Editorial Contributor
TRADING ACADEMY WINNER
John Walsh’s monthly trading record This has been an interesting trading month for me for a number of reasons; one being that I have now got back to trading indices. Just the FTSE for now, but I will be looking to start trading the DAX and Dow again which were among my strongest points during the City Index Trading Academy and I’m hoping it wasn’t beginner’s luck as I know they are two of the most volatile indices to trade! After I won the competition, trading indices actually had no appeal to me at all, ironically because of the volatility and P&L swings during the competition. I was not ready to sit in front of my screen all day sweating about every little move like I had to during the competition against the other traders. Given that I swung to a £30k + profit at the 11th hour of the Academy and that clinched the win for me, I felt I’d had enough excitement for the time being! The major market indices have of course got off to a great start this year and I have been trying to scalp profits, trading both on the long and short side where I would have been better simply going with the trend.
92 | www.financial-spread-betting.com | March 2013
My holding length varies from minutes to hours — I guess I’m what you can call a day trader rather than a swing trader. I’ve had some good days and only one bad day, but one day could have been my worst trading day ever, but I was able to trade myself out of the mess. I learnt that traders shouldn’t get married to a position and certainly not get emotional and I think these disciplines helped me turn around the large loss. Another reason the last month has been interesting surrounds my equity trades — an area that I feel strongest about. I have decided to up my trade size amount and I’m also now trying to take profits a little sooner than I have done previously; trying to take profits little but often. We’ll see how that goes towards building up my account because as the old saying goes “you never go broke taking profit”. So far this has worked out pretty well.