The CFD Traders

Be a Trade King

2011-07-06T15:10:00.017Z

When you think Investment Bankers such as Goldman Sachs, JP Morgan, Morgan Stanley etc have got over 200 Trillion Dollars tied up in derivatives alone, then it is time to think that as a "Full Time Trader" who possesses proven market experience, you should put your aims very high and should not simply be content with just making a day-to-day living from day-trading. This is more so, if you are trading via a margin account like CFDs or Spread-betting.

What made me write this article was I was chatting to a derivative trader last week who had made a fair amount of money a few years ago and had decided to cut down on his trading size and take things easy and become a Steady Eddie instead of going full throttle ahead and take on the big guys single-handedly!

Now, that may sound extremely arrogant and I bet a lot of you people out there may disagree with what I just said above. But think about it in a lot deeper terms.

Here, we happen to have a guy who has been trading over 15 years and has apparently increased his starting capital by 10 fold, he has seen and gone through everything that a trader needs to come across while involved in the stock market.... things like the bombing of London and Spain, the worldwide shock which was created by the late Osama Bin Laden, the Iraqi attack by the Western Governments and so on, and yet he is virtually throwing all that experience in the garbage bin and is going to be trading just like another trader who is happy with just putting bread on the table at the end of each trading day! This is the biggest injustice that any professional people could do to themselves.

So instead of playing this game defensively, he should have become a more attacking and ambitious trader and should have set himself up with a very high target to achieve. I would have personally gone after making a wealth as high as 2 or 3 Billions at least, after let's say a period of 5 to 6 years. This is definitely achievable when you have the funds, the instruments which the likes of CFD's have to offer, and most of all, the many years of experience, which our trader in this article happens to have possessed -- What he must have lacked I would say had to be self-belief that it was his skills which made him money in the first place and a hunger for being a Trade King.

Can You Really Beat The Market?

2011-02-03T18:03:00.019Z

Does CFD or Spread Betting really work and can you really beat the market?

I bet that is a Question, which every Market Follower or a Junior Trader must have asked himself or herself many, many times over..... and I also bet those of you who had been visiting this trading blog regularly in the past, must have thought at one time (due to the fact that the last post on this blog was nearly one and half years ago) .... "you see... did I not tell you that beating the market using CFDs or Spread Betting is not as easy as it sounds...."?!

Well, if that were the thought in minds of some of you, I could understand, but I would like to reassure you sincerely, that the reason for lack of recent postings on this site has got nothing to do with me being successful or otherwise at trading CFDs. It's just I have been extremely busy both with trading the stock market and, at the same time, have been doing some research on other projects as well - when you have been trading as long as I have been, whether successfully or unsuccessfully, you just want to do other things as well to take yourself away from the boredom of the day to day trading - trading long hours day in day out can really be highly exhaustive in many ways that you would need to experience it in order to have empathy for those who are doing it.

Nevertheless, going by past experience, I like to assure you that "Yes", You Can Beat The Market - it's easily done if you make sure you have learnt everything that there is to learn, which is really a lot in this case!

You must make sure, if you are using a leveraged account that there is always sufficient amount of capital at your disposal.

You must make sure that you increase your stakes at a correct ratio to your existing capital.

You should always insure that you Do Not Open Lots Of Trades in any given moment, specifically if you are trading the Indexes (Indices) or the Currencies (Forex). The market for these TRADING INSTRUMENTS is particularly fast and those of you who trade the market manually would virtually have no chance of monitoring your open positions at all.

In a nutshell, if you apply your trading know-how plus good MONEY MANAGEMENT and also possess all the required tools, you will find that THE STOCK MARKET CAN REALLY BE BEATEN.

Is Recession Over? Does It Really Matter?

2009-08-27T13:22:00.012Z

One of the things, which you should not be concerned about when you are a Contract For Difference Day Trader or Spread Betting is the State Of The Economy i.e. whether we are in a recession or otherwise.

Presuming you have already read other posts on this site, you will remember that I have already pointed out that when you are Online Share Dealing using Contract For Difference or Spread Betting you should make money under any market condition - whether the market is identified as a BULL MARKET or a BEAR MARKET should not make a difference in your overall performance as a TRADER.

When you think the likes of Goldman Sachs and J P Morgan have spent millions of dollars to implement software codes, which are capable of trading at the speed of light it would be absurd to try to work out when the economy falls into a recession or recover from it -- trading in the 21st Centaury is a far cry from the times that the likes of Warren Buffet & Co used to make their money! -- So the sooner you will adapt your ways to make money in very short spans of times the more successful and nimble trader you may become in the long run - true this way of trading may be more stressful for some but the odds are that you will be more likely to sleep better at night when your profits are banked under your pillow!

Don't Be A Standby Trader

2009-02-02T10:45:00.009Z

The attraction of using a leveraged share trading account such as a Contract For Difference (CFD) or a Spread Betting account is that it is far more flexible than if a trader was using the normal way of purchasing or selling shares in a company. Considerable profits and losses can materialise when an investor uses derivatives for the purpose of profiting from the stock market fluctuations.

One of the phases, which most traders tend to go through is that after a while they seem to confuse "Building More Discipline" with being "Extremely Overcautious" with their trading, to the extend that they reduce the number of times they are prepared to trade drastically and become virtually idle or Standby Traders!

Stock Markets are there to be traded and skillful experienced traders would not do their bank balances any favours by just being market watchers - in my experience once a trader has worked out that he has an advantage over the stock market, he should not hesitate too much to press the Buy or Sell button and this together with a bit of money management strategy should stand a frequent trader on a healthy and wealthy financial position in the long run for many years to come.

Stay A Daytrader

2009-01-01T11:29:00.009Z

With the new year started already, I am sure we will be hearing from lots of Stock Market Experts that this year is going to be a good year for the Stock Market and there are going to be lots of bargain shares (stocks) to be had if we do our homework properly.

Well, the opportunities may exist or they may not!

The essential thing to keep in mind is if you are a small investor (trader) you cannot really risk or tie down your small capital on looking weeks or even months ahead -- Instead as a small trader (investor), you would want to employ your funds in something, which would give you nearly an instant return on perhaps daily or at worst weekly basis.

So to achieve the above, you would really want to be a Daytrader and if you happen to have a margin account such as a CFD or a SpreadBetting account, you have the added advantage of both shorting the market or going long as and when you find the right trading opportunities - With short-term trading or daytrading you could virtually close your positions as soon as your initial capital or investment has shown a profit. In other words the flexibilities that daytrading offers you as a trader, should not be overlooked easily.

To stress the nicety of daytrading, let's take trading the Dow Jones Industrial as an example:

We all know that lots of professional traders trade the Dow Jones to make a good living out of .... and we also, know that on most trading days the Dow travels up and down on a certain range -- so if we got ourselves stuck on a long term position, we would consequently be missing on a lot of points which we would be making had we employed daytrading as a means of making our initial investment grew.

Happy Daytrading for the New Year.

Preserving Your Capital

2008-10-20T12:14:00.007Z

A Good Stock Market Trader not only knows when to trade but he or she also knows when to stay on the sidelines. Undertaking the latter route is far more important than actually a lot of traders give it credence.

With the huge and unprecedented ups and downs that the Stock Markets across the world have been going through lately, the notion of Capital Preservation must be heeded more than any time before.

Full-time stock market traders are particularly at risk in such market conditions for the simple reason that a lot of them solely rely on trading to make a living for themselves and their families. So it is highly advisable to make sure that they tighten their discipline and stick to their money-management systems more religiously than ever before.

The amateur stock market traders who trade on leverage are particularly advised to be extremely cautious before they commit themselves to opening any trading positions. They at least must make sure they have devised a working strategy for this type of market environment before entering the trading arena and they ought to stop chasing their losses once they realise their trading plan has stopped being effective.

Do Not Get Margin Calls

2008-10-01T09:33:00.008Z

Due to the financial "Bailout" uncertainty that has been going on for the past few days in America, STOCK MARKETS across the world have been having the biggest degree of volatilities that has ever been recorded in the history of the Equity Markets -- traders have got to be extra cautious if they intend to stay active in this type of environment. Already, some traders have incurred heavy losses and some have gone completely bust as a result of the markets wild swings within the past few days. Remember Stock Market will take no prisoners!

Good traders will always try to adopt the following rules if they want to stop getting "Margin Calls" from their brokers
or getting wiped out completely:

Do not be tempted to open large positions if you can help it.

As soon as your position is in profit, move up your stop losses accordingly.

Do not add to your losing positions.

Stay away from the markets, if you have not traded in such environments before.

Lehman Has No Brothers

2008-09-16T10:53:00.008Z

With the collapse of Lehman Brothers and the search for more funding by the American giant insurance company, AIG, the stock markets throughout the world have been having one of its worst moments of its recent times as regards to daily losses they have encountered. The "Dow Jones Industrial" lost a massive 504 points (more than 4%) last night during the market hours and a further 100 points when the Asian Markets were going through their "free fall parachuting".

However, if you were lucky to be a very experienced trader then you would definitely be able to take advantage of such market volatilities. But my advice to inexperienced and newbie traders would be, in such market environments, simply try to be an observant rather than a participant of the market -- this type of market, when it happens, does offer an "Excellent Opportunity" for the "Novice Players" to take in, what really can happen when markets go through wild swings -- if you can fight the urge from trading by opening a hasty position based on compulsion, then as an amateur trader you will be quids in and at the same time you will be extremely happy with yourself afterwards that you did not gamble your money away in an irresponsible manner!

Traders, Close All Positions At The End Of The Day!

2008-09-08T15:28:00.006Z

The News of the US Federal Government to take over the two "Mortgage Giants" Fannie Mae and Freddie Mack at the weekend, had a frantic effect on the opening of the World Stock Markets.

The Dow Jones future prices gapped up nearly 300 points when it reopened on Sunday, Nikkei closed up over 400 points, the ASX200, the Australian Index ended up nearly 200, the Footsie gapped up nearly 300 points at the open ......

The essence of the above, should make it clear to all "traders" that they should think twice if they are tempted to leave their positions open to the next day, specifically where the weekend is involved, as the after market news could really prove to be detrimental to their trading accounts! Of course this is if "Guaranteed Stops" have not been put in place.

In situations like above, where the market can gap up or gap down by a large margin, a trader could risk losing all his or her capital in one day if he or she has left his or her destiny to fate. So please make sure you apply tight discipline to your trading method, if you are to avoid having painful days during your trading careers.

Dow Jones Contrarians

2008-09-05T08:08:00.008Z

If your style of trading is to be a "Contrarian", I would recommend, if you are an index trader who happens to trade the Dow Jones, S P 500, Nasdaq etc Do Not rush to open any trading positions as soon as the index you're trading has dropped or gained only 2% or less in either direction, unless you're just scalping for a few points.

The nature of the US Indices recently has proved that in the case of days where there are a bunch of good or bad news, they seem to over-react to the situation.

