Editorial Contributor
1
DON’T MAKE LOADS OF TRADES EVERY DAY YOU IDIOT!
I can tell you this for a fact: if the trades you are making on your spreadbet account start to mount up every day, you are chasing the market. It will eat you up and toss you down the rubbish chute. The more trades made, the more losses pile up. Only trade when you think the odds are really in your favour. Stop pressing so many buttons.
2
HAVE A BREAK!
And not just a Kit Kat sized one. Things not going your way in the market? Stop huffing and puffing and saying bad words at your screen. Especially that one. Sell up. Come back next week or the week after. You don’t have to trade in a difficult environment. Keep hold of your capital and you can fight another day.
3
WAIT FOR THINGS TO SETTLE
Don’t just jump in because you heard Greece is saved on the news. Remember, everyone else knows it too. If there is big news about, don’t go straight in — especially right now because Greece can be saved and then lost in ten minutes in this environment. And if Greece is fixed, they come up with another country to worry about. Wait till the whipsawing ceases and you can figure out a longer-term trend is really developing.
4
WE’RE NOT ALL IN THIS TOGETHER
The professionals know just how to extract your hard-earned trading cash from you. In current conditions, the moment you are in profit the market will turn on you. And just when you take your losses it will shoot back up. Don’t let them have it.
5
BUY WHEN YOU ARE REALLY SCARED AND ABOUT TO SELL THE LOT
The professionals are buying just as the private investors are piling out. Remember if shares are tanking down on fear that prices are actually cheap! It’s amazing how private investors buy at the top and sell at the bottom.
6
SELL WHEN THE NEWS IS GOOD.
If you bought on the bad, you want to sell on the good. The Euro saved? All in the garden is rosy? Commentators saying the FTSE is going to boom up to 6,500 by the end of the year? Time to bank profits.
64 | www.financial-spread-betting.com | July 2012