University Trading

[oshunt]

I'm 19 and currently at uni, and have recently opened a spread betting account with £150.

My goal of this journal is too improve my trading and more importantly get some financial experience in the markets and make some money

I've read allot on price action and have also looked at the making money trading thread which has been very helpful and this was reflected in my demo account which remained heavily above the green.

i know downfalls of spread betting and the odds of making money (90 percent of spread betters losing), but i believe the amount of research and application I've done should limit my potential loss and favor gains.

 

[pboyles]

I'm 19 and currently at uni, and have recently opened a spread betting account with £150.

My goal of this journal is too improve my trading and more importantly get some financial experience in the markets and make some money

I've read allot on price action and have also looked at the making money trading thread which has been very helpful and this was reflected in my demo account which remained heavily above the green.

i know downfalls of spread betting and the odds of making money (90 percent of spread betters losing), but i believe the amount of research and application I've done should limit my potential loss and favor gains.

I'd say you're wasting your time. It could take several years to be profitable.

 

[oshunt]

OK the strategy i'm using is pin bars supported by S&R and fibonacci retracement levels and will posting my trades on here, winning and losing to track my progress.

 

[oshunt]

I'd say you're wasting your time. It could take several years to be profitable.

That's fine with me, I would rather start now on my portfolio cause I need to show it to potential employers, just to show i'm interested and have had some trading experience.

 

[oshunt]

research 8/05/2012

Due to me working full time while im back from uni I've decided to not trade Forex and focus on indices and, also due to me being more of a beginner than an amateur in this world we call trading i'll look at commodities further in the future.

I've decided to focus on 12 indices; FTSE 100, FTSE 250, DAX 30, CAC 40, S&P, DJI AVERAGE, AUSTRALIAN INDEX, RUSS 2K, NIKKEI 225, SINGAPORE, HONG KONG INDEX.

 

[montmorencyt2w]

I'm 19 and currently at uni, and have recently opened a spread betting account with £150.

My goal of this journal is too improve my trading and more importantly get some financial experience in the markets and make some money

I've read allot on price action and have also looked at the making money trading thread which has been very helpful and this was reflected in my demo account which remained heavily above the green.

i know downfalls of spread betting and the odds of making money (90 percent of spread betters losing), but i believe the amount of research and application I've done should limit my potential loss and favor gains.

What are you studying mate?
I guess students these days can afford to lose £150 (or if you are at Oxbridge, that's probably £1500 ).

It's always worth keeping an eye on FX though, even if you don't trade it, but only the majors: USD, EUR, GBP, JPY (though it's almost never worth trading the Yen in my humble opinion; your mileage may vary), and keep an eye on gold as well.


It's probably better than pissing money away in the bar, although of course the temptation would be to trade and píss your money away in the bar. I know I would have

 

[oshunt]

What are you studying mate?
I guess students these days can afford to lose £150 (or if you are at Oxbridge, that's probably £1500 ).

It's always worth keeping an eye on FX though, even if you don't trade it, but only the majors: USD, EUR, GBP, JPY (though it's almost never worth trading the Yen in my humble opinion; your mileage may vary), and keep an eye on gold as well.


It's probably better than pissing money away in the bar, although of course the temptation would be to trade and píss your money away in the bar. I know I would have

I'm studying business Studies at Coventry uni atm, and i guess the main reason why i don't wan't to trade forex is cause it doesn't make sense to me at the moment, by that i mean how it works. Thanks for the advice thought iv'e added those forex and commodities to my watch list.

yh i thought learning to trade would be more benificial than going to the pub every other day lol

 

[oshunt]

After finally trying to understand how pin bars work i'm ready to go live with a demo account for 3 months.

 

[oshunt]

Thought I was ready to take the plunge I was wrong

Cut my demo account half a month early, and opened account with a spread betting company.

In the demo I've done well averaging a ten percent increase each month on the 10,000 making it 13,243 in the two and half months, just trading PA.

However its not real money and in my real spread betting account which i started with £100 i'm down 20% already at £80.20. all the principles i applied in my demo just went out the window, all the records i did, the entry reasons and so on have,just disappeared in this account. Looking back i've literally just blind traded s&r looking for good money mangement (it hasnt worked ) .

i'm trading at 10p per point atm and that means ive lost almost 200 points just because i haven't been taking this seriously, because it's such a small amount of money which is the wrong way to think about it. i've read other peoples journals and they have turned less money than this into very respectable amounts.

