I donāt know why I havenāt had an account until now, Iāve been trading sinceā¦ about April 2020??
Basically, between May 2020 and Feb 2021 on my CFD account I lost around -Ā£9,700.
I want to be open and transparent because I plan on being more engaged in these forums to help give advice and tips to newcomers who struggle.
Since March 2021, as of last week, I have made back over Ā£12,000ā¦
Now because of this, I want to run through ALL of my transactions to check where I made the most and where I lost the most.
Therefore, I would like to suggest a data download for CFD results, just like we can for Invest/ISA.
I think this is a super useful feature because we can have more ownership of our transactions as users and people like myself can do a bit of data analysis to find out what worked best / didnāt work at all and plan future trades.
I think we lack experienced CFD traders around here. We are mostly invest oriented, and when somebody brings up the CFD topic, the only advise given is ājust stay away from CFDsā. Usually itās the best advice, because people are greedy and inexperienced.
For sure! I learnt a lot and through the hard way. Online resources, videos, forums, and more. Iād love to chat about ideas with others because cfd can be so good if properly utilised. Do you have much experience with it?
itās often the case that someone new to the stock market goes to CFDs because they donāt have much money to work with and need the leverage + volatility to try and get any meaningful gains quickly. Which leads to horror stories of losing most of their money and having to ask about how very basic features and concepts work.
Iāve only used the practise account on CFD so far and found that my comfort range where I can balance risk with opportunity requires me to first have Ā£10,000 in the account. not an easy amount to just have laying around. any less and itās extremely risky for very little return on your time (I would earn more getting paid 1.5x for overtime at work than I would trading with little to no funds, and it would be far less stressful too)
So hopefully more experienced traders appear that can give good guidance and advice on getting started, rather than just the usual āwell if T212 had this feature we wouldnāt be losing moneyā¦ā.
We got CSV downloads in the invest side, so I would hope it safe to assume a CFD version shouldnāt be too far off/hard to implement, though sorting the mess it outputs would still be the individuals responsibility (mess-factor determined by frequency etc)
@Tony.V do we know if such a feature would be in development already and if perhaps can we expect it before years end?
I used be a big CFD trader. Since December last year though Iāve stopped trading CFDs as the market has been moving sideways pretty much all of 2021. Happy to discuss anything related to CFDs though. During the next perma-bull market Iāll likely jump back in.
Also work just got too busy. You need to have a lot of time if youāre playing CFDs. I just couldnāt give them my attention.
Iām just too busy to follow CFDs on a simple interface like T212
I instead do option trading on tasty simply because I am a lot more familiar with the patterns and interface/software is advanced enough to setup and āgo awayā
On the other hand what @Dao said is correct. Most people are not even aware what a CFD or an option is. They lack experience and capital and with the hopes of making āmucho dinero tempoā they faceplant what little savings they got.
Good news is EU is bringing more ātest criteriaā to enable retail investors trade in CFDs and other spreads (not sure if UK will follow)
I saw so many posts on this forum saying things along the lines of āhi, I just lost 3k, what is a CFD?ā Pretty shocking.
Have you looked at Spread Betting? For some reason it is classified as gambling so is capital gains tax free (in Ireland anyway but Iām pretty sure also in the UK.) The concept is for the most part entirely the same as CFDs though.
Personally, it was a horrible learning curve. But I donāt regret it. Iām grateful and lucky that I was able to get out of it from watching videos, slightly aided by financial support from my dad, adding more in monthly with my wages.
My strategy is very much covering short term losses to make long term gains.
If you bought a Chinese stock like Baidu at 220, your only way out was to buy slightly more on the dips but continuing to hold a strong sell position. That way, once this firm rebounds nicely I will be able to start making profits on the way up.
I donāt think I trade like an expert, or perfectly, but I feel like Iāve learnt a lot about how stocks work, how to manage with the risk you put yourself under, and also exploiting stocks that are ācheapā (e.g. Virgin Galactic or Uber whenever they fall) and overvalued stocks (e.g. Tesla) to buy or sell respectively to keep making money along the way.
I approach CFDs the same way I approach investing. I do the same research, same analysis, same everything. The only differences are I keep additional cash for headroom in case the trade goes against me, and the trades are much quicker. Leverage is just another layer of complexity you need to be aware of. People are very quick to call CFDs gambling as if all due diligence and sensibility suddenly goes out the window the second you bring leverage into the equation. This opinion never made sense to me!
Weāve all learned lessons though, donāt worry, youāre not the only one. My biggest loss on a CFD was 1k trading Amazon. I bought at the peak probably 12 months ago to the day actually. I cut it a few months later and Iām delighted I did as the stock still hasnāt recovered. Iād have lost a lot more!
Most any time āassumingā is bad but in this context assuming theyāll behave āyour wayā some time in the future is one of the biggest fallacies and the way new traders loose a lot.
If you want to learn how dangerous it is, I can say a single rogue trader was able to make one of UKs oldest banks insolvent by using precisely this strategy (and some more) google for ābarings insolvency 1995ā or something like that, Iām sure there are short articles/videos about it.
Having said that there are many trading approaches. For HF trading I use āthe coward approachā When I decide to execute a trade I immediately assume that I am wrong unless the market proves me right immediately. The definitions of right and immediately depends on among many other things: length of planned holding period, IV of the trade and risk thresholds.
okok I know itās all fun and games but lets stop pummelling the guy.
His trade strategy might be flawed and coincidentally worked at some point but adhering to the original topic, I still think data downloads for CFD accounts is a really nice to have feature.
In fairness, I take a ābuy the dipā approach all the time myself. It usually works out if the fundamentals of the company are in order. Examples of where it would be unwise would be the ones listed above: Kodak, Hertz, Wirecard. Also lets not forget Luckinā Coffee.
it is only natural to physiologically lean on āaveraging outā most of us do that occasionally I think, but it is not a good strategy as a rulebook. Above he mentions he was lucky to be able to borrow from family etc. Nick Leeson was borrowing from Barings at least
Leeson did not end up in jail either, at least not for his trading strategy.
The prosecutors tried to put him inside for as long as possible so if he was overdue for an oil change that was on the docket 3.5 years out of his 6.5 years sentence was due to forgery for the fax heās sent from his home machine.
Oh for god sake. I just assumed he was jailed for some sort of financial malpractice related to fund management, not for a few faxes. I must read up more.
