Mark Shipman's Investment course

Spread betting is the zero sum game as based on futures that is the derivative vehicle.

Small number of people are making huge money in derivatives meaning that a lot of people needs to loose money on the other side.
Are you better then these pros or lucky people?

The trading strategy needs to have the entry, exit and money management elements. I did not find it all in Shipman's book.

Somebody mentioned that he followed his recommendations from his trend following site.
Would you tell me did you earn money on crude oil? How?
E.g. leverage for crude oil is x36. Loss of around 3% is 100% down.
Volatility of crude oil is on many days like that.
Were you lucky to pick the good day to start with?

What with the NASDAQ (one of the last picks) till the whole link suddenly disappeared from the site?
Why most of the picks are nothing to do with commodities if they are the next boom?

I am just not believer too much as I have never seen any numbers or statistics. Also if they are smart they will be on the richest list.

Again, zero sum game. How anybody can suggest such thing as the main investment vehicle?
 

It was me that mentioned i started following the picks from his web site.
FIrstly - just to clarify - i didn't enter all the positions.
I decided to spread my money over 3 positions rather than spread less of it over more positions.
Through random choice oil was not one of the ones I chose.

So - to clear up your confusion re leveraging.
Yes - with crude you can gear up 30-fold. What that means is that the max you can gear up is 30 fold - it doesn't mean you have to gear up 30 fold.
You can ecide with whatever level of leverage you are comfortable with yourself.
With spreadbetting you don't have to gear up at all in fact - it merey facilitates this option should you desire.

How it works is this - lets ay you have no positions open - you want to open up a position that allows you gear up 10 fold.
i.e. you put in lets say €1,000 - but in effect you have the same exposure as a guy who has €10k worth.
However - lets also say that you only want to be leveraged 2 fold.
i.e. You want the exposure of €10k but you want to use your own money for half of it.

WHat you would do is this:
1) Put in €1000 which gives you the exposure of 10k
2)Add in another €4k yourself into your account.

That way - the price could drop 50% before you would have a margin call
i.e. A margin call is when the company gets back to you and says you need to put more money in to keep the position open.
If you don't putthe moneyon they wll close your position.

Alternatively if you wanted to allow say, a 30% drop before margin call u could put in €2k instead of teh €4k.
Or alternatively if you wanted to avoid margin calls altogether you could add in €9k yoursel.

SO you control the leverage aspect - howver the company will dictate top you what the max leverage is - in oils case 30 fold.

ANd as for your first point above about shipman not having entry and exit signals and advice on money management.

he in fact goes into detail on all 3.
Take another read of the book.
I won't go into exactly what he said as it in the book and would take too many words for me to type but briefly it's along the lines of enter whne price anove the 40 week sma - exit when below the 40 week sma - and as for money management never gear up more than double.

Read the book again to find out in detail what he said.

And as for the NASDAQ - yes - he would have lost money there.
But going by his exit signal in the book he is definitely out of that position by now.
Trend following isn't about winning them all - it's more about limiting your losses and winning big on your gains in the hope that the overall gains will outweigh the losses.

And lastly - you mention how not many of his picks are anything to do with commodities.
You are right - (although i suspect that has changed in the last fortnight.)

Th ereason is as follows.
He doesn't enetr any position unless it satisfies his entry criteria as outlined in the book.
The point he is making about commodities is that he expects these to satisfy these criteria in the future - and he suspects that he will be involved in many of them over the next decade.

However - until they satisfy his technical criteria he will not enter those positions.

He doesn't trade on fundamental analysis buy soley technical analysis.

If and when they do he will then enter those positions also.

It was merely just an opinion of the future based on fundamental analysis - but as i say - it's all about technical analysis with him.
 
>It was me that mentioned i started following the picks from his web site.
>FIrstly - just to clarify - i didn't enter all the positions.
>I decided to spread my money over 3 positions rather than spread less of >it over more positions.
>Through random choice oil was not one of the ones I chose.

I will believe you if you show me that.

What 3 positions? When did you enter and when did you exit (if at all)?
What is the profit/loss on all 3 of them?
If you exited did you continue buying new things?
How you will do that when his link on picks disappeared?

Where is his link now? Why is gone?
The picks from the link did not have in what percentages or real money they are entered and when are they exited and so on.

>WHat you would do is this:
>1) Put in €1000 which gives you the exposure of 10k
>20Add in another €4k yourself into your account.

Did you do it this way. To artificially make 2x leverage?

