Welcome to the first Spread Betting Beginner blog entry for YTE UK. My name is Harry and I class myself as a spread betting beginner.

I started spread betting back in February 2009 with a view to trading full time and escaping the rat race. I entered into the world of trading thinking I knew it all, I soon realised this is not the case. Trading is a skill that takes time and effort to develop and after losing money I decided I needed to learn the ropes.

I needed to become more disciplined with my trading so I started to keep a trading diary. I thought others may benefit from my trading diary and so I decided to share it with the rest of the world. The Spread Betting Beginner was born. That's where you will find details of all my latest trades and my reasoning behind them.

So far, in my trading career, I am still at an overall loss but I am starting to claw my way back slowly. I started small so my losses were not huge but still big enough to make me sit up and realise I needed to do something about it. I now have a few strategies that I trade and these govern every aspect of my trade. I think my biggest challenge to date has been getting control over my emotions to make myself stop making silly mistakes. Having a strategy removes emotion from my trades and stops me from over trading as I only take the entry signals when they occur.

It took me quite a while to develop a strategy that fits with my lifestyle. As I also work full time I needed a strategy that did not require me to be sitting watching prices and charts all day long. Now I look for trades at the end or beginning of each day and if one comes along that fits my strategy then I make the trade. If there are none that fit my strategy then I sit and wait until the right opportunity comes along. If there is one thing that I have learned in my few years of trading it's that there is no such thing as a missed opportunity. Another opportunity will be along tomorrow.

I aim to update this blog on a monthly basis, and you can keep up to date with my latest activity on my spread betting blog.