Let's analyse yesterday's US market actions as an example:

The ADP Employment figure came in as 33k which was a shade above the forecast.

The Initial Claims was 24k worse than the estimated forecast.

The Productivity-Rev did come in better than it was forecasted.

The ISM Services was above 50 and better than consensus.

Taking all the above factors into account, "one" would not have expected for the "Dow Jones" to have dropped 344 points (nearly 3%) and for all other indices "S P 500" and others to have done the same. So we can see how the market over-reacted negatively to the Employments News.

I wrote this article specially for the beginner investors, who may use margin accounts for trading. As by having studied their way of trading, I see a lot of them falling into the trap that if an Index or an stock sheds 1% it's time to buy that stock or Index!

Don't Be An Angry Trader

2008-08-27T10:40:00.004Z

It's happened to me, it's happened to you and it's happened to all those who have been trading for a while ..... Getting Angry When We Have:

- just hesitated to push the activation button to place a High Probability Trade (HTP) which we thought had the ideal set-up and the trade has gone to be a real winner! So what do we do next ...? Can we forget about the incident and still keep our composure and carry on trading as normal....?

Unfortunately, as we humans are controlled by our emotions, the pre-programmed chip inside of us takes over our "central processing unit" and buggers up all our previous positive efforts in a matter of a few minutes after having allowed our anger to get the better of us and went on to place a chancy trade to win what we should have won in the good trade, which we have just missed due to our indecisiveness.

(Had I been an sceptic (me..? never!) ..... I would have said "it seems that this emotion chip must have been designed mostly for the benefit of CFD or SpreadBetting companies like the CMC markets, IGINDEX or their Irish counterpart spreadbetter Paddy Power", who incidentally today announced a profit of over 40 million Euros, thanks for the existence of the "emotion chip" inside most of us stock market traders!)

Now, when a trader gets himself to a situation like that and ends up getting wiped out, he must sit down and do some serious thinking as whether he is going to continue trading or give up the business completely -- I would advise all traders and "would be traders" specially those who trade on margins i.e. trade using CFD's or SpreadBetting .... "unless you are completely in charge of your emotions DO NOT TRADE!"

S & P 500 Declines 29%

2008-08-25T15:48:00.007Z

According to Standard & Poor's report the second-quarter earnings for companies which are listed in the S&P 500 index were 29% lower than the previous year. This was the 4th declining quarter in a row for the companies in the index.

During the second quarter the Energy Sector have contributed 25% towards the operating earnings of the S & P 500, whereas the Financials have been the culprit for depreciating the index's components by %28.

Fuld not The Man at Lehman!

2008-08-25T15:46:00.003Z

The Observer reported on Sunday that Richard Fuld the-in-trouble chief executive of the investment bank Lehman Brothers is fighting an internal battle to keep his job.

The company has lost nearly 80% of the value of its share price this year despite the stock price surging last Friday as a result of take-over speculations.

But even if a buyer comes forward, still Fuld will have to step down from his position according to well informed sources within the company.

According to The Observer Lehman's Chief Operating Officer Bart McDade is carrying out several of Fuld's previous duties.

Mind the Oil Spillage!

2008-08-12T19:28:00.019Z

It wasn't long ago that everyone thought Oil would soon reach the near boundaries of 200 bucks per barrel. In fact, I know of several traders who were holding to their long CFD positions for exactly the same reason. But unfortunately for them the bubble burst before the price ever reached $150. I wonder if the Goldman Sachs's people managed to get out of their long positions in time before they really burnt their fingers seriously. Because as some of you may know Goldman were heavily long on the black stuff. In fact they were part of the reason if not all, for the Oil to have reached the price level that it did, as they upgraded the price on a number of occasions. What a joke ...!

What's been happening in the last week or so, has now been the reverse of before ... i.e. the fall in price cannot be stopped -- from $148 a couple of weeks ago, it is now down to $114 a barrel.

Obviously, the strength in Dollar has caused some of the fall, but who can argue with the famous saying of "Let The Trend Be Your Friend..."?!

Don't Get Burned by Oil

2008-05-09T18:23:00.001Z

Making a living out of trading, whether you trade using a leveraged account such as CFDs, Futures or otherwise, on normal day to day stocks is hard enough, never mind trying to catch the wild swings we have been having on Crude Oil, recently.

I know of quite a number of experienced traders who have burnt their fingers trying to play with the black stuff with the limited amount of margins they have had at their disposal.

If you are the type of trader who is compulsive in trading an instrument such as Oil, I could only recommend to you that keep your initial stakes at minimal and most definitely use Stop Losses to limit your losses. It is extremely possible that in trading such an instrument a trader could easily get wiped out and throw away the results of months of earnings and efforts on a single trade.

One other thing you should never do as a good trader is try to guess the top or the bottom of any market -- you should just be content with taking a day's pay as how you see a trade develops on any given day, unless you are a big player with a deep pocket, in which case, you could try having swing trades aiming for the big pay-outs.

Day Traders, are you making money?

2008-02-11T10:56:00.001Z

If you are not, you should be back on the drawing board and reviewing your strategies - the choppiness in the market should always suit the day traders style of trading. Scalping the markets could be very rewarding in the present market conditions if you are day trading and sitting in front of your monitors for many hours of the day - pick your market and use your charts effectively and with a leveraged account such as CFD, Spread betting or Futures, you should be making good money.

Stick to making some 10 points here and there and by the end of the day, you should be showing 50 points profit at least - if you are not making any money in these market conditions then stop trading altogether and go back to learn more as you are definitely doing something wrong!

Have faith in your ability and press that buy/sell button and don't allow your profits turn into a loss by being greedy - be ruthless to the market as the market will be ruthless to you if you let your concentration abandon you.

Above all, only trade using an instrument which you are comfortable trading with.

Futures Trader Faces Uncertain Future

2008-01-22T12:07:00.001Z

The Markets across the world have been racing against each other to see which market can lose more of its value!

In the meantime, some traders have been losing serious amount of their hard earned capital.

Normally, volatility in the stock market can be considered as a great opportunity for the experienced traders to make vast amount of money. This is more so when trades are being struck on margins i.e. trading CFDs, futures etc. Leveraged trading has its disadvantages too, as it was brought to my attention that this Futures Trader lost most of his capital on a trade position he opened last Friday before the US Market closed.

When I read about his losses, I really felt his pains -- we traders do really have a lot of sympathy for other traders, as "trading the stock markets successfully" requires enduring a lot of pains and lonely days sitting behind a screen to master.

To try to avoid financial disasters like the one happened to our colleague trader, traders must be very vigilant in such market environments of the recent days. Money Management is the absolute "must" - risk and reward must be precisely measured before a trader commits himself to opening a new trade - all trade positions must be closed before the end of the market on the same day, unless a trader trades with unlimited amount of margins!

Trading With No Confidence

2007-11-29T17:49:00.001Z

All traders at some stage during their trading careers go through a period of time, which they lose their confidence.

This applies even more to those traders who trade on Margins, such as CFD or FOREX traders. The reason is because of the high frequency in the number of trades that some of these daytraders use in order to make their profits -- and the more a trader trades the more he or she is likely to get it wrong -- and when they happen to go through a bad patch, it could really hurt their pockets deeply -- and I guess that is one of the dangers and disadvantages of being a CFD TRADER.

Recently, a CFD TRADER who happens to be a good friend of mine and I have a lot of respect for, has decided to stop trading CFDs and he is trying to take on FOREX TRADING instead -- when I found out about his decision, I was extremely surprised, as he had done pretty well at daytrading using CFDs in stocks and indices for a number of years -- but apparently he must have had a few big hits, which had made him make such a decision.

So, what should a TRADER do when he starts having a bad run and his confidence plummets?

He could do a number of things:

The obvious thing he could do would be to pack up trading for a few weeks and take a break.

But what I would do as a professional CFD daytrader, and I have done this in the past, would be to lower down my stake money to absolute minimum and cut down on the number of my daily trades -- and only trade when I think the odds are heavily in my favour -- I can always increase my stake money when I start getting things right again --- remember the market is always there for you but your money may not!

Some traders may have the opinion that the best thing to do in cases like that would be to stop trading but watch the market more carefully than before and start trading again when you get your full concentration back -- lack of concentration have cost a lot of us a lot of money in this game I am sure -- it's always best not to trade when we cannot fully focus on our trading.

Trade What You See

2007-09-20T11:21:00.000Z

One of the most used sayings in the Stock Market Trading Business is "Trade What You See ...." and if most traders took this simple advice seriously and understood its real meaning then I am sure they would increase their trading profits multi-fold.

When reading through some of the CFD or Forex forums, one cannot help noticing that the majority of traders seem to form a rigid opinion on how the market will shape or perform in the future; something which I doubt many traders could possibly forecast correctly.

At the moment with the financial mess which the banks have got themselves into it would be extremely unlikely that even the biggest financial guru would be able to come up with "a viable scenario" as what would happen to the stock market 2 days from now never mind months ahead.

Bearing the above comments in mind and having access to a leveraged account such as CFD why not just be content to grab whatever profits that you can make from a market which is not really sure of itself and its direction until the time that a solid trend is formed on the basis of good fundamentals in all foundations which are required to hold a stock market together. So trade what you see and not what you think you will see in order to stay in the game or even prosper from it!

Day Traders' Paradise

2007-08-21T08:32:00.001Z

The volatility in the STOCK MARKETS across the world due to credit problems with financial establishments in recent weeks have offered some great opportunities for experienced day traders to accumulate wealth.

Most experienced TRADERS and MARKET WATCHERS would agree that the market will carry on being panicky, hence volatile until the day that the credit crisis are put behind us. So if you are trading daily and watching the market's every move you should be well placed to make good profits - in my opinion these are not times for long-term trading and anybody who does that is only throwing away valuable time and of course his or her hard-earned money.

Last Friday, the US Federal Reserve cut down the lending rate to banks, which was a temporary measure to calm down the market and this made a positive effect on the day and consequently made all the major WORLD MARKETS to rally.

The credit crisis cannot disappear overnight and it will stay with us for a while. For instance, last night Capital One, after the close of the US market, hit the market with more negative news that it will close down its wholesale mortgage unit. TODAY, the German Bank WestLB AG warned that it has become very difficult to acquire FOREIGN CREDITS and the FUTURES are already down as a result a considerable amount.

My advice to junior traders who use CFD or other leveraged accounts to trade, is a word of caution. Make sure your stakes are kept to a sensible size and in a volatile market I would always take profits when they arise for the reason that profits can turn to a loss in a blink of an eyelash.

Practise being a patient Trader

2007-06-28T13:24:00.000Z

If you have been TRADING as long as I have, you ought to agree with the statement that "one of the factors that most short-term traders like CFD and FOREX traders cannot make regular profits from the STOCK MARKET or the CURRENCY MARKET is because they trade too often (overtrade)".

