Points make Prizes!

Alfaman

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As a newbie to trading and this board I am reading and learning as fast as time allows.

I recently started Spreadbetting and tried to devise a system (although I did know it was called that at the time) to earn small point gains each day. So far I 've lost money and then I found this board and realised others were also into trading systems - revelation - I am not alone!

My attempts revolved around the fact that the DOW seemed to me to shoot rapidly either up or down in the first 30 mins of trading. I therefore placed small bets both up and down on the Dow cash with two different SB companies before trading starts. The limits and stops were set such that for a (roughly) 40 point rise in the DOW (and vica versa) the Sell bet would close at a loss of 20 points and the Buy bet would close at a profit of plus 30 points thus making a profit of 10 points per day guaranteed (Ho Ho). (The extra 10 points are lost in the spread.)

On a £2 stake this makes £20 per day. If it worked every day I thought I could quickly gain confidence and increase it to £20/pt and £200/day income tax free - retire.

The beauty of this system to me would be that it places bets once and then left all day - hence not interfering with work.

Although it worked a few times saw toothing in the Dow can cause both bets to stop out at a loss of bot bets at around £80/day (on my stake). Obviously it can't afford to fail too often to wipe out the profits. Also moving SB prices before the DOW opens caused problems as sometimes the jump occurs before opening.

Whilst I read and learn can anyone offer me an alternative trading system to the above that makes regular gains that I can be going on with ? (or is this the Holy Grail ?)

Is spreadbetting the most common method used by you guys or are your comments generally aimed at other investment tools.

Can anyone advise which charting package is a good compromise between cost and function. I currently just use free live prices from Moneyam.com and free realtime DOW charts from Lycos.

Lots of questions - any comments ? (please be gentle please I am new to all this!)

Alfaman
 
Hmm, yes a lot of questions!

A lot of people on the boards use spreads - most people, in fact, I would say. Others (like myself) trade futures via a direct access broker such as IB. Others still do both futures and spreads, it depends on your budget, your understanding, the size of your gonads and your knowledge.

Regarding charting, one of the most popular and the one you'll see referred to one the boards a lot is www.sierrachart.com utitilising a feed from someone like www.mytrack.com : the "silver" plan will give you realtime access to the Dow (cash) index, you have to pay a small monthly fee for Dow futures and the emini S&P. However, again there are lots of people who use lycos.com, advfn.com etc etc and do quite well with it.

as for learning, Chartman's daily postings and analysis on the Dow are superb. Also worth a visit to the chatoom probably.

There is no holy grail :cheesy: There's a technique called the "Holy Grail" used by Linda Bradford-Raschke ( www.lbrgroup.com ) although its not referred to that often on her site.

Other useful links Technical Analysis-wise / learning wise are :

http://www.elitetrader.com/

http://www.decisionpoint.com/

http://www.stockcharts.com/education/


Hope some of this helps.
 
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