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If you follow me on Twitter (and I suspect the vast majority of Readers do and if you don’t then you are probably missing out on a lot !! Note, you don’t need a Twitter Account as such and if you just do a Google search for ‘Tweets by @wheeliedealer’ then you should just get them magically appear on your Browser thing), you will most likely have spotted that I managed to get to the Mello Event in Derby on Friday (after getting lost for 2 hours mainly because my Directions were spot on but at the key moment I drove straight past the venue and then suddenly found myself on ‘Brian Clough Way’ and I figured I was far too near Nottingham for my liking !!) and I was still a bit flustered and stressed from the painful drive so I was totally caught unawares when it was suddenly announced by David Stredder (@carmensfella) that I had won the Award for the ‘Most Influential Twitter Account’ and I was presented with the heaviest piece of Glass ever known to man by Aston Girl (@Reb40) as you can see in the pics below (by the way, the bloke in the blue checked shirt is Steve Markus (@smarkus) who is a bit of a Tweeting Legend himself):
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I often get ideas for Blogs from various chats on Twitter and this one has come about in this way, and it also has the added bonus of being sort of linked to the recent lengthy Blog Series I wrote on ‘Wheelie’s New Improved Index Trading System’.
We were having a debate about what drives Indexes in terms of Price Rises and Falls etc. (I think it was with @Old_Man_Trading who is really hot on the TA stuff and well worth following on the Tweetster) and I put forth the idea that to a large extent we cannot know what is driving them as there are simply too many factors involved. To illustrate this, let me start off by listing things that might be drivers, and note they can probably be broken down into a few Headings:
I’m really tight for time tonight as the MotoGP from Circuit of the Americas in Texas is running as I type, so I am not sure how much I can cover but there is a pile of Admin type stuff I need to run through first and then I need to flag some concerns I have about the prospects for the US Markets and I also need to carry on the Forensic Analysis of a difficult FTSE100 Short Trade I had running last Week (see my ‘Trades’ page for full details on this and some initial thoughts about what I did not do particularly well and how I can improve things).
I attended the UK Investor Show in Westminster yesterday and met up with so many people who I have met previously or who are people I regularly chat to on Twitter and of course many Readers of this Website etc. I really enjoyed the Event although I didn’t get the chance to see many of the Stands and stuff but I did listen to Mark Slater’s Speech but in many ways it was pretty much old news to me and sadly this time he did not really come up with any new interesting Stocks to look at - in fact he was a bit of a tease because he said his Funds had been buying into 2 Stocks lately but I don’t think he told us which ones they were (although of course it makes sense for him to keep quiet about this if he is still building his Stake).
This has been such an unusual Year with what are normally some of the best Months being so poor. After such a miserable start I was extremely pleased to recover 1.3% across my Portfolio last Week (this is UK and Spreadbets and my 2 Overseas Unit Trusts) and as a result I am now down just under 1.0% for 2018 so far and I am using all my Lucky Charms to try to get back into Positive Territory very soon. I guess if I just leave my Portfolio alone and resist the urge to tinker with it I will have much more chance of achieving this !!
On that sentiment, I mentioned a few Days ago on Twitter how I had done one of my rare checks on my iWeb Income Portfolio and was rather pleased to see it was up something like 1.7% on 2018 so far - I was really surprised by this and it is a bit worrying that the Portfolio which gets no love and attention from me (in fact, I have done no Trades in that Portfolio this Year so far) is up in a difficult Year whereas the Portfolios I put considerable effort into are down !! Oh the irony !!
This first paragraph is being written after all the rest in this Part of the Blog Series. Having now completed a very good Draft of it, I have decided that it is extremely involved and lengthy and for this reason I will separate the Examples out into its own Part - Part 3 - and now the Blog Series will run to 4 Parts with the final one being a Conclusion that brings everything together.