This is exactly the habit, which I followed when I first started my trading career a few years ago. The number of times, which I had made huge amount of money in the mornings from scalping using CFDs and by the time the market was ready to close, I had given it all back, was numerous.

So I kept pressing myself for applying more control and self-discipline -- eventually, I managed to apply the discipline, which was and is necessary for any traders to come on top at the end of a each trading session.

As good traders, we must remember AT ALL TIMES that not losing in TRADES we enter, is just as important as winning the TRADES we get ourselves into.

For instance, I was very pleased with myself last night, I did not fancy opening one single CFD POSITION the whole day yesterday as the US MARKET looked unsure which direction it was going to head, but as we approached the closing times the MARKET seemed on its way for an upday, so I took this opportunity in opening 2 LONG CFD positions in ASX200 and the German DAX30 and to my delight when the markets opened in Europe this morning, I managed to close both positions well in profits.

I like to add another point, which a good trader needs to have in order to practise being a patient trader --- and that is vision about the markets he or she trades in -- the more clearly one can see what FACTORS move the MARKET the better timing a trader can apply in entering the trades within that market.

Markets are very Edgy at the Moment

2007-06-22T08:28:00.000Z

Short-term TRADERS would love it when there is volatility in the market .... and fears are necessary to have if the markets are going to be volatile -- and what type of traders are going to benefit most from this type of market's volatility ....?

Well, due to the very nature of what CFD trading has got to offer, I would say the CFD TRADERS are amongst the first group of traders who could make a killing when the market is going up and down in a short space of time during same day of trading.

Needless to say that in order to take advantage of a volatile market, one must be a fully professional Stock Market Trader.

Yesterday, was a great example of how the market's wild movements can really produce big rewards for us CFD TRADERS:

The Dow Jones started the session going down by about 90 points to roughly 13400 and within minutes it recovered all of its losses and more - soon after it was down again by 50 and up once more to a session high of 13565 and eventually ending the day up by 57 points at 13546.

So fears in the market can be great for short-term traders like the CFD traders and currently the cause of these fears are partly due to the Bonds' rates going up and also, some major selling off of the Bear Stearns hedge funds -- In the meantime if you are using CFDs for your trades, you may wish for more times like this as I do ...!!

Recent Market Rally

2007-06-19T10:51:00.000Z

Has the recent Market Rally been justified ....?

Well, let's look at how it all happened:

Last Wednesday, the Beige Book Day, the market rallied (the Dow) 187 points, basically on no fresh news except a hint from the Fed that the inflation seemed to be within the expected range!

The following day came the results for the PPI which itself was above the forecast of +0.6% BUT the Core PPI was as expected and yet again the market reacted positively to these numbers and pushed the Main US Index, the Dow higher by another 71 points.

Friday, the market looked to yet another inflationary gauge the CPI -- the CPI itself was slightly higher than the estimated figure of +0.6% BUT the Core CPI emulated the previous day's C.PPI by matching the market's estimates at +0.6% AND YET AGAIN the market astonishingly rallied for the 3rd day on the same fundamentals by another 86 points as far as the Dow was concerned.

The extent of the 3-day rise was such that even the most optimistic of the bulls could not have thought they had been given another Christmas day in a short space of time, specially that early in the week some of the bulls were about to think that their run may have come to a halt when the US market had a very bad day on the Tuesday --- Even the slight chance that the bears may have thought they may have had in the sense of Friday having been the Options Expiry day, hence the possible volatilities, did not materialise in the sense of any opportunities for some consolations and markets finished the week on a very strong footing.

How to place Stops and Limits

2007-06-14T11:51:00.000Z

One of the most important factors in accumulating winnings as a Stock Market Trader is knowing when to terminate a trade. This is more so when a trader is trading through highly leveraged trading methods such as CFDs or FOREX. Recently, Doug Newberry has given his views on this subject matter which I would like to share it with you:

Getting into a trade is often the most glamorous part of stock trading. Knowing which trades are likely to turn a profit and diving into those trades can make a day trader feel really knowledgeable and involved in the market.

Being a good trader doesn't only mean knowing when to get into a trade, it also means knowing when to get out. The following guidelines are meant to get you started, but remember that trading is a continuing journey of discovery about the tradable nuances of market moves.

Make sure you're familiar with historical support and resistance levels. Also, check out momentum readings as well as Bollinger Bands to inform you about where to put stop and limit orders.

It's also a good idea to use trailing stops. They will allow you to ratchet up a sell stop slowly as your positions change to be in your favor.

When getting involved in stock trading, sometimes avoiding mistakes is more important than doing the right thing. Don't place your stops according to how much money you need to make. The market doesn't distribute profits based on the needs of its investors. Just because you need to make 500 dollars this week and you can't afford to lose more than 250, the market doesn't really care.

Sometimes the amount of money you need to make will correlate with how you set your limits and stops. However, these figures rarely work out to be the same. Thus, you should never use your needs as a guide to where to place your stops and your limits.

Another important thing to remember is not to invest when you are "on tilt". Being on tilt means that you have just lost some money on a trade and you want to make it back quickly. Suppose you have just lost $300 on your last trade. You shouldn't set your exit limits to make all that money back on your next trade. After all, the smart limits on this next trade are not dictated by how well (or how poorly) you did on your last trade.

Stock trading "on tilt" is a sure way to lose money. Use the stock trading tips mentioned earlier to guide your trades rather than using impulses based on flimsy reasoning and financial need.

Always let the market determine where you should put your stops and how you should set your limits. Letting go of your expectations will help you be an objective trader and will increase your profits.
About the Author:

Doug Newberry founded Investing Systems Network. As one of its directors, he helps provide Stock Trading tools and services to more than 20,000 customers in more than 70 countries to help them become more disciplined, better investors.

Do You Want to be a Forex Trader

2007-06-08T09:01:00.000Z

Forex or CFD? Although, these two methods of trading the financial markets have lots of things in common, but it seems to me that a lot more people are trading in Forex than CFDs. If you are thinking to join the millions of Forex traders already out there, here is some good tips by Phil Smulin:

Currency trading a.k.a. Forex Trading must be one of the most controversial subjects of our time and all with very good reason. The world of Currency Trading is no longer the exclusive playing grounds of Banks, governments and influential financial institutions; we live in an era where the Currency Market is available to anyone who can at least open a trading account of $300.00.Trading Currencies have never been more accessible to the individual than now. But like every industry there are a group of role players that make the rules and the obviously they are always winning (making money that is) despite of anything in the market place.

Thousands and thousands of individuals have tried their "luck" on the currency market the past 10 years but only a handful are making a consistent success of currency trading. The average live span of a self directed currency trader is anything from 3 - 6 months before they quit- these are figures that were announced by one of the biggest retail brokers a while back. This makes one think why only a handful are successful and why a whole lot of people claim they are successful currency traders while they are not. One can argue that people would very much like to be successful at currency trading and when they realize they are not making it they simply fake their success by ways of a website claiming that they have discovered the gold mine and the gold.

There are many ways to engage on your currency-trading journey and chances are that you will get hurt, in fact if you go to Google and type in the word learn currency trading will soon realize that every second guy on the Internet has a currency-trading product to sell you.

The proposed steps to start trading are to firstly familiarize yourself with the language used in the Currency Market Place and secondly you need to understand the rules of the Currency Trading Market environment. These two aspects are very important but the most important part is to learn how to think like a profitable currency trader. These three aspects are very important and they are the only potential barriers to prevent you from success. You need to get in contact with a decent Currency Trading service provider, someone who can introduce you to the right and important aspects of Currency Trading. We recommend that you look very selectively when you decide on such a currency trader service provider. Make contact with them and challenge them with questions like "why you should choose them to educate you on the subject of currency trading"? Also check out their website, most of these websites do not give enough information about currency trading and some of these websites simply look trashy!

If you are after decent currency trading education, support and mentorship, you do not need to look further than Euro Traders Euro Forex Trading System. This is a group of Currency Traders who decided to make their system available to the whole wide world and also to back that up with quality support free of charge. What make them different is the fact that they are actually anticipating market activity (like traders should do) rather than discussing what the market have done. "The proof is in the pudding", so the saying goes, so go and have a look at what Euro Traders have to offer and look at what their happy currency trader clients have to say about them

There is after all hope for you to become a profitable self directed currency trader, the question is whether you have the discipline to take the right steps to make it happen. To Your Success!
About the Author

Phil Smulian is a reviewer for Forex training specialists, Euro Forex Trading Systems (www.euroforextradingsystem.com) or for more info on currency trading (http://www.euroforextradingsystem.com/currency-trading.html)

Go With the Trend

2007-05-29T16:38:00.000Z

This time I have picked an article by David D. Wells, which some of the newer traders may find useful. In it David tries to explain how you can make lots of money by jumping on the bandwagen or following the trend as we traders say:

Money is one of the biggest concerns for most people. Learn to master money and that success can transfer over to every other part of your life if you let it. As you already know mastering money is not easy but it can be made simple with some little-known techniques.

The techniques I am going to reveal here have been responsible for literally millions of dollars being created and even billions of dollars, as mentors such as Jim Rogers have taught me.

Jim Rogers is one of the greatest commodities traders in history. By my estimates he has made well over $1 billion trading commodities. Learning some valuable lessons from Jim allowed me to turbo-charge my profits.

FOLLOW THE MONEY: You can earn large amounts of profits by first letting the wealthy use their money to search for opportunities and then jumping on board. Find out where the big money is investing and get in. This is sometimes referred to as following the trend.

You can literally make tens of thousands of dollars doing this. The trend is your friend is a phrased used often by me and other successful traders.

KNOW WHEN TO GO: You must be careful to recognize when the trend has ended. Amateur traders often get in when it is too late because the trend has ended. Another challenge is they get in a trade and stay too long.

Unless the market is already trending down there really is no way to know if it is too late however you can limit your exposure to risk. Use a tool called a STOP LOSS. This does exactly what it implies, it stops your loss.

This tool should be used on every trade every time. This tool also keeps you from staying too long in a trade. It is easy to use. At the time you place your trade also place your stop loss meaning where you want to exit a trade if it does not continue to go in your favor.

BONUS TIP: As you make profits cancel your old stop loss and enter a new one so that it locks in a certain amount of profits. As you continue to make money keep moving your stop loss to lock in more and more profits.

USE LEVERAGE: You must learn how to effectively use your money. Most people use their money on a 1:1 basis. A few people know how to use their money on a 1:2 basis. The great traders use their money on a 1:10 or even a 1:20 basis. This means that for every $1 they invest they control $20.

For example, if you invest $1,000 do so to control $20,000. This is leverage at work. Your risk has not been enhanced because as previously discussed you will use a STOP LOSS.

This type of leverage that David has just mentioned is what we CFD Traders use.

Now let us take a look at a market to apply these techniques. Since 2001 Gold has been in an uptrend. Will it end soon? Who knows for sure but the analysts tell us that it will not end anytime before the end of the decade.

