RE: Introduce yourself here!
Hello one and all.
I used to be heavily involved with investing in the 90s when I was living in Antwerp, Belgium. At the time I was using MetaStock and despite the market being positive when I was involved I found it hard to make any headway. That's an euphamism for making a thumping loss. The biggest problem I had in those days is knowing what to do.
The only source of information in those days was CompuServe (ask your dads, kids!) and really I had no idea of strategy or anything. One thing that I did do, along with a collegue, was to form a company called Smith & Hodgson Limited and we were the first company to sell UK Stockmarket data to the small investor. That took years getting it off the ground as the UKSE hadn't a clue what a small investor was and their idea was somone who was willing to spend hundreds of pounds A MONTH in licence fees to get the market data. That took off for a while and we got glowing reviews in the Small Investor section of the Investor's Chronicle on a regular basis (which clearly the folks in Threadneedle Street never read) and it was going well for a while until bigger companies came along and blew us out of the water. But, I'm still proud to say that we were the first.
Anyway, one thing led to another and I left the market because I was working all over Europe and I just got involved with horse racing which still is a good source of income. But now i have settled down on the LlÅ·n Peninsula, settled down with the good lady wife and the travelling days are over: for the time being.
Fast forward to early last year and I found myself an orphan and was left some cash so I decided to invest it for myself and the good lady wife. So, the week before the ISA deadline I put £10k into two ISAs and then did the week after and decided to get to work.
This time I've done no end of reading. I have read about thirty books on the subject this year and have taken out subcriptions out for Investors Chronicle, Shares and the free Spreadbet Magazine. All good information to get back into swing of things and they have now been cancelled as I find myself polluted by dodgy advice from them.
Of the books that I have read most of the good ones tend to have the same theme. Find a trend, get in and hang on when it goes up and get out quick if it goes wrong. And this is where I came across Weinstein's excellent book.
The other good book that I can only recommend is THE NAKED TRADERS GUIDE TO TRADING which is more fundamental based but it's a good complement to the Trechnical side of things.
Anyway, I am still reading what I can get my hands on and I have finally fought my way throught the Trade2Win forum and now I am reading this forum and Weinstein book again. The software I am using is ShareScope and if anyone uses SS then you can see me often making noises on their forums. I am also happy to code away in ShareScope's programming language, ShareScript, to improve my SS environment.
I am looking to develop the technical side with the Weinstein method because I like the simplicity of it. I have done all stuff learning the Fibonnaci this, the Gann that and none of it seems to work in real life as far as I am concerned. I have half of my funds in a technical ISA and half in the Fundamental ISA. The technical ISA is what I am looking at to use here.
Both are doing quite well at the moment (I am up 17% since April and after making some howling mistakes as well) but I want to get into Weinstein's methods for two reasons. The first is that I do the idea and I think that it will suit me and the second is that I want to be able to get to grips for spread betting.
The reason for this is that the market can't go on up forever. It's been going sideways since February 2013 and I note that I am getting stopped out everywhere. At the moment I have two holdings left: VP plc (VP.) and NCC (NCC) and the latter has thrown a sell which will get me out tomorrow and I am getting fewer buy recommendations by my own systems and I am thinking that we may be going south for a while and tenchical stuff would be good for shorting.
Oh, I do currently have one LONG spread - Trinity Mirror whch I think is in Stage 2 territory and has been since mid November
Anyway, that's it for me and, yes, I still do the horses. That's my daytime job which is both frustrating and satisfying as possibly can be.
So, excuse the ramble. You'll soon get used to me - or add me to your blocked list.
Cheers
Malc
Nessa: "Why?"