Can see what you're saying there. Think there were quite a few analysts who thought the FTSE 100 was going to be around 5000 or less again by christmas IIRC, so people were short a few months ago. It seems to me that it's totally random whether they're right or not. They're making an educated guess, but so many things can happen in the mean time which reverse direction, or just generally make something move in a way they hadn't predicted.

Tel - I know what you're saying about the ratio of winners and losers, but I just brought this up because I realised that someone who isn't the best trader could still make consistent money if they have good money management, whereas you could be a good trader and consistently lose money due to poor money management.

A 30 minute breakout system would have worked well on the banks today. Still spending most of my time just watching and paper trading due to all the new things I'm learning. Would be daft just going straight into it at this point I think.

Oh and Happy New Year to the posters who frequent this thread and offer advice! :)

Had a nice touch with lumping into financial stocks yesterday, picked up RBS at 31.4 and BARC at 289 reaping the benefits today from this optimistic start to the new year also more luck than judgment but picked up Man Group at 310.

Nice healthy balance for 2010....thus far

They were good calls then! :thumb:

Been thinking about the miners recently with what's going on. What are people's views? Are these low prices a buying opportunity or a signal to sell in your opinion?

XTA and VED in particular.

Not far to go to see sub 1000 Gold Dangleberry!
Oh and a strengthening USD.... you didn't expect that did you.

Not that it matters to you anyway because you just keep buying all the way down I guess.
As I said at the time when you were all taking the piss, Gold is a bubble.
I can see USD stengthening even more if the Euro sov default concerns continue, but I guess you never though of that kind of issue, you just thought USD would fall and fall. Don't get too stuck in to the crap you read in the newspapers, it's yesterday's news.
I don't know what happens from here, and to be honest I'm not so bothered, I've done well trading it from the short side and I'm sure you have lost money. I told you I had methods to develop a view, I look at the big picture, you get stuck on one view.
You know I wouldn't come back and be such a d!ck and rub it in your face, but I gave an opinion and you took the piss. That's the difference between you and I, when I gave my first opinion, I said I was going out on a limb i.e I could be wrong. You got sucked into the hype so much you couldn't think of any other scenario other than it was going up. Anyone that disagreed with you was an idiot hey? It's so easy to make money from people like you......
I would say I'll be back when we see sub 1000 - but now I've lowered myself to your level by being a prick it probably won't get there, so maybe in the end you will have your moment. Good luck and learn what a stop is if you want to make some real money, although I suspect like GS you are doing God's work and don't care about the money.

Let's clear one thing up first shall we? You keep talking about dropping down to my level, but I never used gutter language like you just have. I may have been passionate, perhaps dismissive but never resorted to calling you a prick.
So calm down eh? Otherwise you'll have dropped below my level. Now

1) You never really understood what I was saying. To me gold is a hedge/insurance policy against a devaluing currency $ or £. I said time and time again, and you can go back and have a look, that I'm not using it to make money.
I have money (please don't take that the wrong way) I need to PRESERVE my wealth. I did emphasise that before. As such, approx 10-12% of my 'money' is in physical gold, again don't take this the wrong way, but that's still quite a lot of money.

It is part of a diversified portfolio, if I believed that gold was anymore than a hedge/insurance policy I would have put all my money in gold.

I am still bullish on gold in the long term. To say I can only see one scenario though is patronising, but maybe it makes you feel better. I think it is still a long term bull. The dangers for the $ and £ are far from over, if you can't see that you are blind. I'm not saying they will implode but there is a clear and present danger that it might.

I bought most of my gold at circa $650, so I'm still sitting on healthy 'profits' thank you for asking. I tried to explain to you before that I'm not interested in stop losses on my gold, its an insurance policy, you don't cancel that every 5 minutes.

2) So I'm bullish on gold and will add if it hits $1000, as I mentioned before. I'll increase the insurance on the rest of my portfolio as it were.

3) You gave me some advice in your post about 'how to make some real money'. Well the situation is this, my life is not about making money. I'm sorry if this comes across the wrong way, but I have real money, I just need to preserve it. At the moment that's going pretty well.


4) I wish you luck and hope you continue to make money.

These two comments you made were IMHO just taking the piss and uncalled for given someone was just giving an alternative view.

QUOTE
Thanks, I was just curious. I haven't got long to save up some more cash to load up on gold when it drops to $900 then

Good to get a professionals view point.
Its hit a new record of $1200 today. Have you hit your margin call?
Whats the timescale for your predicted 30% correction?

UNQUOTE

Hence my recent comments to you.
I don't really have anything else to say on this other than if you are using it to hedge (poor hedge against Sterling by the way) I don't understand why you needed to slate my opinion. Surely as a hedge you would expect Gold to decrease or increase and not be so worried as to whether it does move up or down so why would you need to take the piss of someone that says it will fall. Surely that's the point of your hedge, thereby a possibility. Sorry what you say to me just doesn't add up.

Nice way to bring the thread back.

I'm not sure what in that quote has wound you up so much. Did I call you a prick, or any similar derogatory term? Because I dared to question your opinion? Your response was disproportionate in my opinion.

If you don't understand my approach to investment that's fine. I'm not going to go into details of my portfolio on an internet forum, as I'm sure you'll understand. Its working for me and that's all that matters.

