[john kane]

first a quick apology to mods, sorry if it isn't appropriate that i update this whenever something changes, but i feel it helps me to jot down how im progressing and maybe in the future for others looking into trading systems they'll see how a noobie tried (and may well failed) and what steps he took.

anyways, basically the site im using tells you when to buy and when to sell. i'm going for the more aggressive approach of long and shorting the stocks whilst leveraging 5 times.

i've now worked out the spreads ill be paying and from what ive calculated the 13 stocks range between 0.58% to 0.66% i lose in the spread everytime i trade.

do you think such a spread is beatable?

also from the data they provide i have calculated the % rise in the stocks had you of bought and held for the past 2 years and if you had bought when the said to buy and sold when they said to sell and wait for a price drop. here are the results:

the average return of the 13 stocks from buying and holding has been 42%

the candlestick method has returned 158%

now, the obvious problem with this is that i am picking 13 of their better performing stocks.

they rank stocks on a 5 star rating based on how well they have previous done. all of these stocks are 3* with a couple of 4*. almost all the 5 star ones are very unknown stocks which have ended out producing them incredible returns.

therefore i have looked into some well known companies and less well known companies with no stars to 2 stars to see how they have performed. in general almost every stock i look at has outperformed under the candlestick method.

taking the beverages sector, every stock has outperformed by using the candlestick method.

i see a number of mid-tier firms which have done especially well, take Admiral, a UK car insurer which is mainly web-based, they have over doubled their share price in the last 2 years yet via the candlestick method they have over quadrupled.

one example which has given me confidence is jessops, the company which deals mainly in photography. they are a well known (ish) high street chain). 2 years ago their price was 80p, 9 months ago they had risen 80% (using candlestick method up 160%).

then what i find remarkable is by only buying (they never short, only sell and buy back in) that in the fall from 140p to 16p they managed to profit 58%, by only having a long position at set times.

anyways, i am confident with this system.

they also have an identical service for US, commodities (although in general the candlestick method has performed pretty poorly with commodities), chinese, and about 6 or 7 other stock markets.

i still need to look into this furthur, and try to develop a portfolio of stocks which i am confident can beat the spread. i believe the higher cap firms should be more consistent and less risky in that market news will not be so important. however, i think with the candlestick method it filters in this news by seeing when investors are becoming bearish.

however, it is still important i think that i know roughly what is happening which each stock. for example they were 'buy' signal when the US banned online poker, and if you asked anyone on here who knew about the friday bush signing you'd of been mad to of been long the days before. (i still wish i had set up this account then, would of made so much).

anyways, thats the update, the funds should be in my account tomorrow. ill dout ill start it then as i still want to build up a large enough portfolio of companies i have confidence in.

also i want to become confident with how i will deal with the intraday decisions of when to reverse my position, becuase each mistake costs me around 0.6%.