2012

Happy New Year to anyone out there.  I am happy to see 2012, a year full of much promise and many opportunities.

I hope i do not blow the chances that will come my way in the year. Follow my progress on here as i trade mainly the FTSE and Dow.  I will be trading these instruments part-time as and when time is available.

I aim to make £400 a month and you can review my progress in the table below. Individual days are also commentated on in the daily post.

Week	Trades	Winners	Losers	Max Win	Max Loss	Weekly P/L	Cumulative
1	35	20	13	£63.30	-£41.60	£43.70	£43.70

Week	P/L Per Trade	FTSE P/L	DOW P/L
1	£1.25	-£72.80	£116.50

Week 1

Well, a difficult week trading wise with no clear to trend to follow and scalping opportunities the way foward.  After a meteoric rise on Monday via the Dax, the rest of Europe appeared weaker, brought up in the afternoons by the superbull Americans.

My first week trading of the year and some positivies and some negatives, and lots of lessons learned to carry forward to week 2.

Positives:

1) i got a lot of good entry points correct and bought into dips when i believed the market was going up, and vice versa.
2) my daily forecasts, in particular on the Dow, were accurate.
3) i cut my losses with discipline, as soon as i had accepted the trade was wrong.

Negatives:

1) i should have taken profits quicker on occasions. A couple of times i was well up on trades and held for more, in hope of a big ride up. In future i need to think more about taking profits gradually perhaps through a series of phased limits. That way i can let small stakes run and also bank a bit of profit. Remember i have modest profit targets each week.

2) although my forecasts were pretty good i did not listen to them often later in the day and had my opinion swayed by forums etc. Must retain my own beliefs each day.

On to week 2 and i am still moderately bullish for the markets. I expect the FTSE to challenge 5720 successfully this week, without any European news and possibly rise to 5800 by end of week.  Of course trading at these times is difficult, we have to be alert to any suddent news from Europe to torpedo the markets.

6th January

FTSE at the key support level of 5610ish.

Europe weak every dat but the USA oblivious to the worlds problems and goes off on one dragging Europe up. Be interesting to see what happens today but will sell into any strength seen on FTSE.

5th January

FTSE around 5780 pre-market open.

Still not much value in a trade here and again looking for extremes to trade for 20 point returns.

Range possibly 5720 - 5640 again.

5720 is the absolute key. A challenge and hold of this level means there is further bull to come.

Watching market open, if there is a spike down to 5660 may take a long position.

Summary.  Had a poor opening this morning after anticipating immediate challenge of 5720 by FTSE and lost a reasonable number of points.

Recovered half of losses by some short term scalping trades.

Then went long on Dow this afternoon 12320 stake * 0.66 and closed at 12380.  Made a nice profit on that trade.

Dow challenging the downward resistance line at 12420 on this hourly chart now. Interesting and maybe woth a short if reaches.