Trading.

SailorSam

Thanks for those links John, so it seems the best route i can take is open a free practise accomt and if i ever get to be confident enough to gamble, try this instead of doing the lottery each week.

bowlhead99

SailorSam wrote: »

At the beginning of the programme the woman who was the nurse was up to a profit of over £1.5 million, while she was only using monopoly money in her training account but found it harder to make the right decisions once hard cash was involved..

At the start she had an account balance of over £1.6m, "I'm not even sure what that means, really, but I think it's good" ; "when I see 1.6m of pretend money, I'm gutted, that it's not real... sometimes when I win like £50,000 on a trade, and I say to my husband, £50,000! But he's like, but it's not real... It's sad really, that I can't do it with real money... yet."

She basically said she sees where the charts are going and tries to guess where they're going next, and places bets. We watched her bet £1000pt shorting GBP against Yen. Then the GBP went up a bit straight away, "ooh it's just shot up... it's gone massively up now". She closed her laptop because she didn't want to watch it, and said she'd go back after an hour or so. This without having placed any stop losses so far as we could see.

One of the other live bets she had open on her screen was a buy bet on FTSE100 at 6566.1, and the trade was showing a running profit of £8800 because the sell price had gone up to 6574.9. As the camera flicked back later the trade was up to £9000 because the index had moved another 0.2 (I was watching on iplayer so could hit pause). With a bet of that size, £1k per point, she is literally putting £6.575 million to work on the FTSE index. A 1% movement would get her about £66k profit or loss. A 20% swing would be £1.3m.

Her bet on the Yen was also £1000/pt too, along with some others regardless of market. Apart from a few stop losses visible on her history screen she didn't seem to be demonstrating any money management techniques - literally just betting on where the graph was going based on her gut feel, generally using the largest bets she could.

So, "sad really, that I can't do it with real money..." - but very fortunate that she didn't actually have her (rented!) house as collateral when a bad day or an error would wipe out her entire margin balance. It doesn't surprise me one iota that her 'mock' 300k turned into 1600k over her 9month experiment, nor that she didn't do quite so well with the smaller bets of actual cash, especially after getting used to dealing with large numbers. She was purely a gambler and, "if it works, it will be really good for my family" is only half the story of what can happen.

So, when she sold her litter of kittens(!) to raise £6000 because eventually she had to give it a go for real, there's probably a bit of 'serves you right' seeing her balance at he end of the show being under £4k.

I quite fancy having a go on one of the dummy accounts the nurse was using at the start. Did anyone recognise the website she was using, or know of a good place to find a dummy account?

She was using CMC markets. It's not one I've used, but they're reputable. Like the others above I'd endorse IG.com as well featured with decent service - they can give you a demo account with £10k play money.

SailorSam

bowlhead99 wrote: »

So, "sad really, that I can't do it with real money..." - but very fortunate that she didn't actually have her (rented!) house as collateral when a bad day or an error would wipe out her entire margin balance.

So, when she sold her litter of kittens(!) to raise £6000

I thought as i watched that nurse in her rented house and having to sell her pets was she any different than the young lads from Birmingham. They had a vision to one day become trillionaires, and on the face of it had started to build a successful company and convinced a number of rich footballers to invest But they were still working out of a bedroom in their Mums house.

[Deleted User]

Anyone thinking of trading could do with reading a book called `trading in the zone` by Douglas. It is all about psychology and how not to be swept along by crowd behaviour. Then get started on learning TA ie how to read charts. Try and fit in some good courses and set aside a pot of money that you can afford to lose. Trading with paper or pennies is not at all the same as trading with decent amounts of your own money

Most of the people on that programme were losers, wanting to get rich quick without actually working, making all sorts of excuses to have quality time at home. The woman in reality, was not engaging with her children and she had them eating quick rubbish food while they were watching tv. She was purely a gambler

I used to trade ftse and also dow, until I realised that I did not really want to spend most of my hours watching my three flashing screens. There was much more to life. Oh yes I set stop losses, used risk/reward but there is something hypnotic about screen watching. I stopped and went entirely over to position trading and investing, real shares with real money and with real dividends. Now I look at my one screen just once a day when I update my charting programme, no longer real time as before. Sometimes I sell to tie in profits and then I buy in again, otherwise cash in the sipp gets almost zero interest. I still have the ability and knowledge to trade but the older I get, the quicker real life flits by. There is also the constant adrenaline rush, no good for heart and health

I heard over and over about persons called x, y or z. They lost their redundancy money, and sometimes their house. True tales not fiction

IronWolf

I know some people that trade successfully, even some that have been doing so for years, but I'm still skeptical whether it's skill or luck.

Trading is just way to much energy for me, I like to invest, when I find a stock that I like I can hold it for years, the only effort expended on it is reading their news releases and financial reports every so often. Having to keep abreast of all the latest news and watch shares all day isn't my idea of fun.

jabba42

I have lost tons day trading. Luckily money I could afford to lose. You really cannot say you are a winner until you have been doing it for 3 years or so consistently. Even then you might let one big one run and wipe out your account.

gkerr4

JohnRo wrote: »

A reasonable person might assume that to be the case, it isn't at all the case though.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-19909942
http://www.theguardian.com/business/2012/feb/12/this-man-could-nmake-you-rich-or-could-he



Evidently.

This is interesting..

i mentioned earlier an audiobook i listen to (and still do) by alexander elder - i enjoyed it so much i went back to iTunes and noticed it recommended (along the lines of "people who liked X also liked Y" - I'm sure you know what i mean) - a "book" by Greg Secker - the guy in the guardian link. The audiobook was entitled "trade your way to success"

i say "book" because it was just an advert for his seminars - it told nothing about trading - not a thing, it was awful.

I complained to iTunes that it wasn't a book and that it was simply an advert which you paid for (it was £2.95) and that really, in my opinion, it had no place being on iTunes - a scam really.

They refunded me and apologised - but i notice its still on the iTunes store!!

edit: - and if you have iTunes - have a look at the reviews! - there are three showing, you'l figure out who i am and the two others make similar comments about wanting their money back - i hope they complained to iTunes and got it too!

spender

" my LTBH investments now "

Could you please explain what an LTBH investment is (I am curious). This subject fascinates me as I have a friend who is using redundancy money doing this. From the grapevine he earns the same as he did each month working.

JohnRo

Long Term Buy & Hold

Have my fingers and toes crossed this mini sell off keeps going until at least October.

spender

So JohnRo is it forex you are trading?