After I mentioned to Graham that I’d managed to hit £10k for the month of October (£10,731 to be exact!), he invited me to write a few words here about the profitable strategies that I use in the hope that it proves an inspiration and shows what is possible, so here goes…
The vast majority of my income is from financial trading. After a couple of fruitless years involving many hours of chart watching, I changed tack for 2017 and bought a couple of set-and-forget strategies (set up at a particular time of day with a stop loss and profit target then left alone) and resumed one I’d bought in 2014. Subsequently, I bought more as I found them.
The beauty of this approach is two-fold: firstly, I now have a diversified portfolio of strategies with the aim of smoothing out troughs and peaks; and secondly, there is minimal chart-watching (human emotion tends to play havoc with a (novice) trader’s discipline when lengthy chart-watching is involved but also, it means a more productive day – I now combine my trading with voluntary work at a local food bank). Anyway, enough of the preamble; here’s what I use (P&L figures are all for Oct 2017 only):
Heikin Ashi Mountain
5-10 mins 7-8am weekdays & anytime over weekend; “Combined” +£962 (£20k bank)
Diff Code Transatlantic, Diff Code Global , Diff Code Europe (no longer available)
1 min each, 7-8am weekdays; £200 risk/£100 profit/trade; DCT +£1576, DCE +£382, DCG +£687
Magnetic Trading
07:45-08:15 FTSE/DAX webinar suggesting trades (not advice!); £10-12/pt; +£939
A Minus B
08:00-08:05 weekdays (+ possible management at 1100); £20-24/pt; +£272
HAV
5-10 mins weekly; £3551 (£25k bank)
PIE
20 mins/month; 1-3%/month
I also have a couple of betting tipsters:
Golf Betting Expert
weekly email on Tuesdays; very up & down; £10/pt; +£781
Sports Spreadbetting
trading of bets on horses/football/cricket; £10/pt; +£1091 (seem to be easily restricted)
The rest of my income stems from buy-to-let rent, savings interest, and portfolio income although I have just cashed-in the portfolio in order to take advantage of Gold & Silver For Life, which is forecast to pay out 1-2.2% pcm.
Another essential part of my set up, I believe, are my spreadsheets. Not only do they allow me to see the bottom line for each strategy (so I can see which to ditch if under-performing) and the all-important total earnings (in a master spreadsheet that collates all the income streams), it also serves as a motivator to get up the next morning and strive to improve on the previous day’s figure. In the first seven days of October, I’d made £5k (it’d slipped back to £3,844 as late as 22 October!) so I added another column to the master of what I’d need each day to hit £10k at month end. This increased my drive still further, particularly as my trading buddy up north was close to £10k too!
Hugo
Impressive stuff. Just goes to show what is possible when you have a large amount of surplus funds. As they say money makes money!
Hi Mark, it’s all about percent returns. You can earn the same percent returns regardless of the size of your trading bank.
Thanks Mark. I’d just like to clarify though that the bank may not be as large as you think it is: although I’ve put 20k bank for HAM and 25k bank for HAV, I’ve not allocated 45k for just these two strategies. Maybe some people would consider that a cardinal sin but one half of the PIE team is an experienced ex-financial trader, who said that we didn’t need our entire bank in the trading account; just to be able to access it should it be required.
Is all that profit tax free?
Yes, Jason, all the trading (spreadbetting) & sports betting is tax free, although the PIE income will eventually be liable for Capital Gains Tax once I work through the £11k yearly allowance.
That’s another reason I decided to volunteer at the food bank: given that I don’t pay income tax and it’s all just money, I felt I should contribute to society in some way.
nice to see some real life experiences, but, not wanting to be critical of very good results for 1 month, it would be good to see the percentage gain/loss for the year
Fair enough, Andy, I shall endeavour to make this a regular update, or at the very least post again after a year of results
Hi Hugo
Wasn’t trying to be critical and i salute you for posting your results here, but i think a percentage for year to date would be very helpful.
FYI i trade Pie but also own Hav & HA
It’s ok, Andy, I wasn’t offended – thanks for your support. I appreciate that percentages are probably easier for everyone to relate to, and a single month potential outlier isn’t very helpful either.
I’m looking forward to assessing my results for Gold & Silver For Life, as it looks to be PIE on steroids!
Can you clarify why the ‘Golf Betting Expert’ official site results show a loss of £200 (at £10 per point) for October, yet you recorded a profit of £781 for the same period ?
That’s a good question, Robert – for GBE / Betting Gods – because I believe that his results table (and thus the graph) is wrong! My results, per month, are based on when the tournament ends (and the bet is settled) not when it starts or the bets are placed so, for example, the British Masters finished on 1 October but in his table, it’s dated 26 September (when the bets were placed; some of the other entries are dated when the tournament started). If I exclude the British Masters results, my October figure becomes -£237 (the discrepancy is due to the fact that it’s incredibly hard to match all the advised prices that the official results are based on).
