I’d like to continue my current theme of ‘money management’ by telling you about the Kelly Formula for optimising your bet sizes.

One form of Martingale strategy that is often implemented by novice investors is the practice of averaging down.

You will often see the phrases ‘risk management’ and ‘money management’ used interchangeably, as though they are one-and-the-same thing. But they’re not, as I will explain.

It’s about time we talked about money management, and a good starting point is a discussion about Martingale and anti-Martingale betting strategies.

In this article I look at how the original position trading approach might be enhanced to benefit from the shorter-term swing as well as the longer-term trend.

Here I look at the shorter-term swing trading approach and how you can switch automatically from swing trading to trend following. In my previous article I alluded to the fact that a swing trader should always place a protective stop order just below the observed trading range.

The trading pattern involves first establishing a long position at (let’s say) £1-per-point, at what you consider to be the bottom of the trading range. You then reverse the trade at what you judge to be the top of the trading range.

Many first-time spread bettors will not even consider the impact of dividends on their trading returns, and may not even realise that spread bets pay dividends (or the equivalent adjustments or credits) just as traditional share holdings do.

For me, the right stocks are the ones that I expect to rise in price soon after I have established a position, and / or the stocks that have a lot of upside potential when they do rise.

Leveraged trading means trading on borrowed money. To bet at £1-per-point on a stock index priced at 1000 should require you to deposit £1,000 into your spread betting account, but it doesn’t. The spread betting company might ask you to deposit just 1/5 of the amount (£200)