bluedental
Junior member
- Messages
- 16
- Likes
- 1
wow, what a mug! he should read the advice in this forum!!
Can you really make money spread betting
- Thread starter bluedental
- Start date
- Watchers 69
After a close reading of your situation and aspirations one is inclined to conclude that you would derive greater satisfaction from taking your £300 to a suitable Freehouse and getting pissed by sampling the wares therein
like it defo more fun than losing
bluedental have u tried using a sim account on spreadbetting? i lost a grand of my own money byt being stupid after having a couple of good days on a sim! then decided i would set myself a target of making 50k on a sim account before losing anymore of my cash! the sim im using starts of with 20k, after 5 days im on 25k, like others have said cut ur losers and max your profits, let some run and bank some ! dont always put all your bet on at the same time phase it in, im a bit lazy with all this reading so excuse me if u have already said in the llast 6 pages but how u getting on now?
Lee Shepherd
Senior member
- Messages
- 2,164
- Likes
- 573
Word of warning and advice:
To take or throw away with your money.
:!:You've made 5k on a 20k account in 5 days, this amounts to 25% on account in a single week. To get your 20k account to 50k will take a considerable amount of time. If you do achieve this within 1 year that would be a result of 150%. To achieve these figures means you are playing with extreme risk which over time results in inconsistancy and eventually total loss of funds.
You've been warned.
A Dashing Blade
Experienced member
- Messages
- 1,373
- Likes
- 170
Never ever seen the point of using a sim a/c. Imo, to mimic the emotional aspect of trading, you should use a real a/c with a relatively (for you) small but still meaningfull amount
simcom
Active member
- Messages
- 142
- Likes
- 8
Agreed - I thought it was a sensible thing to do when I started out, but it didn't take long to realise that that sage advice about psychology being the main part of the winning battle was true. I found that using small trade sizes (I used IG Index during their TradeSense programme, but I imagine other providers have similar schemes) was much better. Even then, the mental response to losing 50p is different to losing £500!
Phil Mibbutz
Experienced member
- Messages
- 1,860
- Likes
- 58
As I remember it, you tend to see the point only after you've rushed in and blown a real account a few times!
As a rookie, I turned £4k into £16k in 4 weeks-and £16k into nothing in 12 weeks! No discipline, poor stop losses, made the usual mistakes of pushing the stop back to stay in the trade-after all I couldn't be wrong! Let the losses build & took the profit too soon! Painful lesson. As the losses started backing up I lost the courage to enter some "obvious" trades, I would sit for hours waiting for a signal & then be too frightened to enter, only to see the trade go the way I had expected. I'd then try to make up for this "loss" by jumping in a trade I hadn't given a lot of thought to-gambling at the end of the day. I think my lessons learned were know when you've got it wrong & get out, have realistic stops in place & don't think you have to do X number of trades per day or per week, setting targets of daily amounts to make will encourage you to play catch up on days you didn't hit them.
I have read your comments with great interest, this being totally due to the fact that I also started with £300 and I am now left with half of it, although I did reach £590 at some stage.
I am a Professional Engineer and employed full time and never thought for a moment to leave my day job for trading. However trading does fascinate me and I am keen to add to my income by exercising it.
I started by practising on the Paddypowertrader simulator and later Tradindex one; I found both good to practise on, although the Irish one was not realtime and the TradIndex one did not offer the charting tools that other spreadbetting Companies incorporate in their platform. After some reasonable wins and losses on simulation I decided to go for the Real McCoy. In the mean time, and when the opportunities were available I would study trends and try to analyse what happened; J.Murphy's book and other literature on trading helped me understand quite a lot about charting and technical analysis, which I find great tools for spread betting, as opposed to fundamental analysis.
It didn't take me much time to realise that I was miscalculating my entry positions due to bad interpretations of the real spread after adding the "fee" for guaranteed stop losses etc. Another mistake I made (and regrettably still make at times) was/is placing the stop too close to the entry point, in which case a very volatile move could terminate the bet and vanish your money straightaway; the more annoying is then when you see that it was indeed the right choice to go short (or long) but you lost because you were scared enough to go for a "braver" stop point than taking the recommended by the platform.