>ANd as for your first point above about shipman not having entry and exit >signals and advice on money management.
>he in fact goes into detail on all 3.
>Take another read of the book.

Just tell me his exit strategy that you followed in your 3 picks from above?

>and as for money management never gear up more than double.

That is not the money management strategy at all.
What percentage of the overall money you will invest in any one position?
How much loss you will bear over time on 1 position and on all positions?

I assume you have read at least 1 book on trading and futures to understand what is that all about?

>And as for the NASDAQ - yes - he would have lost money there.
>But going by his exit signal in the book he is definitely out of that position by now.

Are you overall good from the time you started investing this way?
What is your percentage profit?
 

Ok - your first point - you say you will believe me if i show you that.
WHat's that about ? Do you think I'm lying - why would i lie about that.It's an annonymous forum.

Your second point - what position sand when did I eneter?
I entered gold end of november.
I eneterd sugar when he did - late december I think.
I entered corn the beginning of january.

I am still in all 3 positions and will exit when the sell signal as outlined in his book is triggered.

Having his new picks there is definitely convenient - but it is bot necessary. He explains his buy signal in the book - so just analyse weekly charts to see what fulfills his buy criteria.
FOr example - presumably he has entered copper wheat and soyebeans recently guven that they all reached all time highs (At least i think they all did anyway)

Your 3rd question - where is the link now? WHy is it gone ?
There was a note on his page a few days ago (which has since been taken down) saying he is unable to continue with his current open positions as he is awaiting approval to continue to do so from the regulatory. Make what you want of that. That's his line anyway.

Your 4th point - you say it doesn't say when he exited his positions on his website.
I seriously reckon you don't read at all. It's there in black and white when he leaves a position
i.e.e If it's there on eweek and gone the next then obviously he has exited that position.
As for the exit signal - read the bookj again - it's also there in black and white.It woiuld take too lon for me to type it out here.
There are a few aspects to it.

As for what % he puts in each position I'm asuming they are equal - I'm making that assumption because positions are entered due to technical reasons - nbot fundamental reasons. Although personally i wouldn't be surprised if he invests a larger % in commodities in the future given that he feels so strongly about them.

And giving advice on leverage is definitely money management in my book.
KNowing how much you can gear up is a significant part of the battle.
If ytou get that wrong you can be wiped out before you know it.

ANd yes - i have read a couple of other books - just glanced through them really.
His was the first one i really properly studied.

Basically i riskily decided to gear up 10 fold.
I accept that is too high to the point of being a big gamble.

You aske about my own success so far?
I had the exposure of €120k worth - am up a paper profit €7.5k for the last 2 months - tax free given it's spreadbeting.

I plan to not eter any more position until either i go bust or else until my position grows until i have 25% of the exposure in the account myself - whichever comes first !!

I reckon with the exit strategy used,25% is safe enough.
 
>WHat's that about ? Do you think I'm lying - why would i lie about that.It's an annonymous forum.

I am not saying you are lying, but it is much easier to put some numbers and dates so we can see and learn.

>As for what % he puts in each position I'm asuming they are equal - I'm >making that assumption because positions are entered due to technical >reasons - nbot fundamental reasons. Although personally i wouldn't be >surprised if he invests a larger % in commodities in the future given that he >feels so strongly about them.

It looks you picked only winners in your portfolio somehow.
What happened to nifty-fifty, NASDAQ, swiss index, DAX, ...
Why you did not follow these recommendations?
I assume you considered yourself very lucky.

So, you believe in the simple trading strategy based on 3 random picks?

You entered position due to the technical reason but the whole book is about why commodities are good from the fundamental perspective.
If he is so strong about fundamentals why would you think about technicalities at all and think exiting position every week?

If I know soy bean will go up a lot I will just buy it and keep it for years, is not it?
This is especially true if you removed the leverage so who cares if it goes a bit down.

>As for the exit signal - read the bookj again - it's also there in black and white.

I did it again. It is on a couple of pages very descriptive.
So which method out of 4 you are going to use?

I assume you never exited the position so you will learn about it on fly.
While skipping through the book again it is 150 pages of which a lot of is explaining what is soy bean, coffee and so on.
He puts some basics (moving averages) of technical trading and proposes spread betting to try to beat pros in zero-sum game.
It is really very promissing.

>It woiuld take too lon for me to type it out here. There are a few aspects to it.

