Caseynotes

That's all very true @TrendFollower, one of the biggest traps at the moment are the fake signal service sellers on instagram. Very tempting to walk into that once you realise how hard trading is and how long it takes to learn, to just look for someone to tell you which trades to take for a fee. By the time you've lost all your money they have run off and started up again with a new name. I saw one that was tracked down who had re-started 5 times in the space of a year taking 10s of thousands each time, and it's not actually against the law.

Update of the daily chart, I was going to ask @Bell, was that why you were looking to trade an etf because of being US based and so no contracts for difference available?

I agree @TrendFollower, reading some of the posts I wasn't sure if a trailing stop was going to be used for SB to lock in profits and prevent a total loss of any gains or indeed too much loss of capital.

@Bell, nice charts, I've always liked the look of those from Stockcharts.com, don't often see them here in the UK. Are they set in the US time zone? Yes, may well be setting up for a bearish move, especially if the trade talks fall flat which the indications seem to be pointing directly to though the news throughout today has been very mixed.

That's nice, he can hand straight to the Chinese vice president when he arrives.

@Foxy interesting, you may well be right, the sell off started before the US market open as well.

Warren Buffett doesn't use leverage and I think there are a few professional leveraged traders who don't make as much money as him, and as I suggested before, no one tries to trade everything. So yes @nit2wynit, it is a big space which is why you need to discover what and how you are most comfortable trading.

Once you understand the market and have learnt how to survive you can do anything but not everything so you will need to decide on personal preference and what suits your core personality (which will have been changed by the journey). What and how you are most comfortable trading will provide the more satisfying experience and so the best returns for you.

It doesn't matter whether you choose long or short term or SB or share dealing, until you've learnt all the skills needed to survive in the market place your mistakes will inevitably wipe you out. Survival is the first goal and 80% of those who try trading don't realise that and so won't make it.

IG emphasing the double bottom on the daily just now.

@nit2wynit, it's my understanding that the probability of finding those one in a hundred stocks that just take off is er ... about one in a hundred 🙂 You are right that learning to trade is difficult and takes time as there is a lot more to it than just platforms, dealing tickets, charting, indicators, patterns, psych, strategies, risk management .... If you were wanting to compare SB to share dealing maybe try running matching trades on 2 demos. https://www.share.com/investment-accounts/free-practice-account

Indices attempting a bounce up from here, not sure why, I don't think the Chinese have just changed their mind 🙂

IG really needs a demo shares platform and I would certainly be looking for one to trial such a risky strategy. Putting your entire account on one trade doesn't have a very good long or even medium term survival probability. Just looking at the chart below I see that price goes down as well as up and in AIM stocks when price is going down is the time when you can't sell.

Indices were doing well this morning until the extent of the Chinese backtracking became clear. "In each of the seven chapters of the draft trade deal, China had deleted its commitments to change laws to resolve core complaints that caused the United States to launch a trade war: theft of U.S. intellectual property and trade secrets; forced technology transfers; competition policy; access to financial services; and currency manipulation." https://www.devdiscourse.com/article/international/507051-exclusive-china-backtracked-on-nearly-all-aspects-of-us-trade-deal-sources

It wouldn't be unreasonable to add the high from Feb to your trendline.

High implied volatility levels after yesterday's big move so high prices and very balanced, not looking to take anything from there.

No real clue as to direction, Dow giving nothing away, Dax went to tag the pivo then stalled and Ftse has looked both ways and returned to the middle.

@rich12, you can find it on the deal or order ticket, see pic;

On the Eur open Dax looks to be trying to continue the pullback rally with the daily pivot a target. Dow visited it's own pivot overnight and wasn't too impressed but has settled at Monday's point of control. Bit worried it might be a balance day, waiting for direction to become clear.

As if things weren't bad enough now my own demo platform has started mocking me. I obviously expected the option trade yesterday to be minus £30 on start up this morning and so the headline was but I find that the demo has put it's own trade on without any action from me.

Just to recap, on the first market high in Jan 2018 Trump started the trade war causing the first slide down, the market worked it's way back up and at the top in Sept 2018 Trump turned the screws again sending the market back down. And now he has done the same again, how far will it fall. There is likely to be a delay in any major movement as the Chinese delegation, which includes China's vice president, arrives in Washington to continue talks (the 11th round) Thursday and Friday.

That's interesting, not seen that before. So IG are taking away individual cannabis stocks but have an index instead. I don't know about 'safe to invest' in but seems workable to speculate on though the chart has many spikes and gap traps.

@DanLord, yes you own it, it is held in your name by the custodian (Citibank in the case of IG), this method is used because it facilitates the speed and ease of buying and selling shares as well as being cost effective.

@DanLord, yes you can either have a share dealing account where you can buy actual shares or a spread betting or cfd account where you are simply taking a position on the direction of movement of the shares. If you feel you have opened the wrong type of account it should be no problem to shift funds across. You will need to jump through some extra hoops to open a sb/cfd account though as they are leveraged as Trendfollower points out.

If you haven't it already seen this Steve Bannon interview it's worth a watch. From a month ago and he foresaw that Trump would need to ratchet up the pressure and increase the 10% tariff to 25%, as he says, 'soybeans is a sideshow'. This is about much more as he explains and remember he was on Trump's staff at the beginning when this whole trade war was planned out.