If you read my post you will see I was referring to myself as a dick and a prick! i.e I said "sorry to be a dick and come back and rub it in your face...." I'm saying this because I'm not usually the kind of person to behave like this but I took issue with the comments you made to me towards the end of last year. YOU lowered the tone of this thread, no one else!
You see the issue I have is if you want an intelligent discussion then fine. You can plead your innocence now and play dumb, but you were clearly being a smart ass and taking the piss with your margin call comment and your "expert" comment. As I said it was uncalled for and just lowered the tone of a thread that should have been about opinions, not piss taking, and all because someone had a different view to you.

I'm not pleading any innocence or playing dumb. My comments are there in black and white and I don't deny any of them.

I must say though, its a bit sad if what I said on an internet forum last year still has you so wound up. Take a chill pill bros.

Gold back above the $1100 level:thumb:

There's a dark cloud candlestick formation on the daily chart of gold going into the close tonight, which suggests there may be a sell off tomorrow or over the next few days.

Not sure about the long-term, but that signal is strong enough for me to be short tonight.

Will post back in a few days, when the outcome of my trade will be obvious to all!

Yes, and there are inverted head and shoulders up my gary glitter!:lol1:

Only joking mate, but i find these sorts of technical analyzes to be more retro than prospective. More interesting is what George Soros has been up to. On one hand his fund has doubled its stake in the SPDR Gold Trust (ETF) taking it to $663 million, on the other he has been quoted as saying that gold is 'the ultimate bubble'

Very strange, but interesting.:)

The thing about these formations with commodities is that they are a self-fulfiling. The fact that traders look out for them and accept them as leading to a certain direction means that they do work. The formation I mentioned is a strong signal to sell. Usually pretty reliable.

This time though, there wasn't the sell off I was expecting. If you look at most other times this formation has come into play you'll see the strong sell off the next day. As I mentioned, I was short from around 1117, watched it fall to around 1100 yesterday and then rally back up. Decided to close it before it went into a loss, before getting back in at 1119 after things had slowed, with a stoploss just above the previous day's high of 1128 or so: perfect considering I was still confident and intended holding out for the 1080s. Strong reaction to the news last night, but when I woke up this morning and discovered it had lingered above the 1100 mark despite the contuining strengthening of the dollar, I decided to close it at 1104.

Will be interesting to see where it goes from here, but my feeling now is that it could see a bit of a rally. Breaking through Wednesday's high would confrim this I suppose.

Sooner or later you're going to realise TA is 90% bull****. There's far more going on, especially in the gold market, than a guys or software looking for formations.

I have realised that already, but technical analysis is more about measuring risk in my opinion than being able to predict the future. That last trade I did, I was risking around 10 points to make 30+. Turns out I was wrong(ish... it still hasn't gone near my stop, or even entry point), but I still made almost double what I was risking.

I know you mentioned earlier in the thread about it being impossible to make money, etc, but so far I am doing ok. There have obviously been mistakes along the way, but I've dealt with them. If I was as negative as you I probably wouldn't make a bean.

marky1- Brilliant banter!!

TA is BS?? I'm a massive seller of this fact but horses for courses!

How much weight does candlestick analysis carry in your opinion. One thing I've been noticing about reversals(say for e.g. the end of a short-term retracement in a medium or long-term trend) is that they quite often happen after a stock, or any security really, has closed the day above the previous day's high, therefore possibly marking a turning point(even if it's short lived and limited to the next day). That would be in the case of resuming an uptrend from a sustained sell off. Suppose that can be combined with general market sentiment and the use of oscillator signals to time entry.

What are your thoughts?

Candlestick analysis is my preferred trading tool, they tell the trader so much about the stock on all time frames. Depending on your aggression you can trade ahead of the close, but to negate risk and verify your entry of course entry in the morning is your best choice.

Point & figure charts remove noise i use a combination of this and candles to create most of my trades, all of which are held for a max of 2-3days usually intraday

Thanks, that's interesting. At first I was considering entry at the end of the day like you say, but one problem is that the stock often opens in the wrong direction. It still ends or touches your target at some point, but it means you could have got a better entry point.

Some paper trading/back testing needed first I think!

Now using IG instead of Barclays to trade(spread betting account that is), seems to be a much more comprehensive platform and easier to use too. Also the charts are flash not java. Had a lot of problems with java in the past, it's a pain in the arse!

IG has a good API so there are lots of good trading tools. Not a fan of tws.

The Dow looks like it's going to have a crack at 11000 over the next few days... possibly even later today. This has certainly been some rally.

A couple of recent spread bets have been: long RBS at 41 and long Afren at just under 84. RBS trade still open, but closed Afren position out the week before last at 105. Nice profit considering my stop was 74. Still hold Afren shares bought in the high 80s though.

Interesting that Gold has been stuck in this range for some time now, and has broken away from its medium-term correlation with the Dollar.

I also recently bought Xstrata shares at 1100 with a target of 1250. When they started to fall back after rising over 1200 the first time, I raised my stop to 1120 to take a small profit. Unfortunately that was hit almost exactly before the rally back up to where we are now... around the 1300 level. Typical, but it was much better sticking to my strategy than changing it for the sake of greed and moving my stop again.

Was just having a look at my spread betting account there and thought of this thread. Some of the stuff I was doing when I started this was just... :facepalm:

I put £2k in a spread betting account to trade gold. Thought nothing of taking positions at £50pp without stop losses or anything. £50k position with £2k in the account. Seems nuts thinking about it now. :D I really did do well for a while though...

Makes interesting reading, this thread. There were certainly plenty of people willing to offer advice. :thumb:

Any of the posters have any thoughts on precious metals and equities now? Would be good to hear them.