Why did price spike on my broker but not on the FTSE?

50 pence per point is the sane way to lose money learning to trade.

But this is not necessarily the best way. There's guy here who traded £5-£30/point. He learned pretty much instantly about trading. Now he doesn't even trade a penny. I used my best abilities on him to change his mind, but it was in vain.

Best lessons usually come with a premium price tag.
 
Please don't make the mistake of assuming that the ftse will go up tomorrow.

Actually, I shouldn't have said 'up day tomorrow' as I was thinking of a retracement to 7350 and after that it can potentially be down all day.

We might not get that retracement and it might just go down.

The trading strategy I'm following works better within days and can break down after close, and between days and is less accurate on the highest timeframe charts.

It's still pretty good between days but I would not hold any position overnight expecting it to go one way or the other.

This is, I believe, because high trading volume is needed for prediction because the high trading volume creates the 'purest' most predictable patterns that I try to read.

Overnight volume completely drops so anything can happen.


The big news today concerning gbp clearly shows that trading sentiment favours strengthening of gbp. This being the case, it is highly likely that the ftse will go sideways to lower but not higher. As long as the gbp gains in strength, then expect the ftse to do the opposite in the short term. Approx 10 times the ftse is testing support. If it does break, it will be to the downside, likely target 7,100

Interesting. I have been expecting down move too but longer term still up until 7900.
 
Actually, I shouldn't have said 'up day tomorrow' as I was thinking of a retracement to 7350 and after that it can potentially be down all day.

We might not get that retracement and it might just go down.

The trading strategy I'm following works better within days and can break down after close, and between days and is less accurate on the highest timeframe charts.

It's still pretty good between days but I would not hold any position overnight expecting it to go one way or the other.

This is, I believe, because high trading volume is needed for prediction because the high trading volume creates the 'purest' most predictable patterns that I try to read.

Overnight volume completely drops so anything can happen.




Interesting. I have been expecting down move too but longer term still up until 7900.

So One day on we see continued strengthening of GBP and FTSE weakened in line with expectation.
 

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the FTSE100 does not seem to have done the same move..

i haven't looked into your discrepancy in detail but thought id add that have queried an incident of my own like this with my SB provider (only once a long time ago) and they agreed to put the trade back to how it would have been without the erroneous spike. im not saying yours would do the same but may be worth a try. they might have a reason like the widening spreads etc
 
Et,

I think you may want to rethink some of the info you've been fed.

Correct me if I am wrong but you are trading the FTSE cash index which is what your Yahoo charts show. Yahoo , google does not keep futures charts.

The SBs make their derived cash products off a " fair value " model based on the nearest month futures contract, so of course there is a large correlation between their cash product and the futures.

Thus when the futures spikes, so will the SB cash product, though the real FTSE cash may not.

You are of course wise to use stops if you intend to trade decent money, obviously @ 50p - 100p is beginners stuff so it doesn't matter as much.

Then again if you are trading decent money I would advise swtiching to futures exchange products. You must also realise that this forum is sponsored by SB firms so only natural that their products may be defacto promoted.

Ultimately it is up to you to do what you want, not for me or anyone to dictate to you.

I have to warn you now that I have taken this seriously and tried to help you , this will be a que for trollers to jump in and vent their anger.



Imagine you are trading £50 per point and got in at the perfect point end of wave 2 ... and then this happened.

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Fortunately I was trading only 50 pence per point. If I was trading serious money I would have been annoyed because the FTSE100 does not seem to have done the same move.

Was my analysis wrong or is one of these charts (Google and Yahoo data for FTSE 100) wrong?

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Edit: I was shorting and my stop, somewhere above the high, was taken out by the spike that wasn't there on the actual? FTSE 100.
 
obviously @ 50p - 100p is beginners stuff so it doesn't matter as much...

Then again if you are trading decent money I would advise switching to futures exchange products..

hi wf,

seeing as you brought it up again, can you clarify what decent money/size is?
what size do you trade typically?
 
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hi wf,

seeing as you brought it up again, can you clarify what decent money/size is?
what size do you trade typically?

Well as the OP said if his size was bigger, then his account would have taken a much larger hit. What is big is subjective. As he also said he is a begginer and using very small stakes which is wise but of course things are much different when size becomes larger. So to him 5/point may be a large size, to me it is not, but to someone else a CTA perhaps 50 - 100 contracts is normal. At least the OP is honest and seems to be on the right path.
 
