So I’ve finally started preparing for 3 peaks (with 3 days to go) and I thought I’d share my packing list so far with everyone (just incase you find yourself packing for a mountain walking trip with 72 hours to spare).

Here goes (I have a fellow walker named ‘Dee’ to thank for this list);

• Map
• Compass
• Gloves
• Hat
• Waterproofs
• GPS
• Mobile phone
• Spare socks
• First aid kit
• Sunglasses
• Head torch
• Toilet paper
• Camera
• Glucose tablets
• Survival blanket
• Optional: walking poles
• Winter: Crampons

Pretty simple really.. And I think I’m all sorted except for the glucose tablets (seriously – they’re not easy to find anymore!)

Any other recommendations are welcome in the comments!

Firstly, I should apologuise that my weekly column hasn’t exactly been weekly, unfortunately due to work commitments (and a few bad trades),  my exposure to spread betting has been kept at a minimum… and just in time too.  Unfortunately due to some large errors in judgement, at the beginning of this week I was a whopping £40 (or 40%) down on my initial investment.

Saying that, its now Sunday, and I’m pleased to say I’m now 30% up.. so it can’t be all bad.. mainly due to riding 106 points of Thursdays 112 point FTSE drop.. which was nice

Riding the FTSE

So whats changed?

Firstly, my Finspreads “trial” period (the first 8 weeks at 10p per point) has now expired, which initially I found quite an annoyance, but it has made me re-think alot of positions (now I have a minimum of 50p per point), and pushed me to sign up with a better platform (one that doesnt crash if the wind is blowing the wrong way, sorry Finspreads, but your flash based platform is aweful).

Secondly, as I’ve been too busy to even check the markets during the day (and certainly too busy to trade in binaries during the day), and after reading a book (The Financial Spread Betting Handbook by Malcolm Prior – I really recommend you buy this book now if you’re reading this!), I learnt a few things about triggers and strategies… but before I get into that, let me talk a bit about how I used to trade.

So I have a relatively detailed trading plan, involving some indicators, and with binaries, involving some “safety net” as I called it to minimise risk, however, my trades would normally go something like this.

1. I’d wake up and sign into Finspreads at 8am (normally after a couple of tried once their flash interface had decided to wake up), and look at a few stocks.  As my filters had been relatively basic I’d normally be looking at the “popular” stocks and the main index (well the FTSE).
2. I’d find something I like the look of, and not bother looking at the other timeframes.. plus I’d usually ignore the fact that it may have been trending on FRIDAY, but now that its MONDAY, it probably isnt.
3. I’d Buy or Sell straight away..
4. I’d set a completely arbitary stop loss based on no calculation or price action points at all.
5. I’d sign in 5 hours later to find my stop loss was triggered in the first hour as I didnt get it far enough away and I hadnt bothered to look at other timeframes / factors that could be effecting the share price!

So.. Back on topic, Whats changed?

So, after reading a few books (and surfing the T2W forums) I revised this to include something called “Triggers”. Triggers are great, because after deciding that you’re interested in a stock, you can setup a trigger to be tripped before entering the bet.. So with some revised indicator planning too the plan has been revised to the following.

1. Now using IG Index, and their advanced charting package (which is awesome, and it looks like its based on ProRealTime), I can programe my own filters (which I have done based on ADX), and screen stocks accordingly.
2. After shortlisting stocks, and placing them on another “watchlist” I then setup some SMS alerts, to let me know if I was on the money with some movements..
3. From there I setup some triggers (which I may do progressively through the week rather than all at the start), to open trades should a certain value be met..
4. I monitor and close on my iPhone during the day..

I know that sounds like a bit of an advertisment for IG Index (seriously let me know if you join because of this and I’ll get a bottle of chamapne!), but it really is night and day between the two platforms.

To Summarise

1. Always have a good any trading plan.
2. Always use triggers, dont just open a trade if you think its going that way
3. Evaluate other platforms

And I think thats it!

Ok – So I wrote this post a while ago.. since then I got a little busy with Christmas and various other things along the way.. Apologies for the delay getting this out!

So it’s the end of my second week trying out spread betting for real.. And I’m pleased to say, I’m still up on my original investment.. (graph attached below – if you’re viewing this on an iPhone.. I’m sorry, but its flash based!)

So what have I learnt this week?
Binaries are not as awesome as previously thought...why? Because part of a good strategy is to ensure your losses can be limited to be less than your gains. Unfortunately with my current strategy I don’t buy the binaries until they meet my pre-defined risk factor.. In this case the value is usually 75, meaning my profits can be a tasty 25 pips.. But my potential losses can be up to 3 times that (75pips)… And.. As you (currently) can’t place stop losses on binaries this usually means that I do make the full loss if the Market goes against me (this is what happened during the beginning of the week).

However with these risk factors and the current strategy I’m using, things seem to be working well.. but more on this next week in my next post

Stocks and Shares – Tend to move too slowly to make any real money at my current risk level – perhaps these would be good low risk choices when I start tradining in real amounts (ie £/point instead of 10p!), but often the spreads are just too large for me at the moment for small stocks to be worth my effort.

Trading Plans – Are *%@£ing important. Seriously.  Every time I deviate from my plan I loose, everytime I stick to it I win, yet again and again I’m finding myself straying from my plan for one reason or another, which I justify, which 90% of the time fails.

Overall its been a pretty roller-coaster ride for the past two weeks, but I’ve got a good feeling about this!

UPDATED : IG markets have given me a call about opening a new account with them – more on that soon, but as their platform is far superior to Finnspreads (with iPhone / Mobile Trading), with no minimum deposit, I’m going to give it a go soon!

