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I’ve been pretty busy with work and what-not.

The news

Biggest news is, I’ve enrolled on a course called Level 5 Diploma in Financial Trading by the London Academy of Trading.

The London Academy of Trading offers a combination of on-campus and home study options.

I’d like to do some on-campus. It’s not something you can explain, but a lot of the more subtle aspects of learning are done face to face in an environment, so I thought that seeing as I was spending for my future, it’s an investment worth making.

Financial Trading is basically a course in day trading with a certificate at the end provided by the British Accreditation Council, the recognised government body.

What is ‘day trading’?

To those of you not familiar, day trading is trading financial assets or futures on the digital markets. That’s stocks shares and commodities mostly, although you can trade in indices and currencies such as the Hong Kong Dollar or the Pound.

The prices of these assets and currencies, or ‘instruments’ as they call them, changes constantly, the name of the game is predicting the size and direction of the moves, and being on the right side of it!

I’ve been day trading for about 4 years.

I think last month was the first time I’ve made any money out of it but it’s something I’ve always been interested in.

12 Weeks of study

That includes 3 webinars a day plus a weekly study schedule.

Apart from going out to work to pay the bills, that doesn’t leave a vast amount of time for anything else.

An average day as a day trader

Typically, I start the day by watching the morning webinar.

I need to watch the markets. That’s reading the papers and financial publications online and checking the graphs, which look like the one below.

During the course of the morning, I do any work around the boat that needs doing. If there is none, I can do some course-work which involves watching a video and taking some notes.

After this, I fire the computer up and.

There is a lot of checking graphs. In fact, trading is mostly time spent looking at graphs. Looking for ‘entry’ and ‘exit’ points. Identifying trends.

In case you’re wondering whether I have £10k in my trading account, I don’t :D.

It’s a trial account.

We need to trade on this account to help us to

a) learn how to use the spread-bet platform.

b) show tutors how we are progressing.

As you can see. I’m currently up £341.

That’s since Monday.

I think a lot of people get the impression trading is easy money. It’s not. At least not at the moment.

Maybe when I’ve finished the course it will be easier. At the moment, I’m pretty busy. All the time.

Stop loss

If I’ve identified a trend in the market, and have decided it’s worth placing a trade, I execute that trade and watch it on my mobile phone app during the course of the day.

If I’m happy the tradeg has got ‘legs’ as say, I can put what’s called a ‘stop/loss’ on it. That means if it goes below that level, the asset is sold and I take the profit.

Stop/loss happens automatically, and I don’t have to look constantly on my phone, I can go off an do other things.

I can do this on my trial account. Which doesn’t really matter, because it’s not real money.

On my live account, the one pictured at the top, I tend to watch things live unless there is a really strong trend and I can step away and set a stop/loss.

Because it’s real money, I like to keep an eye on it y’know (❁´◡`❁)

Trading.com review

This is my main broker who I’ve been trading with for maybe three years or so.

I see they don’t have many reviews online. Depending on how many organic searches I get from this term trading.com review, I might do a write-up for them.

Life on the boat

I’ve moved down, (the canal), a couple of times.

I spent some time outside this place.

It’s called ‘The Pig Place‘.

It’s like a campsite where they have organic pigs and sheep, ducks and chickens and other animals wandering around.
Not so much the campsite, but in their pens, although the odd chicken does escape and they can wonder round a bit.

The pigs are pretty lazy and spend most of their time sleeping, waiting to be fed or wallowing in the mud being smelly.

They are noisey buggers, like the ducks.

Whilst I was moored there, I dropped in a couple of times. They serve larger from the local brewery, Hook Brewery in Hook Norton which is not a million miles away. It didn’t taste bad. £4.50. Not bad…

The first night I went in there, I had a good few of these due to the fact that the barrell got a bit ‘over-excited’ when it was changed and dished out a load of larger all over the place which we had to catch in some glasses which the boss-woman re-distributed to us once it had calmed down a bit.

That led to me staying on and being a bit tipsy.

The next time I went back there, it closed much earlier, and I only stayed for a couple. When I asked Dean, the boss-man, he said it was due to the fact that they couldn’t get staff to man the bar in these post-covid times.

I was moored near enough opposite. This is the pig place on the left with my boat about 4th one back on the right. You can’t really see it….

This is the canal on the stretch down to my new location Aynho Wharf.

Aynho Wharf

Sells fuel and does pump out’s and has water and nick-nacks for the hire boaters.

There’s a pub called the Great Western. That’s about 200 metres from my boat across on the other side of the canal.

I’ve not been there yet…

I’m sure I’ll work my way down there in the fullness of time.