Stock market dealing

[kingandy2nd]

Thanks for the guidance @Justin Passing , I appreciate the time you’ve taken to write it out.

I think that you highlight the concern that I (and probably others) have is that when you start out it is your real savings and if you lose that bit (before you’ve cleared a decent profit to the trade fear free with) then it’s game over. And you’re using your actual savings when your least experience!

I have been playing with T212 fake money, starting with 5k in the Invest fund and £50k in the CFD.

I’m marginally up across the portfolio but would have been better if I’d not lost £3k on some energy stock that was just trending down and down.

I cant work out how/if you can short on T212, and I think I was setting the stop loss too short as I trigged a few loses within minutes of placing order only for the stock to bounce back later.

Most of my picks weren’t scientific, sometimes from alerts the app was sending me or looking at the top movers in the day. So gains were more luck than judgement, but I was doing what you mentioned previously about looking at the channel/trends and avoiding anything on a general downward trend.

I think my main issue is that I don’t have time to watch the prices or listen to the investor news channels (as I run my own business). I do like the idea of dabbling though and what you’ve suggested in your last post about doing something like that in the evening just watching the rises and falls is sensible given the time available.

I’ve got about 5k in crypto as I stuck about a grand in when bitcoin and doge coin were at their lowest…so I guess that could be considered my risk free gambling pot.

Thanks for the pointer on eTorro too, I’ll give it a try.

 

[Arbu]

You would if you could operate spread-betting inside an isa. AFA I know you can't - nor CFD which is same leverage as SB. You could take it out of the ISA but you couldn't put it back in again. So it's handy to be left there.

Why do you want it in an ISA though? Spread-betting is tax free https://www.gov.uk/hmrc-internal-manuals/business-income-manual/bim22015

 

[Justin Passing]

@kingandy2nd Writing it out reinfoorces it so it's all good. If you had to write an instruction book, you really have to be clear what you're doing, sort of thing.
Well done for having a go on the simulator. Easy to get wins on there, then something you weren't watching takes a slug from you.
Yes, stop losses are a mixed blessing, or a necessary evil, or something in between.
There's no formula I know of for getting it right. It'll always be wrong, but it can be very wrong if you don't used the damned things.
"Trading" is easier, in that you plan the trade, and selling is part of ithe plan, and having a price where it's failed an you need to sell, is too.

Most of the time, you're looking to see what the Trend is. Get it clear that you know what a trend looks like. A trend up is higher highs and higher lows.
Loads on the net, at Investopedia and whatnot

That's here: https://enrichmoney.in/knowledge-center-chapter/what-a-trend-in-technical-analysis.

There are various words to describe the same things. Like you could draw a Channel going up, sideways and down, on that.
The black part is called Consolidation, where buyers and sellers aren't really doing anything much, The price there is oscillating because of the positive feedback thing - people and bots buy because the price is going up which pushes the price up, then the reverse takes over.

On the blue side, you aim to buy when the price hiyts the straight line underneath - or just after it. "Just after it" is safer because you'll have see confirmation, but also reduces your gain. The Spread gets involved when the price changes direction. It often goes wide, reducing your gain again.

Once more about whether to bet with or against the trend:

If you buy WITH, at black "Buy", and you miss the sale at Green oval, you can just wait, holding the position, which may look negative for you, until the price is above the green line again.

If you try going against the trend, as atthe black square, and you miss the sale at pink, you're bust, because the price is never going to come back for you. IT MIGHT, on the next swing, maybe 10 times the time period later. Holding on for those ten time periods is where people make big losses ig they decide it's not going to come back intheir lifetime. It's uncomfortabe to hold on all day, or overnight, because you can never be sure about anything.
In that Microstrategy thing a couple of posts back, I was on the hump in the afternoon at say 500, then the price went down to 400. I was fearing it was going to 300, but it came back up to
......