There our positives i've learned from this £20 education fee:

• -I dont know how to trade support and resistance (so i need to learn how to draw trend lines correctly and understand whats weak and strong, and how to enter these correctly so i'm on the right side of the market.(break retest for example).
  
• -I haven't been treating this like a business i have no model,trading plan or neat way to record trades and why I took them.

So over the next couple of days my aim is going to be to improve on theses areas, if not and i get to £70 i will re evaluate again.

 

[NVP]

good learning here....keep going

you stop being an amateur when you bet with real money ......

So now learn to swim with those sharks - and dont get bitten !

N

 

[oshunt]

Trading plan

Finished my trading plan, so i have some kind of path now. The trading plan is based of isotonic's basic plan, but making it relevant to me.

 

[Prestige]

Oshunt,

It is good to see you are willing to get some experience trading outside of the university. I trade mostly currencies and was in your position about a year ago, I would recommend looking at my first post in my trading journal as it shows you what can happen without the right kind of trading discipline and I don't wish you to end up in the same place as I did.

Nerveless if you work hard enough at it I am sure you will succeed.

Kind Regards,

Prestige

 

[thelazytrader]

Can I recommend the book Trading in The Zone by Mark Douglas. It's a great one on psychology in trading and it is indispensible to anyone wanting to learn the markets. Read this before you embark on the 'search for the right strategy'.

 

[Goldmember21]

Pretty much doing the same as me oshunt, however can i ask how the brokerage commission fees are treating you? This is my only reason for not opening a real account trading only a small amount of capital.

Also, just because your losing money doesnt mean you dont know where to put your S&R lines, just means the volumes have decided somewhere different, good luck!

 

[oshunt]

Can I recommend the book Trading in The Zone by Mark Douglas. It's a great one on psychology in trading and it is indispensible to anyone wanting to learn the markets. Read this before you embark on the 'search for the right strategy'.

heard allot about that book and it certainly is on my reading list, along with his other book the disciplined trader.

 

[oshunt]

Pretty much doing the same as me oshunt, however can i ask how the brokerage commission fees are treating you? This is my only reason for not opening a real account trading only a small amount of capital.

Also, just because your losing money doesnt mean you dont know where to put your S&R lines, just means the volumes have decided somewhere different, good luck!

I do spread betting so the only cost I've had is the roll over cost which isn't much if you don't hold it very long and the spread which in some markets can cost allot. but on small accounts like i did with svs the cost was allot £5.75 commission on entering and exiting and stamp duty which wasn't that much 1-2 % of trade then there's the spread, this way off trading was costly. Also i couldn't go short only long.

The only reason why i don't feel confident in my ability to draw S&r, is that i can only see horizontal (the easiest and most reliable imo) S&R, not any other diagonal trends or channels atm, but i've been reading allot on the forum about this and have begun to be able to see them better.

 

[oshunt]

First win...Could of been better though

DJIA
13382 entry (13383.5 had order hit because i was at work)
13260 stop
13575 t1 or first trouble area (13518 is where i got out )
13720 t2

first problem i had was that i got out of this trade, not due to my stop being hit but me closing myself out this is because my stop was hit but the bid was at 13575 and the sell at 13571 which meant it wasn't hit (lost out on £6/60 pips ). but i calculated it perfectly but being a beginner failed to add spread into my exit, i'll learn from this.

second issue is re-enter time to see if my second part of my trade will proceed i now have to wait for the price to fill in which i would of had profit and wait for some kind of retest above the 13575. at this point i hope to place a stop below the 13575 and bet 20p per point until 13720. if the market acts right.

Some positives and allot of information taken from this trade, which can be carried forward. Also got back of the majority of the losses from previous weeks

 

[oshunt]

forgot to add the images

 

[oshunt]

I've been on holiday for the last week, so haven't been able to trade. Aslo with me doing freshers now tradings going to have to be limited to just watching for the next week.

 

[oshunt]

ohh i forgot to add the trade i did before i went on holiday it was the retest on the DJIA it didn't work but i learnt some stuff.

DJIA II

BET - 15p
E - 13585
S - 13553

Sorry guys i should of updated my records straight away . i lost 4 quid anyway.

What I learned from this trade is that i'm not to confident to play outside bar retests, and shouldn't of taken it based on the experience from the demo.

Also over the next couple of weeks i'm just going to focus on four markets all of them indices. Just because too much is going on for me, to give my full attention to the others.