A recent report by the UK’s Ofcom has concluded that the UK leads the way in digital marketing.

UK consumers also enjoy the cheapest prices for mobile phones and broadband, while the country also leads the world in online advertising.

Well done guys – Makes me proud to be at the leading edge of digital marketing.

SOURCE : BBC

So those of you that have been following my twitter account will know that over the past few weeks I’ve been obsessing over teaching myself the ins-and-outs of the stock market.  Overall I’ve found paper trading to be a very enjoyable experience, mainly because of the learning involved, but also as it allows me (with little money) to apply knowledge and skill in a way to quickly make more money, something my entrepeneurial side is particularly attracted to!

So what did I learn after a month of paper trading?  Here’s my summary..

• FOREX markets (particularly GBP/USD or “Cable”) are particularly nasty
• The Capital Spreads platform is nice, but their demo platform doesnt excute orders (such as stoplosses) correctly
• I’m better to trade in just one market – such as the FTSE100
• Always read the chart before making an entry, dont just go with your gut.

So after analysising my wins and losses with capital spreads (which overall was a loss of £3k – but most of that was due to a cable movement without a stop loss, if I took FOREX out I was up £900!), I decided to look at entering the market for real.  After reading Bets and the City: Sally Nicoll’s Spread Betting Diary (which is a great book to start with – but she tends to ramble on about useless junk for half the book), and reading the spread betting dicussions on the trade2win forums I decided to sign up with FinnSpreads, for 3 reasons;

• They let me trade at 10p a point for 8 weeks – which is awesome as it lets me learn at much lower risk
• They’re part of City Index, so once I’ve finished with Finnspreads I can move to the City Index platform and use their iPhone app to trade and monitor positions
• Sally Nicoll said theyre’re ok – and shes a girl so it cant be that hard.

Unfortunately their trading platform, like soo many others, is flash based, and tends to pretty much nuke any computer you run it on.  Plus they trade on non standard points, which if you’re behind a corporate firewall means you’re constantly having to refresh your page to stop the connection dropping to “Poor” (you can still close positions, it just never recieves confirmation from the server).

So here’s what I’ve learnt in a week with Finnspreads;

• Binary bets are awesome as they act as a “multiplier” to current market conditions (ie the FTSE may only move 15points, but you can quite easily make 30-40 points with a binary over the same movement)
• I have to monitor all binary positions minute by minute, as one loss can wipe out a days trading
• That “Wall Street” has up and down cycles that take around 20-25 minutes to complete, which means if you enter an UP binary with 40 minutes to go, dont expect it to be up after 35 minutes!
• Always read the charts – especially when entering binaries!
• Have I meantioned, binary bets are awesome?
• That going “long” on up trending stocks works well – but you need to define your exit point well
• That other currency markets are OK, if you know what you’re doing!
• That the biggest gaines / losses are in the first hour and last hour of trading.

I think thats about it for this week.  As you can see I’m a fan of the binaries, although you have to monitor these carefully as you cannot set stop losses (of course with binaries these are self regulating).

After all that action and 5 days of trading, I’m happy to report I’m a whopping £6.59 up, with open positions in the GBP/EUR, US Crude Oil, BA. M&S and BT.  All going nicely (even if their platform did stop me trading before it should have!).

Now onto next week! Wish me luck!

UPDATED: I’ve been informed (by a reliable source) that IG Index also offers a two week 10p per point trading period.  Seeing as their platform is vastly better than many of the others I’ve seen, AND they do a mobile version for iPhones, I will most certainly be trying this in the coming weeks! – Thanks Adam!

Download squad have compiled all the Family Guy Windows 7 Clips..  world is horrified!

Seriously.. how does Microsoft ever think these will work!

http://www.downloadsquad.com/2009/11/29/microsoft-releases-windows-7-family-guy-clips-horrifies-world/

Popular (well with me at least) blog lifehacker.com has released a list of 10 underhyped webapps.. worth checking out

http://lifehacker.com/5361979/top-10-underhyped-webapps-2009-edition

Ever looked at the trending topics on twitter

A screenshot of what the trend.com

and wondered what the hell people were talking about.   Or worce, have you know what people were talking about but looked at the feed to realise that no one else does…

Well those times are over – new site “Whatthetrend.com” takes all current twitter trends and pulls in all the available feeds (Tweets, Pictures/Videos, News) and allows some Wiki editing to allow anyone to come and explain the trend.

Why is this cool? well you tell me – I’m just glad I can stay clear of #simpleplan now.

So I finally got round to updating my twitter background, not that its that much of an achievement to anyone else with even an aota of experience with photoshop.. but for me it was a challenge!

For those of you that are interested the size you need to use is  1920 x 1200, which produces a jpeg around 110k (or at least my one was).

The twitter top banner is 66px from the top of the image, and the best position for the left bar is 25px left, width around 185px.

Hope that helps – and check it out at http://twitter.com/busbyjon

Ok, so last week I was tasked with running some classes on digital media with some of the other departments in work.  Nothing too exciting, just run them through the basics and let them know how to sell our services…. This particular one was on social media.  Now I’ve head alot of speakers talk about writing articles / books before they start writing a talk to help organise their ideas, hence why I’m doing it on this occasion, as not only is social media a rather “new” but its relatively unstructured (some will argue).
Now the more switched-on of you out there will be thinking .. by the time I write this, not only will it probably be out of date, but also, however long I write this (or teach this tomorrow) it still wont be long or detailed enough to cover everything in socia media!  Well here goes;

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