I thought I would do an update ahead of an update when US markets are open, particularly as this US GDP has just crazified markets again
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It has been a slightly frustrating week for me due to lack of trades, but the planets don’t always line up every week and that’s the reality of trading. One of the things I have been thinking about in recent weeks is becoming more aggressive in my approach and taking more trades. Rather than doing 3 or so trades a week, see if there are two trades per day to do. I am going to try this with real money in August. On the one hand I am cautious about changing things – mine is a profitable approach so why rock the boat, but maybe there is the opportunity to up the returns. Let’s see how it goes in August. The content of the updates in here won’t change, I will just be taking more of the trades.
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The other thing that I have talked about in recent months is my US share trading. As a quick recap I used to do this quite a few years ago now, taking a medium-term view on individual US stocks in the NASDAQ and S&P and putting the trades on long and short. Obviously, all leveraged using spread bets. I would always try and have at least a few shorts in there to balance out the longs. I think it’s a good approach for those who don’t want to watch the markets all the time and the chance is with individual equities you will get one or two that have a massive move.
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So, I have been doing this since mid-May – but only dipping in and out of it. I am going to try and be more dedicated to it from now on and do at least a couple of trades per week. I will mention them here.
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I started on 16 May and have done 13 trades. Three have been stopped – one for a profit, two for a loss. The two losers were the only two stocks I was short so not a surprise given the market we have had.
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I have still got 10 open positions. The biggest winner is Old Dominion Freight ODFL which is up 3x the risk so far. Yesterday I bought AAPL with a stop around $20 lower and FTNT with a $12 stop.
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The returns since mid may are good – but it has been a rising market. If we assume 5x leverage on equity CFD/spread bet, and I would want a minimum of the initial margin +50% in my account to run the trades. So, if it was a £10,000 account on those numbers, it is currently up around £1,975 including open profits. In my book that is a great return – but again, just buying the S&P and NASDAQ would have made more probably.
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For those of you who have done the course, the approach is pretty much the medium-term trading approach off the daily charts with the same rules for stop placement. If you look at AAPL and FTNT from yesterday I am sure you will see the set-up. For those of you still on the webinar programme, I will talk about it a bit in the next session in August.
In case anyone is interested, these are the open posiitons at the moment.
WORKDAY, INC. (XNAS:WDAY)
ANSYS, INC. (XNAS:ANSS)
OLD DOMINION FREIGHT LINE, INC. (XNAS:ODFL)
AIRBNB, INC. (XNAS:ABNB)
ALPHABET INC. (XNAS:GOOG)
STARBUCKS CORPORATION (XNAS:SBUX)
PEPSICO, INC. (XNAS:PEP)
COGNIZANT TECHNOLOGY SOLUTIONS CORPORATION (XNAS:CTSH)
APPLE INC. (XNAS:AAPL)
FORTINET, INC. (XNAS:FTNT)