Spread Betting Strategy

I found that I could not make consistent profits until I developed a consistent strategy. I didn’t link it to the mind or emotions but found that I made better profits the more I stuck to the strategy. I now find I make even greater profits from eventually finding a strategy that I am most comfortable with. I believe I have almost totally eliminated unconscious or emotional decisions from the process. I believe we each have a different level of subconscious acceptable risk with our money, which is why we find different ways to trade and different styles or strategies.

I have about 10% in my ‘trading’ account which I use for IG Index spread bets. Here I tend to take a 6 month contract and hold anywhere between a few days and a few months (certainly not day trading but shorter term than my investments). I found spreadbets as a great way to lose money quickly until I established a spread betting strategy that works for me. I always use guaranteed stops with fast moving markets and now only use small positions on each trade. I aim to buy weakness in well defined uptrends and move my stop up to my entry point to protect my stake asap I also try and go long on a small cap oiler pre-drill and look for it to rise pre-results to protect my stake again. With a guaranteed stop in place a duster means you exit with a small gain or no loss, a successful drill means a better result. I also look to add to a position once my stake is protected. I see the important thing in spread betting is to protect your pot and keep losses as small as possible. The other thing is lots of small gains soon add up if you don’t lose to often.

On Tuesday I went to a talk about trend-following. It was light on content but the thesis was basically that scaling in and out using a series of long term moving averages (1,3,6,10,12 month simple or exponential), will beat buy and hold over the long term. He started by saying that this strategy only works in trending markets. He trades a monthly chart, looking only at last day of the month. The point I wanted to make but didn’t, is that one only knows one is in a trending market after the trend is well-underway. I think he would have argued back that if one is basically a buy-and-hold-merchant trading the long term swings that doesn’t matter.