The first business opportunity I ever bought was Vince Stanzione’s home study course – and it was all down to an article I saw in the Sunday Observer.

Vince was the main subject in a fascinating two-page feature about spread betting the financial markets.

The article described how he had made a fortune trading a mining share (Antofagasta) and also trading the price of Gold.

The article quoted profits of several hundred thousand pounds in just three months.

I remember taking the page out of the paper and carrying it around with me, reading it and showing it to people in the pub. It struck a chord with me as I was reminded of a story I heard in the late 90s of an investment club making a fortune by spread betting the markets rather than just buying shares.

To cut a long story short, I eventually sent off for more details and received a sales letter. I then proceeded to read that letter over and over again – getting more and more excited about the possibilities of trading.

And one day, finally, I faxed off the order for Vince’s course. A couple of days later it arrived and I spent hours reading through the manual and watching the DVD.

At the beginning of this month I reloaded my trading account and started again afresh.

My last ‘try’ ended well, with me getting a 10% return on my capital over just 6 months. I had to cut it short as I was buying a house and needed all spare cash for the deposit.

So, I dug out my 2004 Stanzione course and read through it, watched the DVD and made notes. Then I decided to get an up-to-date version which just arrived today. And, well, it’s certainly been updated over the past 5 years.

Now containing 2 DVDs and a manual of well over 200 pages of quality information, this is going to keep me busy for a while.

I’ll be updating the site soon with more details but if you are interested in finding out more about Vince, check out the review at

Vince Stanzione, Spread Betting and First Information.

Making Money from Financial Spread Trading is the course I recommend for people who want to get into trading the markets but, like me, don’t want to be stuck in front of a computer monitor all day watching charts.

Vince’s methods are simple and take just a few minutes a day which suits me down to the ground and the results I have had have made it a very worthwhile investment.

Yesterday I got back from a weekend away where I was without access to the internet for four days. It was a risk – sometimes automatic digital delivery can go wrong and people need help – but luckily I got a nice break from the internet and didn’t come back to any screaming customers.

Which gave me a little time to think…

I found an ad in a national paper over the weekend offering what seemed like a great bargain. A 19th Century gold sovereign for just £120.

The ad made it clear that there has been a huge increase in the price of gold and that it has been a great investment over the last few years. And it has. Since I’ve been into financial trading, gold has risen from around $380 an ounce (late 2003) to around $1,000 per ounce.

My immediate thoughts were that it may be worth investing £120 for one of these coins. Of course, without the internet I had no way of finding out whether it was a good deal or not.

The ad made it clear you’d be offered further coins in the future unless you opted out. I thought that the first coin might have been offered slightly below actual value as a “loss leader” to gather names.

Buying gold at slightly below what it is currently worth was very attractive to me and so when I got back to a PC, I went to work.

Gold, today, is trading at about $980 per ounce and a pound is worth about $1.9875. So, back of an envelope calculation, gold is about £493 per ounce.

These sovereigns weigh 0.2354 oz which comes out at about £116 if it is pure gold.

However, and I didn’t know this before, 24 carat gold is considered “pure”.

22 carat gold is considered 91.6% pure and these sovereigns were 22 carat so their “fineness” is 916 out of 1,000.

Technically, buying one of these sovereigns would result in me getting about 0.2156oz of gold.

Which I work out as being worth 0.2156 x £490 = c. £106.

Net result: the sovereign is available for £119 but is worth roughly £106.

Glad I did my research before blindly sending off for the coin…

I also came back to several not-too-pleasant comments on the blog. Somebody pointed out to me that a couple of these comments could actually be considered libellous.

Needless to say, they were removed.

And I am now considering whether or not to remove the comments feature altogether. As I was told by a business associate:

“…the problem with running forums etc as I once found when I ran one too is that anyone who feels a little brave behind a keyboard can post anything and you as the forum owner are responsible. I closed mine down long ago as I saw no sense in spending time monitoring posts from nutters that could lead to legal action and me possibly losing my house. It just didn’t seem worth it to me…”

Scary stuff and so I will be monitoring comments very closely from now on!

Lastly, I found I had some money sat in my BetOnMarkets account so I had a little punt:

Bear Contract: Win GBP10 if, at the close of trading on 13-MAR-08, GBP/USD is lower than 2.

My thinking was, looking at the chart, there seems to be a resistance level at 2.00 so it was worth a very small wager for a bit of harmless fun. It only cost £7.45 so it’s a couple of pints worth of risk!

Just for the lawyers: THIS IS NOT FINANCIAL ADVICE – please don’t copy my trade blindly.

Until next time, thanks for reading.

Ben

We’re only just into a new year and we’ve already got record high prices for Crude Oil.

Did you manage to catch any of the move to $100?

Watch this new video on trading crude that shows you the possibilities that this market offers:

Learn How To Trade Crude Oil In 90 Seconds – sorry, link removed as site now offline

Also, new highs for Gold – did you make any money from them?

Watch this brand new 90 second video on trading the Gold market and see how it is possible to dominate this commodity:

Learn How To Trade Gold In 90 Seconds – sorry, link removed as site now offline

Commodity prices are soaring – watch this new video on how you can take advantage of the price increases and also protect yourself against inflationary commodity pressures:

Learn How To Trade Futures In 90 Seconds – sorry, link removed as site now offline

As always, there’s absolutely no registration required to watch these free trading videos.

Enjoy!

If you’re a little anxious or worried about the stock market at the moment, you’re not alone.

No doubt about it, a lot of traders are nervous this week.

Why?

It could be because tomorrow it is twenty years since “Black Monday”, the name given to the huge crash of 1987.

Some people reading this may be too young to remember the biggest single day drop in the history of the Dow Jones Industrial Average.

On the 19th of October 1987 the Dow dropped a massive 23% in just one day.

In case you are wondering the biggest single day crash in 1929 (another big “crash” year) was 12.9%, on October 28th 1929.

Can it happen again?

That’s the question Barrons posed on the front page of its weekly newspaper. The answer is: nobody knows…

However, I have just finished watching a new video which shows how you can protect yourself no matter what happens to the market – whether it goes up, down or just trades in a range.

You can watch it by clicking the following link (no registration required):

[link no longer active]

It pays to be prepared because this could potentially be the most dangerous week of the year for a financial trader.

Enjoy!

On Thursday (19th July) the Dow Jones Industrial Index closed at just over 14,000 which is the highest it has ever been.

Unfortunately it didn’t hold the 14k mark and yesterday closed at about 150 points less, 13,851.

Even at the height of the dot com boom, the Dow only hit around 12,000 so hitting 14,000 is quite an achievement. It’s a historic day for the Dow Jones, that’s for sure.

Over at the Market Club, the question that they’ve been getting most is:

“Where is the Dow going?”

With such a high point recorded, everyone now wants to know where it will be 2 days or even 200 days from now…

But that’s not the best question to ask.

The question traders should be asking is not “where is the Dow Jones going” but “how is the Dow is going to get there?”.

As per usual, the Market Club has put together a free video suggesting some techniques for predicting just how the Dow is going to pan out in the short-term future:

MarketClub – Dow 14,000

They’ve picked up the tab so it will cost you nothing… not even your email address.

It’s a MUST WATCH if you have any interest in financial markets, make sure you take advantage of their generosity!

MarketClub – Dow 14,000