Good afternoon everyone!
I'm new to spread betting and trying to create a plan for day and short term trading.
Below are the rules I am endevouring to trade with but with mixed results.
I would be grateful for any help or comments.

1. Check whether NY stock market was rising or falling on previous day.
2. Check whether UK market/s are rising or falling - particularly market you are trading in.
3. Pick stocks trending upwards to go long - and downwards to go short.
4. Try to find stocks with prices moving firmly in one direction.
5. Check trade buys to see if the stock has liquidity - some stocks rarely trade big volumes.
6. Buy stocks trading with rising volume.
7. Look for stocks with low spreads.
8. Avoid selling on Fridays - people often unload shares before the weekend and price goes down.
9. Check if there is a best time of day to buy and sell.
10. Unless there is a good reason, buy after 10am when the spread is often lower.
11. Watch out for volatile shares - you can loose big time with a low share price and high volatility!
12. Decide a percentage profit sell price and stick to it.
13. Don't chase shares down to try and achieve a profit - sell and look for a new prospect.
14. Don't buy every day - if there's not a good prospect wait until one comes along.
15. Check news to see if anything may affect the price.
16. Trade in the direction of the market.

Sorry this is so long!

PERICLES - What plan! I'm still trying to formulate a spread betting plan that's reasonably successful. Omnitrader seems quite good at picking buy/sell signals but I find many are for slow movering shares not suitable for short term trading or not quoted by the SB companies. Looking at Level2 at the moment but need to find out much more for it to be of use to me. Have booked a 1 day course to improve my knowledge.

Tradman, I am using the OT signals on the FTSE for the time being, will be interested to hear abt the course though,Good luck P.

End of day shows a sell on ftse, closed dec long for +49 opened short all at 4295. Having problems handing control to a software package and waiting for the next signal!I did not believe ftse wd rise but the way I am using this is to stay in the mkt by taking reverse positions rightaway.This overcomes my dithering and as someone said "you have to be in it to win it" .With the signal tonight I find that the 350 list gives new buy/sell signals evenly balanced at 6 each.Recent days buys have outnumbered sells as you wd expect and by 22 to 4 on one occasion. P.

With regard to my previous postings I omitted to say DYOR and that applies to this interesting site click here advice on spread betting & cfds.

Stopped ou at 4333 for -38. Obviously not wise to open futs fri eve. think I"ll lurk on Crocs thread f.t.b. P.