If you had invested $1000 in Gold in 2001 you would have $40,000 at the time of this writing. In six years you would have earned 40 times your investment!

This is just one market. There are many, many other markets where these techniques can be applied.

Crude oil, of which gasoline is made from, is also in an uptrend. If you had invested $2,000 in crude oil at the end of 2003 as of this writing you would have $30,000. In four years you would have earned 15 times your investment.

The good news is if you invest correctly there is still plenty of money to be made.

Learn more by visiting http://www.WealthCodeBreaker.com.
© Copyright David D. Wells. All rights reserved. You are welcome to forward the entire Article to anyone interested as long as it is not edited in anyway and includes the Resource Box. He is a superstar trader and bestselling author. Let him show you how fortunes are made in the 21st century. Subscribe to his free newsletter at www.themoneymotivator.com.

The Dow took a Bow

2007-05-25T08:53:00.000Z

Strange behaviour by the Dow yesterday - When the figures for the New Home Sales were released 30 minutes after the US market opened, which turned out to be way above the forecast, 981K vs 860K expected, the Dow spiked up by nearly 70 points to the all time record of 13,625. Minutes later the market as a whole were struggling to hold on to their gains and soon found themselves on the red carpet - in fact NASDAQ Composite and NASDAQ-100 were even bigger losers than the Dow in terms of percentages - they both shed nearly 1.5% by the time it was time to go home.

Ironically, the reason for the sell-off was the strong Home Sales figures, hence the possibility of FED having to raise the interest rates!!

Regarding my own CFD Trading, my plan for the day paid off - earlier on in the day, I had set a Limit Sell Order at 10 points above the nearly previous high; at 13,620 which got hit by the system ... and closed the position when it descended to 13,545 for a juicy profit of 75 points - as usual with hindsight, I could have got a lot more out of my CFD short position as the Dow went a lot lower into the low 13400's whereabouts - but still a nice profit at the end of yet another trading day...

Hard Commodities Fall

2007-05-22T22:15:00.000Z

Despite upgrades by Goldman Sach for the prices of copper, aluminium, nickel and zinc for 2007, the prices fell today on LME and US markets, with the biggest losers being nickel -5.13% and copper -4.65%. Gold also lost some of its recent shine.

Goldman still believes that “strong” growth in China will offset “weakness” in US demand.

In a separate note JPMorgan is calling "Investors who think it is too late to get into commodities-related stock" Crazy! Whether they are saying this because they are concerned about me and you as individual investors or they are worried about the returns on JPMorgan Natural Resources Fund (UK-registered), nobody will ever know!

I have found the best way to play the Natural resources is to have CFD positions on the Australian index ASX200, which is heavily biased towards the miners. So far I have been showing good profit on my CFD trades. Hope my luck continues ...

Trading Secrets Workshop

2007-05-22T16:21:00.000Z

Traders University is offering an opportunity for traders to attend a free two-hour seminar in UK - also, they will be giving away a complimentary Traders Starter Pack worth £300.

If you are interested to attend register here.

Give MOMENTUM to your TRADES

2007-05-21T10:46:00.000Z

I came across a little article on how you can improve your STOCK MARKET TRADING on the web MomentumStockPick.com, which you may find it beneficial to have a read through, especillay those traders who have recently started:

Buy and Sell Stocks on Mementum
BY: MomentumStockPick.com

One of the most motivating aspects about online day trading is the possibility of taking advantage of stocks that are breaking out and rising fast to new highs.

CERTAIN stocks can achieve extraordinary gains in a matter of minutes or double in price during the same trading day. Knowing when to pick these beautiful jewels can be worth a long lasting gold mine for any day trader.

Unfortunately most beginner day traders rarely take advantage of those incredibly profitable opportunities on a consistent basis, while others don't even know how to manage the trade, because they either sell too fast or get in too late.

Day trading is definitely not rocket science, but You do need to follow a step by step plan that is practical & simple to apply.

Complicated technical systems and information overload can make you slow and confuse you right from the start, making you loose money instead of making your profits grow.

In essence, You can be sure that the trading method you employ to approach the stock market and pick stocks can make a big difference in your results as a trader.

Dont' let the lack of knowledge stop you from becoming a successful stock trader.

Remember that people from many walks of life have made a fortune in the stock market.It all started when they chose to learn how to DO IT.

About the Author:

Momentum Stock Pick helps stock traders & investors take advantage of hot stock trading opportunities in a practical way every day at http://www.MomentumStockPick.com

Day Trading - FOREX

2007-05-17T16:54:00.000Z

From now on, in order to give "The CFD Traders Blog" a bit of variety, I will endeavour to fit in some of the opinions, which have been expressed by other stock market traders.

To start the ball rolling, I have found an article written by Sacha Tarkovsky in which she says day trading in Forex is a waste of time. A view which I do not hold in trading stocks and shares using CFDs - Anyway, this is what Sacha says:

FOREX Scalping - Day Trading Your Way To a Regular Income by: sacha tarkovsky

There are many day traders who go in for FOREX scalping trading several times a day and trying to get out with small profits which will add up over time.
This form of hit and run trading is more popular than ever.
Let's look at how it works.

Well firstly, it doesn't work at all and will doom your trading to failure - Any trader who day trades or tries to scalp profits loses - PERIOD.

Here we will explain why.

Data is meaningless.

If you are studying charts you need to get the odds in your favour.

This is of course not possible in day trading as all volatility is random and prices can and do go anywhere.

This is obvious when you have millions of people trading trillions of dollars daily.

If you don't have data that can help you get the odds in your favour then it is pointless applying any technical indicator.

Moving averages, support and resistance and pivot points which are useful tools for longer term trading simply don't work in day trading.

There only good tools if you feed them with the right data! And day trading doesn't do that.

Scalping the market is doomed to failure and it's made even worse by the fact it ignores the fundamental rule of investing:

Run your profits to cover your inevitable losses. You are going to have losses even the top traders have them, but you must keep them small and day trading or scalping FOREX markets does this and it of course has a lot of them!

FOREX scalping by its very nature doesn't run profits.

So what do you end up with?

A lot of small profits ( and when your lucky enough to have a winner and it is down to luck) then you get a minor profits which can NEVER cover your losses.

FOREX scalping end up not with the trader scalping regular profits but the trader getting scalped for his entire equity.

FOREX scalping is illogical, based on meaningless data and doomed to failure.

If you want to trade avoid day trading unless of course you want to lose all your equity quickly.

About the Author:

GRAB 2 X FREE TRADER PDF'S AND MUCH MORE!

On all aspects of becoming a profitable trader including features, downloads and some critical FREE Trader PDF's and more FREE Forex Education visit our website at http://www.net-planet.org/index.html

The Mad Dow

2007-05-16T20:11:00.000Z

Traders who have been dealing on the STOCK MARKET for a number of years, no doubt would tell you that if you are Day Trading you need to have a volatile market, so you can have as many profitable positions opened and closed in a short space of time as possible - ideally in a day! -- This is more so when you are using CFDs as a means to beat the markets - and oh boy has the DOW been volatile for the past couple of trading days .... you bet ....!

Despite, the profit warnings from two of the Dow's components Wal-Mart (WMT) and Home Depot (HD), with the help of a weaker inflation report, the CPI, the Dow looked unstoppable in the first half of trading yesterday and the US main index was up by 140 points at one stage - but later on in the day most of the gain evaporated and this agile Index ended the session up just 37 points on the day at 13,383 - still a record high - today, the mad fellow was at it again, after a gain of some 55 points earlier on, it went to a minus 20 points and up again to close the session at yet another record high of 13487 to give a lift of +103 and a great gift to the bulls.

As regards my own CFD positions - I managed to get a few nice points to pay for my corns - scalped the ASX200 as well, which I really enjoy trading at times (when the odds are right) - NOTE: be very cautious with this Australian Index, it is a very tricky instrument if you don't know how to trade it.

CFD Longs on Hanson paid off

2007-05-15T11:35:00.000Z

Traders could have gone long on Hanson Plc (HNS), the British Construction Materials Producer, at prices between £6.00 to £7.00 at this time last year and those traders who didn't, today were probably kicking themselves -- after months of bid speculation by different preditors, today at last the German cement maker HeidelbergCement has agreed to buy Hanson for £8 billion - to create the world's second-largest company in construction materials.

The offer translates into a cash offer of 1,100 pence per share, which appears to be the biggest takeover ever in the sector and would create a combined building materials giant, which would effectively overtake the French counterpart Lafarge - so anyone with a 10pp cfd long position would clear 4k profit if they had gone long at 700 pence for the argument sake - whether that was worth the excitement or the anxiety of holding to the position for that long, that would be another topic for a discussion! - as it is, well done to those who did - I wasn't one of them....!

Metals hammered by Brokers

2007-05-14T16:29:00.000Z

HSBC's downgrade and the weakness in Metal Prices brought the shares in mining companies lower in the UK stock market today - after all the sounds that were made only a few days ago about the takerover possibility of Rio Tinto by the giant BHP Billiton, now we have HSBC saying ... "it would be highly unlikey that Billiton, would consider to bid for Rio" and consequently downgraded Rio's shares from "overweight" to "neutral" --- I guess the last of the cfd shorts must have exited the market by now - and some traders may well have opened large long positions in the hope that the bid would have come to realisation eventually!!

That is where Day Trading is always preferred by me when placing my CFD trades, as I have seen too many times, where the stock brokers have played silly billy with the investors' money.

A Chinese Bubble?

2007-05-11T08:33:00.000Z

The Shanghai Composite, China's main stock market index amazingly rose a whopping 130% last year and so far this year it is ahead 50%.

With the interest rates on bank accounts being offered at about 2%, it is no wonder that every man on his bicycle, it seems, is rushing to help himself to some shares -- Lots of people have bought shares with borrowed money - borrowed either from their relatives or by re-mortgaging their houses and some have even sold their homes and invested the proceeds in the stock market - everybody seems to be wanting a slice of the daily 3-4% rise that the Chinese stock market seems to be getting more often than not - so who could blame them? After all, this is what sweet capitalism is all about - So is there going to be a bubble in the air? -- Well, the steady rise in the market has got Mr Zhou Xiaochuan, the governor of the China’s central bank worried a bit but he seems to take no actions to prevent the bubble from bursting - according to the FT: “If Mr Xiaochuan really wanted to affect the market, he could double the bank deposit rate, but that would wipe out the state-owned banks.” Hence, the reluctance by Mr Xiaochuan to do anything about the issue - at least it seems that way for the time being.

As regards me wanting to take a CFD position on the Chinese stocks? No thank you - I would be terrified to do so! If I did, I would need my screen on next to my bed at night time!

