LS Trader Financial Spread Betting Weekly Review

The LS Trader Financial Spread Betting Week In Review

Stocks

The stock markets ended the week lower with Wall Street failing to stay above 9000. The long term trend is still down in stocks but we will wait for further weakness before entering any new short trades. We will hold off from any long trades for the foreseeable future. We are still very much in a long term bear market

Commodities

We finally exited heating oil and no lead gas after the markets rose early in the week and took out our stops. These were both very profitable trades overall as we had been short since the 13^th and the 20^th October respectively, catching a large part of the recent downtrend.

February Crude oil had a go at the $50 resistance level but failed and was sharply lower since, resuming the downtrend. This will be the key level to the upside, but for now the trend is down and we stay short. We may see another go at contract lows at around $35 soon.

We also exited our short High Grade Copper trade this week. This has been a huge trade for us since we entered short on the 6^th October with just shy of 11500 points profit banked.

Currencies

The Japanese Yen fell early in the week taking us out of our Yen trades against both the Dollar and the British Pound. Both of these trades had been very profitable and in fact our Pound/Yen short trade was the second most profitable trade of 2008. We had in fact been short the Pound/Yen trade since we entered the September contract back on the 18^th of August. We finally exited this trade on the 6^th January having banked a total of 6431 points profit.

The pound was also higher against the US Dollar after the Bank of England’s rate cuts were not as aggressive as previously expected. The trend for the pound is still down and there could be further weakness ahead.

Interest Rate Futures

Interest rate futures ended up ahead for the week. The 3 month Eurodollar hit new highs and the 5 and 10 year notes were also higher. The 30 year T Bond came within a whisker of our stops but started to move higher after a fall earlier in the week. We now have fairly tight stops in these markets but are still leaving enough room for the markets to move higher. The trend in all 4 interest rate futures is still up.

Yours for bigger winners, more often

Robert Stewart & Phil Seaton
The LS Trader Team

PS. If you are not already a subscriber to the LS Trader system, now is a great time to subscribe as we are currently only in 9 out of the 44 markets we trade, meaning that we should get in on quite a few new trades over the next few weeks. Click here to join the LS Trader system.