I often found myself greedy enough after a win to try to add to it by betting on the same instrument without realising in all the excitement that the instrument has lost its steam, ignoring all the signals by MACDs, RSIs, Bollinger, SAR Parabolic etc that what I was going to do was the opposite of what I should have done; retrospectively, when lost more than what I won and with cooler brains analysed what happened, I concluded that I was dangerously idiotic for failing to keep myself disciplined. I didn't like the initially won £80 but now I am -£105. For a small account of £300 that is really much!
I also found myself betting on instruments for which I do not have any edge, nor I understand how they really work! Big mistake, the supremacy of idiocy!
As for IG Index that I am mostly using, I cannot say I am satisfied or not; they have been a bit suspect at times and I find their customer service not very friendly, but apart from an incident on US light oil that I couldn't close my position because they frose the platform, I cannot say that my failures are (entirely) due to them!
So, is it worth spreadbetting and can make money out of it? I think yes it is; if you have a plan, prepare, are disciplined and believe in yourself you can do it! Rome was not built in a day and doctors do not become doctors in a day too. Ditto for the traders; otherwise everybody would be superich, should that was the case!
One thing is for sure; we do have a lot to learn before we can dream of remarkable profits from spreadbetting. But in the mean time, even with so little money in the spreadbetting account, we should not quit!
I am a Professional Engineer and employed full time and never thought for a moment to leave my day job for trading. However trading does fascinate me and I am keen to add to my income by exercising it.
I started by practising on the Paddypowertrader simulator and later Tradindex one; I found both good to practise on, although the Irish one was not realtime and the TradIndex one did not offer the charting tools that other spreadbetting Companies incorporate in their platform. After some reasonable wins and losses on simulation I decided to go for the Real McCoy. In the mean time, and when the opportunities were available I would study trends and try to analyse what happened; J.Murphy's book and other literature on trading helped me understand quite a lot about charting and technical analysis, which I find great tools for spread betting, as opposed to fundamental analysis.
It didn't take me much time to realise that I was miscalculating my entry positions due to bad interpretations of the real spread after adding the "fee" for guaranteed stop losses etc. Another mistake I made (and regrettably still make at times) was/is placing the stop too close to the entry point, in which case a very volatile move could terminate the bet and vanish your money straightaway; the more annoying is then when you see that it was indeed the right choice to go short (or long) but you lost because you were scared enough to go for a "braver" stop point than taking the recommended by the platform.
I often found myself greedy enough after a win to try to add to it by betting on the same instrument without realising in all the excitement that the instrument has lost its steam, ignoring all the signals by MACDs, RSIs, Bollinger, SAR Parabolic etc that what I was going to do was the opposite of what I should have done; retrospectively, when lost more than what I won and with cooler brains analysed what happened, I concluded that I was dangerously idiotic for failing to keep myself disciplined. I didn't like the initially won £80 but now I am -£105. For a small account of £300 that is really much!
I also found myself betting on instruments for which I do not have any edge, nor I understand how they really work! Big mistake, the supremacy of idiocy!
As for IG Index that I am mostly using, I cannot say I am satisfied or not; they have been a bit suspect at times and I find their customer service not very friendly, but apart from an incident on US light oil that I couldn't close my position because they frose the platform, I cannot say that my failures are (entirely) due to them!
So, is it worth spreadbetting and can make money out of it? I think yes it is; if you have a plan, prepare, are disciplined and believe in yourself you can do it! Rome was not built in a day and doctors do not become doctors in a day too. Ditto for the traders; otherwise everybody would be superich, should that was the case!
