If you have an iPhone (lucky you) or are thinking of getting one, you’ll be keen to know about the numerous iPhone spread betting apps that are available to download for free from the App Store; many more than are available currently for the rival Android mobile platform. In this review I look at the features and functionality provided by the City Index spread betting app for iPhone.

It’s time for another trading trail update, with a little educational piece that is related to the portfolio thrown in on the subject of pyramiding. I’ll update you on the portfolio performance first, then I’ll tell you the tale of my two pyramids.

To many people a stop order looks like a very simple thing, represented as it often is by a single input box labelled stop on a spread bet trading ticket. The purpose of a stop order is also regarded by many as very simple: to stop a loss. Yet stop orders are not as simple as they first appear, and they come in many flavours as follows.

You may remember that in my last feature I started to explore the issue of taking money off the table periodically (as a full-time day trader might, to pay the bills) vs. keeping profits on the table (as an traditional investor might, so as to compound his gains).

Do you ‘day trade’ for short-term profits, or do you take a longer-term view of building a spread bet portfolio? I do a bit of both, in an attempt to become ‘income statement rich’ and ‘balance sheet rich’.

I don’t know if you noticed, but in January the markets embarked on something of a bull run. I noticed because of the positive effect on my Trading Trail portfolio, and I even read somewhere that this has been the best start to a year for eighteen years.

I’m using this week’s trading trail update to mark the point at which my model position trading account got back to break-even; which was at 10:15am this morning (3 February 2012).

I have in the past suggested that trend-following traders think that it is impossible to predict the onset of a new trend, so it’s better to follow the trend once it’s started. Well, that’s what Michael Covel says in his book on ‘Trend Following’…

AFTER looking at my bank account the other morning, I’m loathe to use the phrase “austerity Davos”. The wine was expensive, the skiing was great and the hotels were packed to the rafters. Yet I can’t help thinking that things were not quite the same as the great and the good gathered for the annual World Economic Forum in Switzerland.

The trend following style of trading is a largely mechanical trading style; we often hear the expression The Trend Is Your Friend, but just how true is this truism?