Bidding for Metals

2007-05-10T05:07:00.000Z

Mergers & Acquisitions continue or at least their rumours do - BHP Billiton, the biggest mining company in the world is rumoured to be bidding for the third biggest miners Rio Tinto something in excess of $100 Billion and this caused the shares in Rio jumping 11% in London stock market yesterday and forced some CFD shorts closing with massive losses - short positions which are still open or those who went short on their CFD positions at higher up prices may have a sigh of relief this morning after Rio's share prices have fallen back overnight in Australia.

According to data collected by Bloomberg an amazing 473 deals or bids valued at $55.4 billion, have been embarked this year in the mining industry alone as a result of the five year rally in metal prices.

I have personally stopped shorting any of the mining stocks for the above reasons - the time to go for confident shorts for my money would be when there are clear signs that the demands for base metals are falling - at the moment there is no sign of that.

Rate of Interest in fighting the Stock Market Bulls!

2007-05-07T09:55:00.000Z

Finacially important week is ahead for the European and the US stock markets as the US Federal Resrve, the Bank of England and the European Central Bank will all be busy later on in the week to determine what the rate of borrowings should be set at - the FED will decide on Wednesday while the Bank of England and ECB will meet on Thursday.

The stock market expectaions for the US and ECB are a no change decision while the BOE is expected to go for a hike of 25 basis points.

So in the case of the US indices it appears that nothing, in the short term, seems to be on the way of the bulls making more headways for a few more days at least unless the bellweather Cisco Sytems: CSCO, which is due to release its results late tomorrow come up with missing their targets.

My CFD positions, if I open any will only be of the nature of quick sclaps and I shall make sure that I have no positions left open by the time the important news are to be released.

2007-05-04T09:14:00.000Z

The BULLS have been having it all to themselves recently - with one good piece of news after another all Indices in US and other major stock markets across the world have entered fresh territories to the north AND with today's announcement of the monthly Nonfarm Payrolls having an estimate of 100k, it is more than likely that the upward momentum may continue - I feel with the present bullish mood that the market is in at the moment, the numbers have to be really bad to have a real negative impact on the market - as usual I am playing it safe and will not open any cfd positions before the news is out. This market data as has been mentioned here before, can really change the direction of the market trend - so be careful with those CFD trades ...

Day Trading justified...!

2007-05-02T08:03:00.000Z

Shorted the Dow yesterday as mentioned in my previous daily post at 13105 and closed my CFD position at 13080. Yesterday was a classic example why I personally insist on day trading when trading CFD. Had I been greedy and left my position open, I would have not made the profit which I made. As it happend the Dow hit a daily low of 13042 before the BULLS started their moves to make the Dow finish at 13136 at the close of the market to establish another record high.

The US Future Markets currently showing well ahead of their yesterday's closing prices and with the March Factory Orders which is expected to have increased to 2.1% there will be another day of good trading actions ahead. I shall not open another position until the Factory Orders Figures are out after which time I will assess the situation if I should open a small short position on the Dow for a quick day trade.

2007-05-01T12:54:00.000Z

US futures surprisingly has been showing strongly for which I cannot find a good valid reason, except that the BULLS may have seen the biggish drops of yesterday's stocks as a buying opportunity.

The good results which most of the Dow's heavyweight components have had in this quarter has been followed by today's results of the Procter & Gamble in which it lifted its outlook for the next quarter.

Uk market has been the only European market today which has been trading and as I am typing it is thinner by some 30 points having recovered the same number of points from an earlier bigger loss.
The ISM & Auto Sales data are to be released later on after the market has re-opened in about 30 minutes time.

I will be shorting the Dow if it gets up to around 13000 for a quick scalp of 10 to 20 points.

2007-04-30T10:39:00.000Z

FTSE100 went up some 50 points earlier on and I am kicking myself for not having gone Long as I planned to do so before the market opened - what put me off from opening a position was at the time the US futures were going down slightly and as well as that the FTSE itself opened a few good points below its Friday's close of 6419.

Important release of PCE inflation firgures for the US is due to be released an hour before the market opens and the estimation is for a .1% rise compared with a bigger rise of .3% last time. I will not commit myself to opening any positions until I have a good reason to do so! Plus as PCE figures are a market mover, it would be best to stay away until later.

MSFT vs GDP

2007-04-27T13:01:00.000Z

MSFT announced great results for the quarter yesterday after the close - its EPS was better by 4c than what was estimated (46c) - and its shares naturally have been marked up pre-market and it has received the usual euphoric reactions from the Investment Houses by having been upgraded to something like $36.

On the other hand the US GDP for the first quarter has just been declared and at 1.3% it's .5% below the expectations - the futures temporarily reacted negatively but the open is going to be hard to read for me - it's going to be Microsoft against the GDP result - but for me, I am staying out of the market and will not open any CFD positions till things get much clearer -- having said that a correction will soon be around the corner - we shall see...

A sweet bite of the Apple!

2007-04-26T21:06:00.000Z

Going on from the previous post APPLE did me a great favour today or should I say my Broker did, as I managed to hit a Sell Order at 103.00 pre-market and had no hesitation in closing my short position with a profit of 275 points at 100.25 - with hindsight I could have let the position run for a bit longer as the share price ended the session at 98.84 eventually - but hey let's not get too greedy and I must be extremely pleased with myself instead - only if trading was always that easy, I could be named the wizard of the stock market and doing it with CFD gives me a special feeling even after many years of trading!

Now, let's not get too carried away as tomorrow is another day or to be precise another daytrading day!!

A Short bite of the Apple!

2007-04-26T11:21:00.000Z

I am sure by now you are aware that Apple-aapl has had a superb quarter going by the results they released yesterday. But for those who read between the lines; going forward their numbers will be short of the consensus. Namely, their estimates for the EPS will be short by 1c and the revenue will fall short by 0.35 Billion - so there may be a good opportunity for CFD traders who may like to play it shrewdly by biding their time and allowing the mug punters to buy into the stock first and when they think the stock is overbought they could start their foray by opening short positions on the stock.

Again, I like to stress when trading CFDs it is extremely important to time your enteries as precisely as possible unless you have an unlimited amount of margin in your account.

Increase Blog Traffic With Z-List - Misc Item

2007-04-26T09:46:00.000Z

This has got nothing to do with trading CFDs, just a one-off post for all bloggers who want to increase their readers:

The Z-List is a concept started in December 2006 by Mack Collier from A Viral Garden as a meme. A meme is a "unit of cultural information" which can propagate from one mind to another in a manner analogous to genes. The Z list is a blog meme, which has bloggers creating and sharing a list of many links to blogs in a single post.

If you wish to participate you should copy and paste a list of blogs in a post and include those blogs that you think should get more exposure. It is called the Z-list because it is a list of blogs not having much traffic in contrast to the A-list blogs. By publishing this list you will increase your Technorati Rank, Google Page Rank, get more traffic and more friends.

After you post this list in a post this will get reflected in Technorati and blog owners who check up on who is linking to them will find out about it and will come over to visit your blog and perhaps become interested enough (depending on your blog content) to leave a comment or even subscribe to your feed.

Here are the steps to follow in order to add the list :

1. Create a new post.
2. Copy and Paste the entire list of blog links below
3. Add any blogs that you want to include near the top of the list.
4. Include the blog where you first got the list from, on the list in your post.
5. Make sure that all links point to each blog’s homepage.
6. Publish the Post.

You can join the list at any time. There are no fees. It is free. Copy and paste the list below. Add any other blogs you wish:

The CFD Traders
Dummies Guide to Google Blogger Beta
Make Money Online With Dosh Dosh
A Viral Garden
Connected Internet
Blog-Op
Can I Make Big Money Online
Blogtrepreneur
Blogging to Fame
Million Dollar Experiment heads Down Under
Kumiko’s Cash Quest
Calico Monkey
Internet Bazaar
Shotgun Marketing Blog
BrandSizzle
bizsolutionsplus
Customers Rock!
Being Peter Kim
Pow! Right Between The Eyes!
Billions With Zero Knowledge
Working at Home on the Internet
MapleLeaf 2.0
Two Hat Marketing
darrenbarefoot.com
The Emerging Brand
One Reader at a Time
One blogger’s experiment in building and engaging with online communities.
Ruminate this site
Reviews blogs and sites so that we don’t have to.
SMogger Social Media Blog
The ethical use of social media for bloggers and other web users.
SuccessCREEations
Blog Consultant bringing the twin passions of business and blogging together.
Successful Blog
The legendary Liz Strauss, blogger extraordinaire and creator of the SOB award.
Troy Worman's Blog
Focus on writing, ideas and connections
Copywriter's Crucible
The importance of copy in corporate blogging
Copywriting Tuneups
How to measure reading effectiveness and why it is important in the blogosphere
Dipping into the Blogpond
Blogging about starting an Internet company in the Sutherland Shire.
BrandSizzle
Broad and deep insight into the branding process.
Own Your Brand!
Blog to help businesses re-imagine their brands.
The Emerging Brand
Corporate branding blog focused on leadership.
The Engaging Brand
Using technology and marketing knowledge to improve business communications.
What is Brand?
Japanese readers/speakers? Anyone?
Presentation Zen
(Site in English) Tips for great presentations, marketing, and business communications.
Dummies Guide to Google Blogger Beta
Complete help on the new blogger. Blogger Hacks, Blogger templates. Adsense. Search engine Optimization.
Bob Sutton
Discussions of “jerks” in business.
Perspective
Health, wealth and the freedom to choose. Archived blog. New one is jugaad (http://www.nitibhan.com/jugaad).
Ramblings from a Glass Half Full
Views on business life.
Simplicity Mary’s Blog
Business development, marketing troubleshooting
Funny Business
Wide ranging discussion on business with a funny and pictorial approach.
Creative Think
Fun Ideas to stimulate your creativity.
The Copywriting Maven
Marketing and SEO copywriting tips.
Brain Based Biz
Tips for stirring creativity in business.
Experienceology
How to create great customer experiences on the web and in the “real” world.
Creating Passionate Users
raving lunacy
Anne 2.0
Emily Chang - eHub
Darren Barefoot - Vancouver Technologist, Writer, Raconteur, Miscellanist
Liz Strauss at Successful Blog - Thinking, writing, business ideas ...
ALLIED by Jeneane Sessum
Presentation Zen
good to know
Logic+Emotion
gillianic tendencies
Steve's 2 Cents
Listics - Frank Paynter's Voice and Vision
Escape from Cubicle Nation
Blog Sisters: Where men can link, but they can't touch
Designers who Blog
E-Commerce Blog by Solid Cactus
Brand Autopsy
Unconventional Thinking
The Boomer Chronicles
Renovate Your Life with Craig
I Dream of Kimchee
The Moronosphere
SYLVIA HUBBARD'S STORIES
Paula Mooney
Inspiration Lane
me,myself & me
A Gota de Ran Tan Plan
How Can I do That
Bonnie Writes
Flee the CubeStarting up a small business in web design.
Community Guy
Online and offline community building tips and tricks.
A Free and Decent Blog Host
Technology news focusing on blogs and blog software
Billions With Zero Knowledge
Changing the world with little bits of knowledge
Connected Internet
All things to do with technology, mobile phones and gaming.
darrenbarefoot.com
Tech news, writing and marketing
Deepak
Focuses on the technology of the Internet and loves Google.
MapleLeaf 2.0
Tech news stories relating to Canada
Scott Burkett's Pothole on the Infobahn
Musings on technology, IT management, and online community.
Small Surfaces
Interaction design, user interface design, user experience, usability and social trends related to mobile devices.
TechBuzz
Tech new and reviews written by 17 year old in India. Awesome.
Masey.com
Design and photography blog.
Through the Lenses
Travel/photography blog includes stunning shots and photography tips.
Travel And Vacation On Blog
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Consider "Arbing" a possibility

