very bullish and had no short bets at all !

I think I actually need about £125k to trade full time. This is my thinking: I was working off a 5.6% risk of my portfolio per trade. That worked and worked well in the current market but for longevity I would rather risk closer to 2%. So keeping the current risk per trade of £1667, that is 2%...

ffsear - max risk per trade was £1667. £30k divided by 18 bets (my max number of bets at any one time)

And so, my initial plan of turning £30k into £60k in a year turned out to be a lot quicker than I had anticipated. I in fact, have doubled my initial stake in less than 3 months. I am not here to gloat, and I also realise that I have been extremelly lucky with timing the great bull run, and in...

Rupert206, I agree that it's hard to know when to let your bets run and when to call them in. With BDEV, I lost patience with the bet to be honest. I held the bet for almost a month and it went nowhere fast. Up and down but mostly down so when I saw a profit I took it. I'm not sorry I did to...

Whoever provides the best spread really ! There are loads of them out there. Register for a free account and try their software, see who gives you the best spread etc. I have five or so accounts that I use.

Rupert206 - I am fairly bullish at the moment. I know the market is due for a correction sooner or later but at the moment I am still bullish. But, that said, I do need to think about a hedging strategy. Maybe open a short bet on the FTSE, not sure really. I have hiked up my stops on all my...

Yes - thanks. Have had a great run so far. A mixture of good picks, luck and obviously helped by a storming bull market. Conditions couldn't be better really. Sitting at around £25,500 up at the moment.

Never heard of the website but I don't really need to. What you need to do is learn the basics - from what you say, you are a novice who doesn't know much about the markets and a sure-fire way to lose money fast is invest in what you don't understand. If you really want to learn, then do you...