04/07/2007

Although this site is about 'Trading The SPI', there are other 'futures' type opportunities in the Australian Market.

With the popularity of Spread Betting, 'futures' like positions (that is short term highly geared positions), can be taken in most of the Top 200 Australian shares. Rather than solely focusing on the SPI and missing out on these opportunities, I will start to identify some of these other opportunities on these pages.

It should be possible to build up a portfolio of geared positions on slower moving shares, with a weeks/months time horizon - hopefully, with the added benefit of not being stopped out too often due to volatile prices.

The theory I'm following is that in the Top 200 shares, some shares are in up trends, some in down trends and some sideways moving. When the overall market is trending up, trade in the up trending shares. When the overall market is trending down, trade in the down trending shares and when the market is moving sideways, review positions or take profits and a take break from trading.

I'll be posting these opportunities from the July 2007 page onwards.

18/03/2007

The trades are going well with a 255 point profit over 5 trades in Feb. I'll be sticking to the current trading plan.

05/02/2007

Update, one month on: Larger profit opportunities have been few and far between so far (for me anyway). I guess I'm waiting until I'm confident of the main daily trend. The theme is still the same, that is "be selective in your trades".

03/01/2007

Having given the 'twin trade' plan discussed below some thought (and the first one went petty well at the end of December), if I think a larger profit opportunity exists I may make a 'triple trade', taking profits 10 and 20 points and letting the 3rd trade 'run'.

28/12/2006

The strategy in the last 3 months of 2006 followed the 'risk as much as you win' method - namely, you needed to be right more times than you were wrong. If you were, over the long term, profits would come.

The methods were running about 66.7%, or 2 out of 3, until a few losing trades were stopped out by a few points and this knocked it back closer to 60%. This still would have resulted in profits but perhaps not enough for the time and effort?

The method of entry, or buy signal, has been very good with nearly all leading to a 'potential' profit - note potential. The problem has been in taking profits: how much to expect and when to take them?

Looking for a small consistent amounts seemed like a good plan - not being too greedy - but a few too many losses brought back the overall gains. There were a few trades where the limit was missed by a small amount and others where the market continued to move an additional 50-100 points - it was frustrating to see this 'potential' after closing out a position.

So, the entry strategy for 2007 will remain the same and the exit strategy will be modified by increasing the stop distance and placing 'twin trades' (using spread betting) to exit at different limits. The first smaller limit should have a high success rate (based on the last 3 months) and it will help to offset the second trade if it doesn't hit the limit and gets stopped out.

As larger profits opportunities occur in larger (daily) trends, I'll be taking the signals used on the hourly chart and applying them to the daily (since they are purely patterned based, this can be done) to see if a method for letting profits run can be found.

Read Me:

Entries are noted during the day and then posted later. Live entries would probably constitute 'trading advice' which the author neither wishes or is licensed to do.

The author uses spread betting to trade and therefore prices discussed (particularly high's and low's) may differ from real market prices.

This is a personal account of someone's own trading experiences. These are personal views of the author. The reader should always seek professional advice to suit their personal circumstances.

The content of this site IS NOT investment or  trading advice.

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