Thursday as it happened (£1450 recovered today)

Close of play Trading Position - £4450 read on for the day's events

Morning all,

8.15am and overnight movement sees me currently £8500 down, ouch.....

I wrote as recently as last Sunday that I thought we'd hear the word 'tapering' this week and boy did it bite me in the arse, I mean talk about the market throwing it's toys out of the pram, really was there anything new in the Fed minutes released yesterday? Bollocks was there!

Only last week we heard all we need to know on this subject, they need to see the economy make sustained progress before they take their accommodative policies off the table, certainly that doesn't change inside a few weeks and if you think Ben Bernanke would start to reduce QE on his watch think again. I think it we'll see it in March next year and to start reducing (or even to announce it) just before Xmas would be unthinkable,

This I believe is just the market taking a natural breather before it continues higher and traders will use this as an opportunity to buy the dips.

Today

I'm good at forecasting moves and I scalp really well but I'm crap with money management and I need to work on this. There's no point in me trading at £30 point with a £300 stop loss, that's just ridiculous. A more realistic figure would be £1000. If I limit my biggest loss to that figure I'll be just fine.

I've scalped the FTSE this morning for £100 and I'll continue to scalp around my DOW long during the course of the day. I'll post again around midday.

11am Update

I've ridden the DOW rise up 50 points (£60 point) and have closed one of my £30 longs (cautious approach) so am now £30 long. I'm £3500 better off than when I woke this morning, I'm happy with that.

I was £5500 down when I started this week and currently that's at £4900. More later.

2.25pm (5 minutes before DOW opens)

I've closed my trades, currently down £4450. That figure represents a £1500 improvement on opening the week. I'll watch carefully this afternoon and if I see a scalp I'll come in. I fancy DOW to hit 16'000 and even though I closed my long at 15960 it could easily go the other way, this way I have peace of mind. More later.

5pm.

No more trading for me today.

I've had a good day but it should have been spectacular. I was long £60 point (2 x £30 positions) from as low as 15877. With all the bad news on Bloomberg (8am talk of spectacular crashes) I could have panicked. I rode with my trades until I got close to the entry level of one at 15930 and closed out for a small loss. I wanted to reduce my exposure to the market even though I fancied it to rise a little more. My next long was at 15972 and pre market I watched it flirt close but never reach. I decided to be cautious as I now had enough capital to scalp a decent size and was £4000 better off than when I had my first coffee of the day. I closed out for a £500 loss on the trade 10 minutes before markets opened as I feared a big drop on open (just like FTSE this morning).

Where I'm angry with myself and where I need to do a lot better is in letting a trade that's going my way run. Had I had the balls to let both trades run on to 15990 (peak today so far is 16000) I would be a further £2800 better off. That's the paper thin difference between making a whole lot of money and actually losing.

It's still so early in my trading career but I can feel I'm making progress. I made the right call (long) and I traded within my account size (as I weathered the drop) but I lost confidence and faith when I got close to my entry points. That will come, I will develop.

My mood

Obviously I could afford to drop £10'000 otherwise I wouldn't be playing but I feel I'm so close to cracking this right now and I don't want to blow my trading pot. I went to bed late but slept decently and woke early to keep an eye on things. Yesterday's bullishness remained with everything else I achieved (or didn't) 24 hours ago and my mood was one of containment, 'I've made a mistake and I need to get out of it as best I can'. I did that and so I'm out for the rest of the day and maybe the week.

It will be interesting to see if today has been a last hurrah and to see if we get a sell off before close. I predicted we'd be in a tight range this week, top 16120, bottom 15850, so far we've oscillated between the two but the fact that the market doesn't seem to be able to break 16028 I think is quite telling (unless it does so after this post). I think a breather is well due and wouldn't be surprised to see us close to 15800 very shortly. We saw how quickly buyers stepped in at 15860 yesterday, this time I think they'll want a slightly more attractive entry point.

'till tomorrow