You should have the trading plan written down with all aspects of it.
Getting into the trading without having the trading plan can be very costly.
That means exit strategy should be very clear and concise, not descriptive as in the book.
Just for people who does not have the book I will put down Method 3:

"If a market rallies exponentially. liquidate following the first big reaction in prices"

Even reading the text with the picture after it I am not seeing this method as exact.
Do you really know how to follow method 3 out of 4 methods?
Which method will be your method on gold, corn and sugar?

>And giving advice on leverage is definitely money management in my book.
>KNowing how much you can gear up is a significant part of the battle.
>If ytou get that wrong you can be wiped out before you know it.
>Basically i riskily decided to gear up 10 fold.
>I accept that is too high to the point of being a big gamble.

First few sentences and the last few are totally opposite.
So, your advise is that you can win in spread betting even you will take a bit of gamble and leverage it 10x.

>I had the exposure of €120k worth - am up a paper profit €7.5k for the last 2 months - tax free given it's spreadbeting.

With gearing 10x that means you have 10k in the account so you are 75% in profit?
That is a pretty good profit in 40 or so days.

I assume you are now believer as you were lucky to pick 2 winners from all his picks assuming that the last pick is purely yours.

I congratulate you on this but we just need to be honest how huge risk you have taken with 3 positions and 10x leverage.
 
I was at the course today.

Very good.

He basially just reinforced what was in the book - along with giving more exit strategies.

HE claims he averages a 15% return per annum using his system.

He compares this to buffets return of 21%.
 
qwertyuiop said:
I was at the course today.

Very good.

He basially just reinforced what was in the book - along with giving more exit strategies.

HE claims he averages a 15% return per annum using his system.

He compares this to buffets return of 21%.
Click to expand...

Would it not be better and alot safer then to focus on buffet rather than shipman, simply buy the companies that buffet buys which are in the public domain and sell the companies that buffet sells, you don't have to attend any courses or use entry and exit signals
 

That's a fair point i.e. literally shadow buffet.

If you're copying buffets every move then it would be reasonable to expect to win big given his past performance.

There is 1 reason why I wouldn't do it though.
I stand to be corrected on this - but firstly how easy is it to do that in a leveraged position?
Is it possible?
I'm assuming it's not.


For me - leverage is the key to making money - yes it increases risk - but personally i think it's esential.

Also - in practice - how easy is it to find out what buffet does exactly?
Like- presumably that information isn't posted anywhere on a weekly site or something?
How can you guarantee that you get in and out when he does ?

I'm guessing here - but,given his reputation, if that kind of info was in the public domain would it not have an increased effect on the stock price immediately?
By the time the lay man gets in would the price have moved up from buffets entry point?
 
markowitzman said:
would buying the hathaway shares not be simpler?
Click to expand...

Ok - I'm not well informed about buffet other than a few basic things.

Is the hathaway his investment company?

As in n - when people say buffet averages 21% per annum - do they mean the share price of the hathaway rises 21% per annum on average?

If so - and this could be invested in througfh a leveraged position then ya - it probably would be the best option.
 
if you just buy the hathaway shares you are gaining exposure to his full portfolio which may not be as responsive because he has huge companies like coca cola which he never sells, however if you buy his most recent buys then you are gaining exposure to his current thinking and where he believes the trend is going, however he only has to reveal his big purchases and US stocks, however even from this he has been buying a big american oil stock, big US electrical and energy company, and big american bank and railways. As regards leverage he doesn't believe in it, however buffet is still very much US centred so you have to factor this in, however one advantage is that information , valuations on stocks are easy to get, an awful lot easier than trying to get full valuations on iseq stocks. Also buffet is not as fashionable as he once was therefore the market does not really respond much to his buys and sells
 
Even if you don't want to invest in his stocks, the fact that buffet has been buying into oil, energy and railways is an important signal of where he believes the trend is going, he has never invested in oil or railways until recently
 
Good chat lads.

A quick question - I'm ready to open up a Goodbodys online account but I'm not 100% sure that all of the items listed in Shipman's website can be traded using that Goodbodys site.

Is there a trading site that you can recommend (not spreadbetting) that would allow me to make trades on all of the items that Shipman recommends?

Thanks.
 
from what i remember reading the book, he will establish up to 5 positions, to spread the risk, you are therefore fully loaded, and will ignore any other buy signals. once he receives a sell signal for one of the positions he will close it and after the weekly review he will open another position. He has said in the book that he has gone months sometimes years without a position. So, he may not be invested in gold at the moment, but if he has to close a position in future and gold satisfy's entry criteria then yes, a position in gold could be opened. Seems like a common sense way to invest.
 
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