Finally I have got around to starting on these Examples - I have been struggling with precisely how to do it as I had a few ideas in my head but often that is not actually helpful and it merely meant that this state of indecision was simply stopping me getting on and writing the darned thing !! Anyway, I have sort of settled on the basic way of doing it and I am starting typing and shoving in pictures in the possibly forlorn hope that it will sort of coalesce into something that makes sense.
These Markets are still all over the place despite me managing to squeeze out a tiny gain last Week of 0.4% on my Portfolio - after so many poor Weeks this was a welcome respite but I am really not convinced it is part of a trend of gains and after big falls in the US on Friday, I wonder if it was just a short relief from the ‘Death by a Thousand Cuts’ Market we have had to endure since the start of 2018. I mentioned this on a Tweet a few Days ago and I might even have misheard it but Bloomberg TV one night were saying that this was the worst start to a Year since 1929 - and that was the year of the Wall Street Crash !! (I am assuming they mean the US Markets).
In due course I will look at the Index Charts and try to make sense of what is happening but my overall stance remains the same that I am in no rush to buy much and am just happy to maintain my current Portfolio as it is with the odd few things that I wouldn’t mind dumping if the opportunity arises - what I mean by this is that if something unexpectedly jumps up then I will be looking to sell into the move. I utterly hate selling things ‘at the bottom’ and I find with patience if you hold Quality Stocks then your time will come. Needless to say I will be monitoring the Charts very closely and if I see a need to Short an Index or two in order to Hedge my Portfolio then that is where my focus will be.
This is the Final Part of a Series of Blogs - if this is the first time you have been unlucky enough to find this Series then Links to the earlier Parts are at the bottom of this one if you scroll down.
Conclusion I am hoping that I have done these Blogs in a way which Readers can makes sense of and will enable them to think about how to go about such Index Trading themselves if the urge takes hold. You can use ETFs like XUKS (a way of Shorting the FTSE100 that you buy and sell like a Share. To go Long on the FTSE100 you could use something like ISF I think - you will need to check this) instead of Spreadbets and of course things like CFDs will give a similar result (but these come with Tax disadvantages when compared to Spreadbets). But it goes without saying (but I will say it anyway !!) if you do fancy having a go you must be extremely careful and start with a Practice Account perhaps or at least start with very low Position Sizes - don’t go betting £1000 a Point on the FTSE100 on your first Trade !! (that would be equivalent to about £7.2m of Exposure by the way !!!). Before I finish the Blog Series off, I just want to stress the following Key Points:
This is the Second Part in what should be 3 chunks regarding what is a pretty complicated and hefty subject - before getting stuck into this, I would strongly suggest reading Part 1 which you can find here:
http://wheeliedealer.weebly.com/blog/wheelies-new-improved-index-trading-system-part-1-of-3 Trade Types I am particularly looking for As with all things in Trading and Investing it is extremely important to strive for simplicity and in line with this I essentially have 4 different ‘Types’ of Trade Setups that I am particularly after; and they can be grouped into 2 different types - Long and Short. In the Final Part of this Blog Series I intend to produce some Examples using real Charts of these types of Trades so Readers can get a much better appreciation of what I am going on about.
I’ve found this Weekend quite frustrating because I really want to crack on with my Garden and planting Seeds and stuff but the weather has been either peeing down or like today just flippin’ nippy and with Superbike Racing on the Telly it wasn’t really much of a contest. I feel sorry for all those People who have gone away for the Weekend with Kids only to find their planned Break a bit of a washout. Welcome to Britain……
I guess Last Week was a typically soggy one for the Markets with the Bank Holiday and the whole tone of 2018 so far being pretty painful for Bulls. Thankfully my Portfolio ‘only’ lost 0.5% for the Week but it is frustrating how difficult it is proving to make headway and with another Bank Holiday in the coming Week, I don’t have high hopes for much of a change. I think there are US Non-Farm Payroll Numbers on Friday 6th April and that might cause some excitement to finish off the Week. I have a small Long Spreadbet on the S&P500 still running but I will be looking at this closely on Thursday Night with a view to closing it before those Jobs Numbers. |
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