After a whole week without any internet connection, France Télécom has managed to get it to work, with only occasional interruptions, today !

It turns out that the Melrose limit order that I had hoped to edit worked out OK as the shares have dipped quite a bit since .

I managed to open another position on the EUR/GBP, following the same principles as the previous one which succumbed to a stop loss too tightly set. Alas the same problem occurred – hitting the stop loss, although it was reasonably set – I had learned – honest, but there was an end of day spike that was really out of the blue which closed my position, which would have gone on to yield a good return.

There is a school of thought that says if you believe in your position you don’t need a stop loss, if you don’t, you shouldn’t have opened it. I don’t systematically set stop losses for my ordinary share purchases, but that can lead to some spectacular and totally badly managed losses!

With today’s crash in the Xcite SP, following, what to me looked like a good piece of news, I set a limit order to buy at 111p. The end of day saw the SP drop another 3p and the order triggered at 110.79p. The position is showing a loss of £49.32 on a £18/pt bet. Stop Loss set at 103.79p. I have not set a limit to sell yet and the position I see a relatively long term – expiring in March 2013. AT £18/pt this bet represents almost £2000 worth of shares bought in the normal market. Time to get serious I thought. Fingers crossed.

There are possibilities for Excite – either just recognition of its innate value, or, ideally a takeover bid.

I have other limit orders in place : CIG and BZT(see Sept 11th post), and an order to short Abcam (ABC) at £2/pt at 404.5p. This latter is purely following this week’s Naked Trader diary. He, of course, sold at 411p, so I’ll never make what he’ll make if the target price of 370p is achieved, but I’m looking for profits and am happy to make something. Also by opening a short position I’m trying to overcome my (and lots of peoples’) resistance to shorting.

Why not short the FTSE? Too scared! I’ve lost money on this before – only because I didn’t ride out the rollercoaster. That said, I have bought SUK2 (What a name!), as an Exchange Traded Fund purchase through my normal broker. To give it its full name, SUK2 is the “ETFX FTSE 100 Super Short Strategy ETF”. Interactive Investor imposes a questionnaire about your knowledge of “complex instruments” before they’ll let you buy this! Effectively it goes up by twice the percentage the FTSE goes down and vice versa of course.

I opened my £2500 position on this when the FTSE was at 5848 and I could have closed for a £150 profit at one point, but held on, so it’s now showing a £45 loss on paper. I quite like having this open as it always provides a ray of sunshine when everything else is falling!

So logically a spread FTSE short seems interesting – perhaps if the FTSE reaches 5900 again and I’m still doing OK with my return to spread betting! We’ll see, psychology is very important in this business.

Current Profit: £137.98