20090326

yesterday's trades in the paper trading account have not fared well. I suspected yesterday that half an hour from market open is too early fo 20-minutes delayed data on RBS website to show any movement and decent bid-ask spreads. So today I intended to look at data at 1 hour from open. But to my chagrin %Change figures were all showing as 0%. So I contacted them through their "Contact Us" interface and then (not expecting them to act soon) I started viewing the BBC's Ronnie video on youtube (cheema had posted). So it was just a few moments back that I downloaded data and processed with my number cruncher. Today's picks are:

Barclays Call 2009/09 1.50 R266
Tesco Put 2009/09 4.00 R337
Lloyds Call 2009/09 1.00 R321
BP Put 2009/09 5.00 R206
BP Put 2009/09 6.00 R283

I will now start looking up their current "offer" prices and start entering them as paper trades in my paper trading account. The change I am doing today is that I shall not enter a trade if maximum size is lower than my requested size, assuming that that is how in real trading I would do. Too low maximum size means thinly traded warrant and better to avoid. Even though yesterdays trades have tanked I will carry their losses because that is how in real life I would be doing, namely that I would do mistakes, and learn and do some "on the fly" change to strategy. So yesterday's bad trades will be sold at loss.