Well as the OP said if his size was bigger, then his account would have taken a much larger hit. What is big is subjective. As he also said he is a begginer and using very small stakes which is wise but of course things are much different when size becomes larger. So to him 5/point may be a large size, to me it is not, but to someone else a CTA perhaps 50 - 100 contracts is normal. At least the OP is honest and seems to be on the right path.

Are you saying 50 to 100 contracts is what you meant by "decent size" ? i.e. £3.6M to £7.2M exposure?

Is this the kind of size you trade ?
 
Are you saying 50 to 100 contracts is what you meant by "decent size" ? i.e. £3.6M to £7.2M exposure?

Is this the kind of size you trade ?

No, as I said a CTA trades that.

CTA = An American concept whereby individual / small ventures passs SFC type exams get registered and can then legally market and trade their own and clients money, mainly on exchange products and more direct startegies.

" Mini hedge " funds if you like, without all the fancy algos et al.

So large size is relative but whatever, 50p / 1 pound a point is beginner's stuff. I hope you realise that size plays a major role; can't use the same strategy for mini stakes as you do when trade larger and larger sizes.

As you alluded a CTA would indeed have millions exposure which is why they almost always use stop losses in 1 form or another. A 100 point drop for a penny trader is nothing but for larger sizes (even for large individual traders never mind CTAs) will be disasterous.
 
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thanks for the info i appreciate you taking the time to explain.. (and good to have an idea of your size! :cheesy:)

i think you're kinda missing the essential part of moving beyond the "beginner stage" though. the size that someone trades is entirely up to them. what takes you past the beginner stage is that you start making money, with some consistency, rather than losing it. you could even say breaking-even takes you to the next stage. that's how i basically define it.
 
thanks for the info i appreciate you taking the time to explain.. (and good to have an idea of your size! :cheesy:)

i think you're kinda missing the essential part of moving beyond the "beginner stage" though. the size that someone trades is entirely up to them. what takes you past the beginner stage is that you start making money, with some consistency, rather than losing it. you could even say breaking-even takes you to the next stage. that's how i basically define it.

Well, I don't know about that since I was just addressing the OP's point about trading small as a begginer. But when you start talking about the "beginner stage" the it all becomes very subjective.

I suppose the larger you trade the more beginner you think smaller sizes are.

The point was that trading in larger sizes IS different. For example, you can trade without a SL if you trade small say 1 ppp and you have 500 pound on margin then you could well be given a margin call if you have gone down by 250 points (50%). To hold this position you will have to top up by 250 pound, not a large sum.

Eventually the market will recover and you may eek out say 30points.

However , If you trade 10ppp and you have 5000 in account, you will have to cough up 2500 pound . That's a huge difference and a large chunk out of most ordinary people's finances.

So trading w/o a SL, hitting and hoping is not appropriate for larger size and 10ppp is nothing special.

Strategies for small sizes don't scale up well. That is the point.
 
As you alluded a CTA would indeed have millions exposure which is why they almost always use stop losses in 1 form or another. A 100 point drop for a penny trader is nothing but for larger sizes (even for large individual traders never mind CTAs) will be disasterous.

What do you know about it ? Are you a CTA ?
 
Well, I don't know about that since I was just addressing the OP's point about trading small as a begginer. But when you start talking about the "beginner stage" the it all becomes very subjective.

I suppose the larger you trade the more beginner you think smaller sizes are.

The point was that trading in larger sizes IS different. For example, you can trade without a SL if you trade small say 1 ppp and you have 500 pound on margin then you could well be given a margin call if you have gone down by 250 points (50%). To hold this position you will have to top up by 250 pound, not a large sum.

Eventually the market will recover and you may eek out say 30points.

However , If you trade 10ppp and you have 5000 in account, you will have to cough up 2500 pound . That's a huge difference and a large chunk out of most ordinary people's finances.

So trading w/o a SL, hitting and hoping is not appropriate for larger size and 10ppp is nothing special.

Strategies for small sizes don't scale up well. That is the point.

i know the points you were making previously you didn't need to reiterate them. however, thanks for expanding on how size can effect strategy - it made me think (y)

What i was referring to is only your "50p/100p a point is beginner's stuff" type comments, this is where you sound like you are missing the point about trading, not the thread or whatever
 
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