Remember how I said I was sticking to trading FTSE 350 shares?

I lied.

And it’s all because I have succumbed to that most common first-time author disease: Amazon-watching.

I knew I had a bad dose when I found myself clicking on the page that displays Bets and the City about six times a day. And for one reason: How well was I doing in the Amazon list of best-sellers?

Pretty damn well! Actually! (At least until they ran out of copies – although they’ve just received new stocks.) Bets has been as high as 935 out of ALL books sold. And it is now No 1 in the Betting Systems and Theories category, outselling 225 other titles.

End of commercial.

I also noticed Amazon had raised the price of the book by 50 pence (still a bargain at seven quid!), presumably because it’s selling well. And that prompted me to look at Amazon’s share price.

I liked what I saw. After a pull-back, the price was on the rise. So I placed a sensibly modest 50p a point BUY trade, on Amazon Rolling – it continues from one day to the next, unless you close it – quite late on Thursday. This cost me a tenner, as the price fell back in the closing moments of the session. But it also had the big advantage of meaning my trade was in play from the opening bell on Friday.

When the share price duly shot up like a rocket.

I curbed my impulse to take a fast profit, and the trade is still in place today. £47.25 has been added to my account for Friday’s business, during which the Amazon share price rose from $39.015 to $39.96. And I am still in the market, as Amazon was trading at over $43 dollars only a month ago. Is there more to come? Let’s hope so! (But I have a fairly tight stop loss in place, in case there’s not…)

As for Santa Claus and his traditional rally. I placed Rolling BUY bets on both the FTSE and the Dow at £3 a point, last Tuesday. Too soon. Modest losses accrued for the first couple of days. But then the markets began to rise, and I am currently £479.76 in profit – including an excellent £270 day trade on the Dow last Thursday.

Will the indexes continue to rise? Can the Dow really go any higher. Nobody knows! But I’m still in a buying position…

What could make me happier than five goals a-flying into the back of the right net at White Hart Lane on Saturday?

I was rather hoping my joy would increase still further when I logged onto my Finspreads screen this morning and looked at that test account they set up for me a couple of weeks ago for the Trading Raffle we held at my book reading.

However…

The results prove conclusively that once a trade is in play, you must monitor it regularly. By which I mean once, a day, at the very least. Because if you don’t, you’re basically throwing money away.

For example. My £1 a point buy on December Google: I’d bought at 49570, but in the past two weeks, the price had dropped to 48457. In other words the share price had fallen from $49.570 to $48.457 between 27th November and 8th December. Which isn’t too much to worry about if you actually own Google shares. But in spread betting terms, it’s a disaster.

• You end up losing £1,113 (the difference between 49570 and 48457)
• Whereas if you checked the trade regularly, not only could you bale out for a much smaller loss…
• …You could then switch from buying to selling, and make a profit all the while Google continues to drop in value

My £1 a point sell bet on Amazon December was better news. I’d placed the trade at 4279 and the price had fallen to 3866.5, making me £412.50. However, if I’d been monitoring the trade, I’d – hopefully – have closed it, once I realised the down-trend was reversing, and pocketed at least £450,

A general observation. Trades either go ‘right’ or ‘wrong’ fairly fast. A good example is my random trade of £/$. Even if you don’t read the financial prices, you’re probably aware that two dollars to the pound seemed a distinct possibility a week or so ago – and that everyone was off to New York to buy their ipods and Xmas presents.

Naturally, in my randomness, I had a sell bet in place, at 1.9345. So by the time the price was up to $1.98, I was losing well over £400. Now, if it had been a real trade, I like to think I’d have said to myself, “Sally, you’ve called it wrong. Close this dud trade and BUY! (And I would perhaps have bought at £2 a point, in a bid to recoup my losses faster – although this kind of staking can be high risk if you’re timing’s bad, so be VERY careful.)

Anyway, I did none of this. Which is probably just as well, because today the £/$ price is back to 1.9506 and my losses amount to only £161.

Happily, none of these trades are real. But the lessons learned, most certainly are.

As spread betters, we need volatility to make – or lose – money. But quite honestly, the American markets move too fast for me. Although I shall be keeping an eye out on Amazon, this afternoon, to see if it continues to rise. Call me sentimental – but I’d delighted to report that Bets and the City has already been as high as 935 in their bestseller chart, and was even number 35 out of 151,000 books in the economics section.

Meanwhile, I’m sticking to the FTSE 350 for most of my trades. Although right now I’m monitoring both the FTSE and Dow Jones to see if the indexes are poised for the traditional ‘Santa Claus rally’.

Is there a buying opportunity to be had? Let’s see!