December 2018 Market Update

Global markets witnessed somewhat of a correction in December. The Dow Jones index closed more than 2,000 points lower, almost 4,000 points lower at one point, erasing all of the gains for the 2018! The FTSE 100 also suffered a large loss, posting much weaker growth for 2018 in any event.

Fortunately trading activity is seasonally lower in this month as I usually choose this period to take a holiday of at least two weeks. No trade orders are posted during this time. I have found this invariably a difficult month to trade in with the volume of market holidays and lower liquidity so prefer to trade much less. Ultimately it was a lucky escape to be away and avoid a lot of the downfall.

This month a total of only 102 trade orders were provided due to being away on holiday. Usually you can expect anything from 200 to 300 trade orders in any given month. The service actually only delivered trade orders for the first eight trading sessions.  A total of 16 or 16% of trades were activated which is very low activity.

December only saw a minor loss thanks to being away. The STANDARD service lost -2.6% where as the PREMIUM service only displayed a loss of -1.4%. The PREMIUM service delivered a loss of -£210 on my £10,000 account due to higher leverage (1.5) used.

Using low leverage means low drawdowns however if you are comfortable in taking more risk, gains can be multiplied by increasing position size. My position size is included in my orders but obviously users can amend this according to their account size or risk profile. Past performance mentioned is no indication of future performance and may not be repeated.