That makes perfect sense Hugo – thank you for clarifying. And congratulations on the performance of your portfolio !
Thanks very much!
I understand Mark’s point about all this being much more attractive if you have £100k fighting fund. If you round that down to a more realistic £1k, once you’ve paid your fees, it’s harder to get out of the starting blocks.
I would ask, if you could pick one of these, Hugo, where you don’t think you’d get a sharp backwards move and you have a consistent upwards trend with only a £1k starting bank, which would you recommend?
That’s a tough question Robyn because I’m not sure such a strategy/system exists bar PIE (but for that, you require at least £6-7k).
The closest fit, in my opinion, would be Sports Spreadbetting. My blog says “seem to be easily restricted” but that was only with Sporting Index when I moved from £1/pt to £10/pt. If you have a £1k bank, I’d imagine your stakes wouldn’t be restricted; on the SSB site, Max, the tipster, says “a bank of a few hundred pounds would be sufficient to start with”. The subscription is great value at £25+VAT/month (including a refund guarantee if 25pts/month aren’t accrued) and in the CashMaster email on 27 August 2017, Max says “it would have to be a bad month for me to produce less than 100 points profit”. My results have definitely borne that out: 436pts in September, 213pts in October, and 302pts 1-15 November and that includes missing some bets and having to take worse prices with other bookies/brokers.
If you’re just looking to enlarge your bank, I’d strongly recommend matched betting (OddsMonkey charge £15/month) as there’s no drawdowns and their free trial effectively means that you can start with no money.
Hi Hugo,
An excellent post and I must take my hat off to u ! I know most of the financial systems that u have mentioned…… ( Not into sporting ones though)
I believe some of them like the Diff codes and HAM and HAV can have prolonged drawdown periods. How do u weather that ? I think the key is to assess the results over a year. You are obviously very tenacious and persistent to follow through these prolonged DD periods
I do realise that u are diversifying ( that is my no.1 rule too !!) but in practice, does the combination that u have sooth the blow of these DDs ?
tx
Al
Thanks very much Alex! Yes, it took me several months to turn a net profit (including the product cost) for both DCT & DCE (while DCG was in net profit after 8 trades!). I’ve not yet seen prolonged drawdowns for either HAM or HAV but then I’ve only been using HAV since March 2017 and HAM since May 2017 but at the end of the day, I bought these products because they have a 70-80% hit rate so I’m confident in their long term profitability.
In terms of weathering it, a businessman recently told me that he looks at his bottom line in terms of quarterly periods rather than months so that may help my mindset when I hit the inevitable downswing, and as you say, an annual review would be the ultimate pacifier.
In answer to your final question, it’s hard to say whether my approach is correct since I feel I don’t have a sufficient number of months to review. However, I’m taking steps to further reduce the impact of drawdowns by addressing two areas:
1) I’ve noticed that the betting side (bar SSB, which is sports trading) is a lot more erratic so in light of my recent and increasing trading success, I’m taking steps to minimise the betting, although the golf lifetime membership is a dilemma!
2) Once I’d seen how consistent PIE is (with no drawdowns), I withdrew more of my portfolio funds to invest in it, which increased my monthly income. I’m hoping this “base” income will increase even more once I start using Gold & Silver For Life.
Great post Hugo and an inspiration.
I use PIE successfully (both brokerage and spread betting) and have started with Diff Code Global which is going well. Might try Diff Code Transatlantic next, subject to the current reviews on this forum
I bought HAV a few years ago and for me it didn’t really work, great one month, terrible the next and I’ve been following a review someone is undertaking of it on another forum, so might start again in the New Year.
No OVI though Hugo? must admit, I have been tempted with this one.
The sheer cost of The whale program (Magnetic) put me off, along with some mixed reports I’ve heard elsewhere.
Keep up the good work Hugo
Cheers
Paul
Thanks very much Paul and glad to hear that it’s inspired you!
Good choice with DCG – it has an amazing hit rate, doesn’t it? I’m sorry to hear about your experience of HAV. Mine has been much more positive and consistent. Have you queried it with Mark Rose at Traders Bulletin (the vendor)?
I was spreadbetting OVI until Guy Cohen (the vendor) said on an options course that it’s best to trade it via Direct Market Access (due to the way that the SB broker will enter you at the wrong price if it gaps). I just haven’t got round to sorting that out! However, I’ve just signed up to his workshop next Saturday so hopefully that’ll galvanise me into action!
I’ve also been using the Whale Blueprint System but not got round to learning every strategy, and missed the ones I have learnt last month! It does seem dear until you consider the high hit rate of the strategies and that it’s a one-off fee. I see it as a long term investment much like I did with PIE.
Thanks – you almost sound like a school teacher!