2007-04-25T11:09:00.000Z

For those of you who have not tried Arbing before as a relatively safe way of beating the market, I would like to draw your attention to this unique method of making money:

I personally have a CFD trading account with more than one Stock Broker - this gives me the chance of getting the best odds from the market - one of the instances which this provides is when two Brokers offer different prices for the same instrument - for instance last night I noticed IGINDEX were offering 6437-6443 for the FTSE100 and CMCMARKETS 6445-6449 for the same instrument. So I grabbed the opportunity and sold the FTSE with CMCMARKETS at 6445 and bought the same instrument with IGINDEX at 6443 - this morning to my delight both sets of prices came close to each other, in fact, IGINDEX were showing better prices, so I closed both positions by buying from CMCMARKETS at 6457 [-12] and selling to IGINDEX at 6460 [+17] - hence making a profit of +5 points in aggregate. I hope you got the gist of what arbing could do.

2007-04-24T21:28:00.000Z

Well, as I mentioned in my earlier post I managed to short the Dow at 12985 and got out at 12950 for a 35 plus which is good going by any day-trading standards! And I must admit my wishes for the Amazon.com to beat their estimates did happen and they surpassed the market expectation of 16c a share by a wide margin as they earned 26c per share - so this may encourage the bulls further to push the prices higher when the market reopens tomorrow, which would be good for those like myself who would like to open short positions at higher levels.

2007-04-24T10:54:00.000Z

UK main index is down nearly 50 points as I am typing with the US futures are showing more or less on the level par despit TI - TXN results announced yesterday after the bell which were better than forecasts.

In UK the results from Yell and the giant BP weren't that brilliant and that together with yet again the fear of the interest rates rises were to blame for the UK stocks' downside movements.

In US later on at 10:00 am (E.T.), figures for the "Consumers Confidence" (105) and "Existing Home Sales" (6.45 m) are to be published.

If the Crude prices stay as high as they are at the moment, near $66 and the Dow revisits its high of 12980's, I should be tempted to open a short position and will be taking profits as soon as it materialises.

How not to beat the market as a day trader!

2007-04-23T16:27:00.000Z

For those of you who thought there was an error in the title, "no, wrong .... there was not"! -- It was just a way of grabbing extra attention to highlight how easy it can be to shrink your capital when day trading using CFDs ... and these are some ways, which you can use to achieve it:

1- Trade the indices as casually as possible with no stop-losses at all.
2- Place a trade using maximum stake so that you barely leave yourself any margin in your trading account.
3- Enter & exit trades without having a pre-planned system.
4- Open as many positions as you want.
5- Switch off your monitor in a volatile market and go and play golf with your mates.
6- Stay on the phone to your mother during a triple witching hour!

2007-04-20T12:12:00.000Z

24 hours later!

It was only 24 hours ago when evreryone was panicking to off-load their stocks as there was going to be no tomorrow on sight. Could it be that the "Shanghai boys" were trying it on the rest of us so that they could buy themselves some cheap stocks? But, seriously it is really amazing how investors seem to forget about the bad news in matters of hours with no good reason either - I wish that human beings forgot about their differences in exactly the same manner as well. If they had, our planet would have been a pleasant place to live on with enough stocks to go round for all!!

Just to stress, the Shanghai stocks recovered all the previous day's losses while the West was resting and that together with some great results from the US companies have given good incentives for the major world markets to progress further - as things stand the US stocks are set to have another record beating day today and let's hope for the benefit of the Bulls Ahmadinejad's men will not come into contact with some loose sailors trying to fish in the Persian Gulf waters!!

2007-04-19T12:13:00.000Z

Within the last few minutes Merrill Lynch and Merk & Co have both come up with consensus beating results and that should go somewhere to support the market, although Merk's 2007 outlook seems to be a shade below TF's estimates.

China the Culprit again!

2007-04-19T10:54:00.000Z

For the second time in a matter of weeks the fall in Chinese Stock Market has wiped out Billions .. off the major global stock markets across the world - in a few hours after the US Dow and S&P had pulled themselves to their peaks, the Chinese stocks sold off due to yet another possibility of interest rate hike by the Chinese authorities. On Thursday the news of a 3.3% rise in CPI was another indicator that another rate rise may be in the pipeline sooner than later.

As a result, the stocks futures have been marked down considerably at the moment and as things stand, the US is heading for a shaky open. Ebay may be one of the few stocks which could defy the market forces due to better than expected results that was published after the bell yesterday. I expect once the panic is settled down the market overall should start to recover the lost ground. We shall see ...

Don't gamble on results

2007-04-18T10:42:00.000Z

When you are using CFD's you cannot really afford to take wild chances - leaving your cfd positions open before a company reports is nothing short of a 50-50 gamble which is something professional and wise traders would normally be very reluctant to do. To emphasise this point further let's take Yahoo which published its results last night as an expample:

Yahoo's share price closed at $32.09 last night - a few minutes after the close Yahoo announced that its quarterly profit fell by 11% - as a result in the after-hours trading its share price lost roughly $2.70 - now imagine you were Long 1000 CFDs on this stock - this not only would have not pleased your bank manager, it would have also got you lots of naggings and blames from your other half for having departed with a cool $2700 in a short space of time! --- So if I were you I would avoid all temptations as a CFD trader; and I would always try to employ a very rigid self-control mechanism.

2007-04-17T11:30:00.000Z

The major stock markets in Europe have given back some of their gains today after having climbed up to record levels yesterday. The UK sotcks were shaken by the news that the Bank of England may yet again be forced to raise the interest rates in order to tame the inflation levels.

The Pound broke through the $2 barrier for the first time in 15 years.

The US Futures have pulled back before the Consumers Prices being announced within the next hour. And let's not forget the big heavyweights reporting this evening after the US close. My advice is to run your open CFD positions with tight STOP LOSSES if you feel obliged to keep any of them open in the first place.

2007-04-16T10:27:00.000Z

Today eventually, the FTSE100, hit a new high after nearly three months, and it's showing a healthy gain as I am typing. Later on today before the US market opens the Retail Sales will be out and an Ex-Auto figure of 0.7% is expected compared with -0.1% the previous month.

Tomorrow, after the close of the US market, some heavyweight companies will be releasing their 1st quarter results, namely Intel, IBM and Yahoo. So I would make sure that I would not be running big CFD postions on these stocks unless I was pretty sure of the outcome!!

All the major world markets made good gains overnight, with the Nikkei being the top gainer - ASX200 once again topped its previous high. The US futures are showing up at the present.

2007-04-13T08:57:00.000Z

Going on from my previous post when I mentioned "trading the indices using CFDs should be left to absolute professionals", this was further reiterated by losses overnight in two major world markets; the Tokyo market (Nikkei) lost nearly 200 points and the ASX200 of Australia fell despite the fact that the USA stocks performed well yesterday with all its major indices gained across the board.

When you are using CFDs, you just cannot afford to make too many mistakes because of the risks involved in losing far more than your intitial investment. In fact if you allow apathy to creep in and you are not on your toes at all times, you can easily lose all your capital or even more at times! Effectively, a CFD trader can never sit back and relax unlike a normal investor who is really not too bothered by the daily ups and downs in his/her equities or portfolio.

Later on today an hour before the US stock market opens, the Producers Prices Index firgures will be released. The figure to look for is the core PPI which is expected to be .2%, anything above that will affect the market negatively and a figure below that will have the reverse effect - NOTE: "the PPI is a real market mover specially the CORE FIGURE".

Sector Trading

2007-04-12T08:23:00.000Z

I know lots of people trade the Forex market, some as amateures and some traders make a good living out of it doing it full-time as professional traders - at the same time there are a huge number of traders who only concentrate on trading the main Sotcks Indices, like the Dow Jones, SP500 of the USA, UK FTSE100, the German DAX30 and so on ... but if you have been watching the markets for a number of years, you may prefer to trade the SECTORS .....

In my experience trading a certain sector using CFDs is far more managable and rewarding than trading the FOREX market or the indices - some indices are very difficult instruments to trade; NIKKEI225 of Japan for instance has very wide trading ranges and it has been known to have fluctuated many 100's of points on the same day and if you happen not to play it professionally by not having used the correct STOP LOSSES or had a bad "Entry Point" to start with or did not apply a good "money mangement system", specifically if you are only a small trader, you could soon find yourself withdrawing more money out of your bank account to respond to your Broker's MARGIN CALLs; Whereas if you happen to pick a group of companies with the same nature of businesses like the BANKS (banking sector), the MINERS (mining sector), the RETAILERS (retailing sector) and so on ... and have done your financial studies correctly on them i.e. you know the PE ratios of the sector, dividend yeilds, the PEG factor or other fundamental factors which you normally use, and ... in addition to that you are also aware of the highs and lows of that particular sector, then as a trader you have made life a lot easier for yourself ... and the likelyhood that your CFD postion will give you a handsome profit is a lot higher.

Another attraction of trading the sectors on CFDs is that most brokers require only 1% margin for opening a new position, whereas if you just traded the stocks on their own you could be required to outlay a margin of anything from 3% to 20% depending on the broker's requirements.

Also, it is worth bearing in mind that sometimes when you trade a stock like for instance Vodafone or Sage Grp in the UK market, you may not have the necessary fluctuation in that stock to either day-trade the stock or scalp it often enough to give you a profit on the day, whereas in trading the sectors you will find, it will offer you more movements to enable you to take a profit at the end of your trading day. Hence, no need to roll over your position to the next trading day, which will in effect, save you additional costs and will eliminate the risk of your transaction.

2007-04-11T06:40:00.000Z

The US market wasn't all that lively yesterday as TRADERS were not prepared to commit themselves to take a position either way due to the FED's minutes being published later on today. The Futures hovering above the flat line at the moment and the UK FTSE100 and the DAX30 of Frankfurt are expected to open slightly above their closing prices of yesterday.

Last night Alcoa the Aluminum maker was the first company to release their first quarter results which were above the market estimates.

