Hello and welcome, I’m back once again like a renegade master! First of all thanks for the comments on my previous post, it’s very much appreciated! The day I posted that last blog post was the busiest the site has been since its inception (not that it would take much!) and more of you are starting to sign up to my mailing list, which you can also join by clicking the link in the top right of your screen!
I’ve started making one or two changes to the site now as I’m looking to develop it and will be making more changes as the weeks go by. First major change is I’ve actually bought a proper domain name for the site, so if you have this site bookmarked then I’d suggest you now change that to www.thecraptrader.co.uk. Secondly I’ve added a Trading Beginners Tips page, again this will develop over time as I learn more and find more resources to add. This isn’t a page where I give advice about what to do, more where I think are good places to look for proper information when you think about beginning your trading adventures. For those of you who are far more experienced than myself and have any thoughts or decent resources which you think would be helpful please feel free to let me know and I’ll look to add them in! Once again life has been very busy since my last trading blog hence it taking a couple of weeks to get something up. That plus the fact my folio has taken a severe beating recently has left me hiding in a corner somewhat until it all stops but more on that shortly! This coming weekend sees me fly out to the island of Ibiza for a few quiet (!!!!) nights with friends. This will be the 3rd year running I’ve been now and can’t get enough of the place. People probably think I should act my age a bit more but who cares, I can’t wait! Monday saw the conclusion of series 7 in Game Of Thrones! Do we really have to now wait until 2019 to see the concluding season as is rumored everywhere. So many questions unanswered, and so many potential scenario's and plot twists I just don't know what will happen!! It really has been a tremendous TV show though with many outstanding performances, not least from Lena Headey who's portrayal of Cersei Lannister in that last episode was remarkable. She plays the character to absolute perfection! Markets Please note I am not tipping any shares and would seriously encourage anyone reading this to carry out thorough research on any company they are thinking of buying!!!!!! As I alluded to a few lines up, I’ve taken a real battering recently with my SIPP falling from all-time highs to seeing a good 5%+ wiped off the value! Amongst this I saw TAP drop even further to knock me out of my stop loss. Now I’m struggling a bit with regards to where I place my stops. I had originally followed The Naked Trader’s advice and had been applying a 10% trailing loss to my holdings, but this saw me knocked out of long term winners such as BOO and IQE. So I then tweaked this a little to leave a 15% trailing stop on TAP, but still I got knocked for a very small profit. Obviously I realise markets go down as well as up, but I do prefer to have that safety net should a company I hold put out a really cruddy piece of news which knocks half the value off. This however means I potentially get stopped out of the good shares as evidenced just. If anyone would like to share their own strategies or thoughts on where I could be going in the comments section please do so, or alternatively please feel free to drop me a mail at thecraptrader@gmail.com. Any comments are very much welcome! As we’re moving into the traditionally tumultuous September, I’m keeping some cash aside to see if there are any bargains to be had during this time. Until next time… Ian
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Thank you for joining me in another exciting update from myself, The Crap Trader, or Ian as I’m more commonly known to my friends (I do have some). There is a hint of irony in that first sentence there! This week I’m going to talk about the future, or more specifically my future! It’s a big scary subject, “the future”, though I suspect not so scary for readers of this blog as we are all probably investors of some kind, all doing what we do in order for a brighter future as it were.
I’d been having a think over the past couple of weeks about my own future, what I want to be doing and where and kept thinking “oh well I’d like to be in such and such position (job wise), earning ‘x’ amount” yada yada. Then I had an epiphany, I don’t actually LIKE working! So I thought about what I really want, which is I don’t want to have to work for a living. I want to be able to get up in a morning, and not think about what deadlines I have to meet, or about the meetings I have lined up, or even the dreary commute down the M6 once more. I want to wake up, clear of mind and do whatever the hell I want! With this in mind I started to make a plan, quite simple really, start with what you want to achieve, and work back from there step by step. I came to the conclusion I want to make a living investing, with minimal stress. Now I hear you all say at once “well that’s what we all want”, of course, it’s been my ambition for some time as well, but this was the first time I sat down and worked out exactly what I need to do to get there. So the plan has been made, I now know exactly what I need to do, and steps have already been taken. It certainly won’t be easy, I’m under no illusions about that, things will be thrown at me that will take me off course but I have a plan I can refer to during these times to hopefully keep me on track. I still have a hell of a lot to learn in the markets but I think if I can keep my discipline, stick to the investing rules I’ve put in place, make sure I take the most advantage of good market conditions whilst hiding, I mean being even more disciplined during the downturns and keep learning from my mistakes then you just never know what might happen! In other news, the football season is back!! I know the Premier League doesn’t actually start until this weekend, but the real football began last week. My team, for all their faults is Port Vale. For those who don’t know, we play in the lowest of the low division before you have to rename as a local pub and hire a pitch from the council. We kicked off our campaign with a real positive however with an away win at Crawley Town, something of a major surprise as I think we’ve only won 2 or 3 away games in the previous 2 seasons! I’m not sure yet how we’ll fair this season as we’ve had a massive turn around in player after a disastrous season last year which ended in relegation. We’d tried to recruit a bunch of unknown foreigners with a foreign manager who then quit on Boxing Day. Anything better than that will be a big plus!! Markets Please note I am not tipping any shares and would seriously encourage anyone reading this to carry out thorough research on any company they are thinking of buying!!!!!! Urgh what can I say! This past week started off very brightly with prices moving northwards all round. Then by midweek Trump and Un started their playground antics and the past couple of days have been spent looking at the markets through my fingers! Everything has dropped, some more dramatically than others! Apart from TAP, TAP is on my good list currently as my only saving grace as it continues to try push on from 400p! This does of course create some potential buying opportunities, and as I’m adding to my ISA funds a bit more regularly now I will have more cash available going forward. In the meantime I’ll be using this time wisely to test out my discipline and market physcology!! Not a great deal of an update on my movers and shakers in the markets this time as I’m now going to lock myself in a cupboard, preferably a nuclear resistant one! Until next time… Ian |
AuthorConfessions of a Crap Trader is a blog following a regular investor trying to make profit via the London Stock Exchange. Follow his journey as he attempts to hopefully one day pay his mortgage off in full! Archives
April 2018
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