Trading Academy winner John Walsh
TRADING ACADEMY WINNER
John Walsh’s personal Diary “When I was selected as one of the final 8 traders for the City Index competition I decided that I would grab the opportunity with both hands and learn as much as I can about spread betting and give it my all which I did.” My name is John Walsh and for those that don’t know who I am, I was the winner of the City Index Trading Academy — a competition spread over 5 weeks in which each week a different trading task was set by our mentors Ashraf Laidi and James Chen and at the end of that week one of the traders who finished in the bottom three would be eliminated. During the competition I won three of the five weeks including the final week, and the only week in which I didn’t make any money was a pretty volatile one and none of the other traders did either. From a young age I have always had an interest in stocks and shares, going back to the days when I used to follow stock prices on teletext (shows you how far back that was!). The fascination with the markets has stayed with me ever since. Before the competition I had never actually traded any stocks but had done a little bit of spread betting which was more in line with my resources at the time, and in which I had a little bit of success. When I was selected as one of the final eight traders for the City Index competition I decided that I would grab the opportunity with both hands and learn as much as I could about spread betting and give it my all which I did. One of the things that people have asked me most since my win is what my plans are for the future.
After I won I handed in my notice to the company I had worked at for six years and I am now currently doing the “Knowledge Of London” in the hope of becoming a London black cab driver. Of course, I plan to continue my learning process in the hope of becoming a good trader. I also believe, in the markets, that you never stop learning. Many thought I would turn to full-time day trading and probably blow the £100,000 within a year, but I can reassure you that is not the case! I have put a moderate amount into my spread betting account and plan to try and build up my account slowly as I consider myself more of a long term trader, holding positions for weeks and months in line with my own money management and risk/reward ratio strategy that I was taught during the completion. As I mostly trade equities and also occasionally indices, where I had a lot of success during the competition, at the time of writing I currently have nine positions open with seven being Long and two being Short positions — all equities. The way I trade is relatively straight forward. Before I open a position I take a look at the stocks charts on different time frames, be it days, weeks, months and even years in some cases, to see if I can identify a trend — either up or down. Sometimes this is pretty clear in the charts so then I read all the recent news about the stock to find out the prevailing sentiment of the stock — a measure that I think is important.
February 2013
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