It has started - not much success as yet.....

Anyway, so I sign up for an account to begin spread-betting. I reckon I've got some stuff to learn just by concentrating on the execution of the trades. So here are a few lessons I've learnt listed below. They are in no particular order but just show a flavour of what I think I've done so far.

- As soon as I set a stop, the price appears to move in the direction of my stop ( invariably I get stopped out often )

- Conversely when I place a limit order the price almost always invariably moves against me. Now seeing I am not a guru type person person , I find it hard to believe that is coincidental behaviour by the trading platform I am using. I am not exactly crying over split milk but the owners of the platform may well be up to something erm...inappropriate shall we say.

- The spread is an important piece of leverage that the MM has over you. You have to be very correct in order to make a profit. Even if you were correct, the spread may take out all your profit.

- Setting the buy and sell at either side of the spread is fine for that but Open P & L is often calculated using the mid-price. The mid-price is probably the worst indicator of what the actual buy or sell price is. The effect fof this is that when you buy - you always buy for more and when you sell you always seem to sell for less.

- Emotionally, I can handle both winning and losing trades very well. If I was sure that the trading platform was being fair then I would definitely be able to trade on a much tighter basis. As it is there are prices that you cannot set because the trading platform oewner does not allow you to set prices too close to the currently quoted price. Seems all like a fix to me to put the odds in their favour and out of mine.

- The more I get into it , the more fun it appears to be. However, I am not bowed or cowered at the thought of the amount of work that lies before me.

- A new lesson about myself is learnt with every trade I make.

- I need to take a formal learning course to help me learn the basics ( nothing I can't learn from books I'm sure but I haven't got a month of sundays to waste ). With my learning style this is a way to accelerate the information I need to assimilate.

- Praise be to God there's more than one way to skin a cat - said tongue in cheek of course ! :-)