2007-04-10T06:27:00.000Z

UK stock market opens today after the long weekend. For those who may fancy opening a LONG position on the main index, the FTSE 100, it's worth bearing in mind that the index is only about 50 points away from its high of many years. So for my money I would only DAY TRADE it as things are at the moment. While we are on this subject, I would say in my experience the FTSE 100 is one of the better indices to trade and I personally think it is far easier to read the direction of this instrument than for instance the DAX30 or the Dow where "day trading" is concerned.

2007-04-09T18:05:00.000Z

Lucky-7 for the Dow but only just - as the US 30 index finished in the black for the 7th day on the trot. With the FOMC Minutes due on Wednesday and the PPI figures out on Friday, traders were reluctant to bid the prices much higher today, although the Dow was showing a gain of +30 at one stage.

The "sell off" in the Crude Oil which was expected last week when Iran freed the British Sailors happened today when the price of each barrel fell below $62.00, more than $2.00 below its closing prices last Thursday.

Stock Markets recovery

2007-04-09T08:03:00.000Z

It now seems that the major stock markets across the world have got their confidence back and 2 major markets have particularly performed better than others. For instance the DAX30 of Germany not only has recovered from the major losses we had a few weeks ago, it has even hit a new all-time high of 7100 and those who opened a Long CFD POSITION when it went below 6500 in mid March are showing a healthy profit now. In my experience, with the DAX you would be far better GOING LONG than shorting it when the TREND is up.

ASX200, of Australia, has had very much a similar story to the DAX30. Its strength has also been supported by the gains of the heavyweight mining companies Rio Tinto and BILLITON which exist within its index. As we know the metal prices have been very strong lately.

Asian markets gain

2007-04-09T07:26:00.000Z

The major Asian markets had healthy gains overnight with the Nikkei 225 scoring more than 200 points by the closing time. This was mainly a response to the above expection of the US Nonfarm Payroll numebrs which came in as 180k.

The US Futures' prices for the major indices, Dow Jones, S&P500 and the Nasdaq have all entered well inside the positive territories at the moment - markets across Europe will not open until tomorrow.

2007-04-06T08:08:00.000Z

With today being the Good Friday, the major world stock markets are closed. Overnight the Nikkei finished just in the red.

The hightlight of the day is going to be the release of the figures for the US Nonfarm Payrolls, which is estimated to be around 140k - a much lower figure will obviously effect the stock markets negatively when they open next week and a much higher figure could still bring the stock markets down on the assumption that the FED may yet again hike the interest rates in order to prevent the inflation.

2007-04-05T11:55:00.000Z

As expected the UK interest rates were kept unchanged at 5.25% and that allowed the shares to rally a bit - at this very moment the UK FTSE100 is up by (+10) points recovering from earlier (-15). Most banking stocks are showing black patches for the moment - in about half an hour the US weeky "Initial Claims" numbers will be out - the market has a forecast of 320k - this normally has not have a huge impact on the market - I expect the US market will move within a limited range today UNLESS the price of the Crude Oil changes a great deal in either direction.

2007-04-05T08:30:00.000Z

UK interest rates are to be announced in a few hours time - the market is generally expecting the Bank of England to keep the rates as they are at 5.25% - if there's any shock news and it has happened before, the market will definitely react negatively even if it only lasts until the US market opens later on.

2007-04-05T07:26:00.000Z

With the British sailors flew home yesterday, not on a Persian carpet by the way as there's none big enough to seat 15 people, the stock markets around the world can now get on with their business with no excuse. Having said that some traders are reluctant to take serious POSITIONS because of the Easter Bank holidays ahead. On a more important front, the news of the Monthly Nonfarm Payrolls in the US, scheduled to be announced tomorrow which has coincided with the Easter holidays - TRADERS ought to practice more caution. This news item is a real market mover - so watch your bets you CFD traders out there.

The Crude prices temporarily dropped after it was announced the British sailors were to be released but that news was offset by disappointing data on oil stockpiles in the US, the world's biggest consumer of energy - the price of US Crude has been oscillating between 64 and 65 for the past 24 hours - I would suspect, if there is no more hanky-panky by the sailors around the world the prices should eventually come down!!

2007-04-05T06:49:00.000Z

The Dow managed another day of gains yesterday, it finished 20 points in the black - the Nikkei225 lost half a centuary overnight, with the Australian ASX200 finished in the red by a deficit of 20 points - as a result the out of hours US markets have been marked down slightly - the FTSE100 of UK and the Dax30 of Germany are mostly expected to start trading unchanged from yesterday's closings.

2007-04-04T07:42:00.000Z

Crude Oil prices are gradually losing momentum partly due to the sailors dispute should be resolved through diplomacy soon - so for those who play the oil companies like BP & Shell from the UK index, I would make sure not to take any CFD positions unless you can tell the direction of the crude prices - BP carries a lot of weight in FTSE100.

2007-04-04T06:49:00.000Z

Stock Markets across the world have been pulling each other up - overnight the Nikkei went up by another 300 points - as I said watch your CFD bets with this monster - those who went short yesterday would not be smiling this morning.

The Australian ASX200 hit the record high of 6097, partly due to that metal prices have been in a bullish mood of the late and the Australian Index includes some havyweight miners as its main components.

In another few minutes the UK market will open and the expectation is for further gain in FTSE100, although there are some bad news in the papers about the drug comapnies Glaxosmithkline and Astrazeneca - Glaxo is a heavyweight company in the UK index.

2007-04-03T14:08:00.000Z

40 minutes into the US trading and the DOW is showing a healthy gain of 100 points - the oil has fallen below 65 and it is partly to blame for the gain - FTSE surprisingly is not following the DOW on this occasion - in fact traders seem to be shorting it slightly - I guess that is because they expect the DOW to lose its gain any minute as has been the case recently - but care has to be taken into account as at this particular time there's no reason why the US market should not hold on to its gain - UNLESS the Crude takes another leap upwards, the bulls should be in charge even if it's only for a few hours!!

2007-04-03T12:56:00.000Z

The US market will open in 30 minutes and all the main indices, the Dow Jones Industrials, S&P500 and Nasdaq industrials are set to start much higher than where they finished yesterday. Later on in the evening after the bell there will be the figures for the Auot Sales released which is expected to be around 5.1M -

The trading has been very choppy lately so the way to play your CFD bets would be to set logical profit goals and take them as soon as your goals have been reached - it's best if you set "limit orders" to do this so that would even cover the instances when the wife or your girlfriend bothers you for some reason as they normally having a habit of doing!!

2007-04-03T06:55:00.000Z

FTSE100 and the German Dax are heading for a good start today as the Nikkei and other Asian markets had a good day overnight. Nikkei regained most of its losses from yesterday and traders who did not close their LONG POSITIONS yesterday were patting themselves on the back this morning. Those who are still asleep could wake up to a nice surprise!!

We've mentioned Nikkei a few times in the last couple of posts, my advice is try not to trade this index if you are not quite an experienced trader. Its fluctuations are very wild and sudden and if you happen not to have too much Margin you could blow away most of your capital. Even if you think you have the required experience in trading CFD's, I would still recommend that you ought to use the minimum stakes when trading this instrument.

2007-04-02T13:12:00.000Z

It's nearly 15 minutes before the US opens and the Dow have been marked up by 15 points or so. The Crude is showing below 66 and the main European indices are all in the gain and the Scalpers have been in and out like crazy as normal!

2007-04-02T10:59:00.000Z

The market in UK opened a bit shakey on the grounds that Tokyo overnight dropped a few hundreds while the Anglo-saxons were fast asleep. I bet the guys who were running CFD LONG postions on the Nikkei weren't all that pleased when they woke up and checked their screens - also, hope that they did not spill their hot drinks on the hot spots of their body while in a shock!!

The Uk market gradually got its confidence back and at on stage it went up by 30 or so points - the Crude oil prices dropped a few 10's of cents for a while which allowed the Cruel and the uncompromising Dow future to go up by 20 or so points but it did not last for long when the guys in funny trousers and zebra jackets started taking long positions in the Crude again - I think these guys must have been on the phone to the President Ahmadinejad and He must have said to them "Ve Vill still entertain the British sailors for a few more days!!

The fact that the insurers and the heavyweight Vodafone were upgraded did help the Uk index as well. So naturally, Prudential , Aviva and Legal & General all got on the blue side of the carpet. BTW - this was not the same carpet as the one Ahmadinejad was sitting on earlier on ...!

Advantages Of CFDs

2007-02-16T11:16:00.000Z

We have so far pointed out some of the risks involved in trading CFDs, NOW I would like to draw your attention to some of the the benefits CFDs can offer to investors:

Low or No Commission for your Trades
With CFDs there are no commissions to pay with some brokers and others may only have a small charge.
No Need To Pay Stamp Duty
Unlike traditional share trading CFDs are exempt from stamp duty on UK-listed Stocks.
You can trade the Global Markets
Using a single account CFDs allow you to trade on a whole range of global instruments i.e. Trade on Shares, Indices, Commodities, Sectors and Treasuries 24 hours a day.

Going Short
With trading CFDs you can benefit when the market falls by Going Short.
Margin Trading
You do not have to fully fund the value of your investment as CFDs are a Leveraged Product.

Stock Market King

2007-02-14T19:30:00.000Z

Did that title grab your attention? It probably did that you've got this far! - So what is it referring to...? Let's assume that you have now started trading the stock market full-time and you have made a few successful trades too - (I have seen that happening a lot to some of the day traders I have been in touch during my trading time) - this is the time when an experienced trader would keep his head and would not allow a short term success to get to him and would try to keep his trading strategy totally intact as per normal - on the the other hand if a trader is a NOVICE, there is a likelihood that he or she would get over-confident - this specifically could be very dangerous when one is trading the stock market on margins with a high leverage..

Thus, bearing the above message in mind - one must always be in charge of one's actions and moods when playing the stock market - this game is very much like a footbll match; you are up 1 minute and if you ar not careful, you could be down the next ... in this business some mistakes could cost you very dearly indeed and in some cases they may not be recoverable either ...! So, by all means be a king but a wise one.

No Positions Before News

2007-02-12T06:49:00.000Z

Another important factor which plays a big part in the success or lack of success in CFD Trading or Day Trading is the major news releases which take place both in UK or in the USA.

As Professional Stock Market Traders, we should not leave the the outcome of our trading to chance; remembering the news release factor,is extremely important due to the high risk that we have already indicated surrounding the leveraged trading or Margin Trading.

Some of the news releases which we should pay extra attention to are:

The USA GDP

The USA Monthly Jobs Report

The USA FED's statements

The UK Interest Rates

The UK GDP

As well as that we must always look out for inflation reports and always try to avoid holding any major positions before the major news releases.

Shorters Worst Enemy

2007-02-08T06:52:00.000Z

The dangers which surround leveraged trading are many, today I will point out one of the biggest perils in margin trading:

The past year or so has been a time where there have been lots of Mergers & Acquisitions (M&A) taking place.