One thing is for sure; we do have a lot to learn before we can dream of remarkable profits from spreadbetting. But in the mean time, even with so little money in the spreadbetting account, we should not quit!
spreadbetit
Junior member
- Messages
- 34
- Likes
- 0
yes indeed i have seen it done, i have watched myself do it. i have managed to triple my account, but i still need to learn the resist greed! set a plan, stick to it and follow the rules above and you will be v. successful!
I've been spread betting for a year and have made every mistake in the books!
I now do the following:
1. Trade with the trend. Always, always always.
2. Take profits at 3:1 ratio. Don't be greedy.
3. Unless it looks like a major trend....
4. Control leverage.
5. Control position size.
6.Take losses as a lesson and learn.
6. Never ever ever move a stop.
I'm not generating huge profits, but I'm not generating huge losses either.
I now do the following:
1. Trade with the trend. Always, always always.
2. Take profits at 3:1 ratio. Don't be greedy.
3. Unless it looks like a major trend....
4. Control leverage.
5. Control position size.
6.Take losses as a lesson and learn.
6. Never ever ever move a stop.
I'm not generating huge profits, but I'm not generating huge losses either.
B
Black Swan
Are dynamic trailing stops *out* in your strat?
Anybody who says they have not made mistakes is fibbing, but i found that most SB companies dont want you to make ,so make trading v difficault with re-quotes, slow fills etc, when i found DMA as a spread bet this made a difference to my P&L.
paulbennett1084
Junior member
- Messages
- 27
- Likes
- 0
hmm i think you can...im currently demoing the CMC platform. I really enjoy it, the gui is great. While watching bloomberg they were talking about the increase in gold and what not...So i put £50/pp that the price will go up. In a space of 30mins i made over £380
Im still getting to grips with it all, so im probs talking out my ****. But i can see the enjoyment out of it "when you get it right" I guess. From what i have learnt in a few days, is practice and practice with a decent demo account. I am currently using 3 platforms. SpreadCo / City Index / CMC / to see which one i prefer. Just takes time i guess. Knowledge is power and all that.
Im still getting to grips with it all, so im probs talking out my ****. But i can see the enjoyment out of it "when you get it right" I guess. From what i have learnt in a few days, is practice and practice with a decent demo account. I am currently using 3 platforms. SpreadCo / City Index / CMC / to see which one i prefer. Just takes time i guess. Knowledge is power and all that.
alphahunter
Member
- Messages
- 64
- Likes
- 0
It's taken me two years to consistently (read monthly) generate a return. That may sound a lot of time given the 2009-1010 equity bull market, but I run a portfolio on a long/short basis & market neutral (+/- 10%) with the aim of generating low volatility - as I like sleeping at night and dislike spending my time behind a screen watching prices.
I can't talk for you if your approach is based on Technical Analysis, as mine is 80% fundamental. Spread-betting works fine with me because I don't day-trade/scalp but keep positions open for a few weeks / months looking for anything between 5% to 25% profit. I obviously check the L2 prices elsewhere before I deal.
My setting is fairly modest and low-cost:
1 yearly subscription to the FT
1 yearly subscription to Investors' chronicle
1 diary where I write down a summary of the day's news as well as expected events.
CNBC & Bloomberg TV over the internet, ransquawk, BFM radio (live French biz news)
2 pay-as-you-go mobile phones and recorders to record conference calls that aren't webcast/can't be replayed
2 computers with wireless headsets
I can't talk for you if your approach is based on Technical Analysis, as mine is 80% fundamental. Spread-betting works fine with me because I don't day-trade/scalp but keep positions open for a few weeks / months looking for anything between 5% to 25% profit. I obviously check the L2 prices elsewhere before I deal.
My setting is fairly modest and low-cost:
1 yearly subscription to the FT
1 yearly subscription to Investors' chronicle
1 diary where I write down a summary of the day's news as well as expected events.
CNBC & Bloomberg TV over the internet, ransquawk, BFM radio (live French biz news)
2 pay-as-you-go mobile phones and recorders to record conference calls that aren't webcast/can't be replayed
2 computers with wireless headsets
Similar threads