In the Uk alone, there have been lots of news for a lot of high profile companies being the subject of takeover bids by other companies. When this happens the share price in such companies can be subject to a volatile market and those who have gone short better be very careful indeed.

My recommondation is try to avoid selling stocks in comapanies which have been rumoured to be of an interest to other companies in the past. If you can bring yourself to do this, then almost certainly you will have saved yourself a lot of your Margin or cash for better and safer positions.

Then in that case, you might ask "How about Going Long in such companies" and my answer would be "why not, by all means" ...

Don't Take Too Many Positions

2007-02-05T07:44:00.000Z

One of the factors which leads to a trader's big-loss or downfall is "Overtrading" or opening too many positions at any one time. Where this happens and the market goes against you, the losses will be huge.

Imagine you are short (you have sold) one of the major indices, let's say the FTSE100 (the UK major Index) and ... as well as that you have another 10 short positions in some Constitutes of the FTSE100 stocks like Barclays (BARC), Lloyds (LLOY), GlaxoSmithKline (GSK) and so on ...

... and let's say the FT100 has one of its good days and it has gone up by 64 points .... I can tell you, on a day like this your losses will be huge ..... and if you had not done your money management correctly it could be one of those days, which you would get a "Margin Call" from your Broker or even have some of your positions closed in order to free some margins, if your account was deeply in deficit.

So bearing the above scenario in mind, one must always make sure the number of positions which one holds will not overstrech their account.

I would say it would always be best if you did not have more than 3 or 4 open-positions at any given time and these should be positions which you were really confident and comfortable about. Stocks which would normally be played by professional Day Traders would be the ideal stocks to hold if you were a scalper. These are normaly the stocks which would move within a certain narrow or narrowish range. Of course you would need to observe and study the market for a long time before you can make a list of such stocks.

Avoid Wide Ranges

2007-02-02T10:17:00.000Z

One of the important points, which a Day Trader would benefit to bear in mind is to try to avoid Wide Ranging Stocks. This is best explained by the example below:

Let's take two stocks from the FTSE100; AstraZeneca (AZN) & Sage Grp(SGE):

In general, AZN can have daily movements of up to 100 Pence or Points ( as it's referred to in CFD) or sometimes even more, whereas a stock like SGE could have a ceiling movement of 10 Points per day, obviously ignoring for days where these companies make their trading updates or their financial reports.

So taking the above explanation, we can easily see, if we opened a £1 PP position on AZN and the market was trending against us for a few days (let's say 4 days) our account could be something in the region of £400 in deficit by the end of the 4th day - take it from me, when this happens to only one of our positions, even experienced traders could lose their confidence as well as the large sum which they already have lost.

Whereas, In the case of stocks like SGE, even if the market went against us for a few days, as our losses are not as big, we could still hold on to our position and wait until the market turns in our favour. Hence, we have just proved one of the factors which would make a big difference in being successful or unsuccessful.

During my time as a trader, I have seen lots of traders going bust as a result of trading Long Ranging Stocks, because they eventually ran out of Margin and were forced to close their positions at a big loss .....

While we are on this subject, a certain stock springs to mind, which I reckon should be best left to those who keep large amount of cash in their accounts or alternatively those who play the market with virtually Pennies. The stock in question is none but our beloved Google (GOOG). In yesterday's trading I noticed Google at one stage, spiked a Candlestick of roughly $13.00 or 1300 points. Could you imagine what could happen if one was on the wrong end of this stock and was only a small player ......?!

Best Spreads

2007-02-01T08:10:00.000Z

As a trader one must always look for a Broker which provides the smallest SPREADS on the stocks which one trades. This is more so if you are trading CFD's because of the high frequency in opening new positions and closing them in a short space of time in comparison with the normal way of buying shares in a company.

For instance, yesterday I was informed that "Capital Spreads" will offer a spread of "1" point on trading the FTSE100 (UK main Index) from 1 Feb 2007, which is great news for all the traders who trade this instrument regularly.

While we mentioned the FTSE100, I must point out that in my experience this index is one of the best Indices which a professional trader can trade and with the 1 point spread that "Capital Spreads" is going to offer, scalpers will be very happy indeed in particular.

I must also stress this point to the non-professionals that if you decide to trade the Indices as a whole, please be extremely cautious as regards to the stakes you pick. Take my advice and always take the minimum stake Per Point i.e. £1 per point (1 PP) due to the fact that Indices are extremely volatile and can move in wide ranges. In general it is a good idea not to trade the Indices until you have gained at least a few years experience as a trader.

Evil The Devil ..?!

2007-01-31T10:04:00.000Z

Those who have been trading CFD's for a while have most probably heard of Evil Knievil. He is known to have made millions shorting the market for the past few years. Although, recently by what I have heard "he has not found the going all to his liking and things have not gone according to plans. For instance one of the positions he found himself on the wrong side, became the subject of a takeover bid; the company was Countrywide Plc. So I am just wondering at what stage this "Bear Raiding Legend" as he's called, exited his losing position? If anyone can shed more light, please let us all know here.

"Stop-Losses"

2007-01-30T12:32:00.000Z

For those who are completely new to this game, Stop Losses, as the name implies, are used to limit a trade's loss. For instance let's say, you have opened a LONG position on BP @ 550 and you want to limit your liabilities by only 10 points or in other words, you want to have your position closed if BP goes down to 540, so in this case you instruct your broker to sell the stock when it reaches 540.

Using Stop Losses can have both their advantages or disadvantages:

It is a disadvantage in the case of market being over-volatile when an instrument can spike up or down by many points in a short space of time and the advantage is that you could save a lot of money if you have happened to have read the trend of your stock incorrectly. Normally, stocks on the Uptrend or Downtrend can move away from you by a long way if you have had a bad entry point. So putting a Stop Loss in this case will help a trader to save a lot of his/her Capital.

Should you become a Full-time Trader

2007-01-29T09:51:00.000Z

Well, a question so many people may ask themselves would be "Should I leave my full-time job and become a full-time trader?"

Having seen lots of people who have done this in the past, I would not recommend this to anyone at an early stage of their trading period. This is more so in the case of a CFD TRADER where the risks can resemble the difference between driving a normal car or a Formula-1 car by a beginner. One must be absolutely confident that he or she is capable of drawing an income from this game before they even contemplate to pack their jobs up permanently. As well as that trading full-time requires hours of screen watching and after a while it can really get boring and tedious like any other repetitive jobs which you may have done in the past. So one must make sure that the lonely hours would not be a problem either.

Big Rewards

2007-01-26T10:27:00.000Z

If you can end up on the right side of catching a stock or instrument and do a CFD position on it, the Rewards will be enormous!

Imagine, you bought i.e. went Long Google when it was first entered the stock market at something like $100.00 @ $10 per point and closed your position @ $500.00 (wishful thinking, I know), you would have made $400,000.00 profit. Amazing, isn't it? So you now see how CFDs can really pay handsomely if it's put into operation correctly!

A Trader I Knew

2007-01-24T18:51:00.000Z

I used to know a female trader whose sole intention was to become very rich in a short space of time. After losing her initial Capital, which wasn't small either, she Remortgaged her house, and took a large Loan, needless to say that she lost the lot on trading CFDs and sadly her house too, soon after!

In my view, no amount of experience is enough for making an individual a perfect trader. So if you ever intend to become a Full-time Trader (Day Trader), treat this game with utmost respect and most of all pay a lot of attention to Money Management.

CFD Brokers

2007-01-24T13:01:00.006Z

here are virtually loads of firms which accept trading in CFDs; one which I quite like is CMC Markets. They trade in most international instruments and in my view they have a good Trading Platform as well, which I consider as a very important factor in the success of a trader's life. To test their Trading System, you could download their Demo Software to see for yourself.

Another good broker is IGIndex who offers CFD's and spreadbettings in a variety of instruments with a very stable trading platform and fast trade executions as well. One thing against IG I personally do not like is their "rollover" method, which I find is inferior to CMC's. With CMC Markets, "rollovers" are done automatically if the positions are not closed by the client by the market closing-time, whereas with IGIndex the client should adjust the settings to cater for this. Also, with "IGIndex" it takes one or two minutes before the position is rolled over, whereas "CMC Markets" does this very smoothly with no delays in time. This comes very handy at times, you must experience it to know what I really mean.

Where "Margin Calls" are concerned IGIndex scores better, as they tend not to liquidate your trading account if your account goes into a deficit. Instead they will keep your positions open until you fund your account with more Margins! This obviously could work for you or goes against you depending on "which way" your position will end eventually.

For absolute professionals, I would recommend GNI. With GNI you can place your trades in the live system and get the best Bid & Offer prices. Also, you can take part in the end-of-day auctions.

For absolute beginners Finspread might be a good place to start from as they allow very small positions and it could provide new-starters gain valuable hands-on experience.

How CFDs Work

2007-01-23T18:43:00.000Z

Let's take Microsoft as an example and we assume the price of Microsoft stock is $30.00:

First, we have to decide whether we want to sell (going short) or buy (going long) the stock:

We assume we will go LONG i.e. buy the stock. We also decide to stake $1.00 on each point of the fluctuation on Microsoft's share price. This means for every Cent that Microsoft share moves, we will gain or lose $1:00 depending on the direction of the movement.

Now to make it clear, we assume Microsoft share price has gone up by 10 Cents by the end of the day, if we wish we can now take profits, so let's assume we do this:

Therefore, our profit is:

10 x 1 = $10.00

How safe Are CFDs

2007-01-23T18:36:00.000Z

One has to be extremely careful when trading in CFDs. Having been there and done it all for many years, I could therefore recommend the following points:

Try to get a Demo Account and do a lot of paper trading first for a few months if possible.

Then, try to open an account with a broker who will allow you to trade with pennies and I mean pennies.

Try to use a spreadsheet to record all your trades including your profits & losses.

Then finally, when you think you have got the hang of things, increase your stakes and even then you should be extremely careful. It's always best to keep your stakes to a reasonable amount.

What Are CFDs

2007-01-23T16:11:00.000Z

In the last few years the Stock Market players have become more adventurous with their money in the sense that they are no longer happy with making 10 to 20 percent profit on their initial outlay by just simply buying the shares in the companies of their choice in the normal way which they used to.

Instead, what some of these people have been doing has been using a means which allows them to buy or sell Stocks, Indices or even Commodities on margins with high leverage. For instance, if one is trading the UK stocks with a UK broker, to enter into a deal, he or she will only need to have 3% of the total transaction available in the his/her account. For trading the indices, the leverage is even bigger; 1% only is needed to open a trade, which could be really great if you know what you are doing.

For those who are not familiar with this type of trading; this method of trading is called CFD, short for Contracts For Difference.

When using CFD you can actually SELL the instrument you do not own. They call this going SHORT and when a short position is taken, the trader is hoping for a fall in the price of the stock so he can close the position by buying the stock back in order to pocket the DIFFERENCE. Hence, the name CFD. Buying is termed as going LONG in CFDs.