Michael Taylor

Michael Taylor made the move to trading the stock market with his own capital on a full time basis in December 2016. As well as ShareScope, Michael contributes to Investors Chronicle and other online publications. He has also written a free book on getting started in the UK stock market, along with a stock trading handbook – both of which are available to download from his website at www.shiftingshares.com

I believe that anyone can learn to trade if they are able to remain objective and are willing to put the hours in. I lost a lot of money early on by not having a proper strategy and following the crowd. If you want to make money then you need to generate your own ideas – I use SharePad to find and plan my trades, and ShareScope to run on my trading screens.

The Trader: The Impact of Coronavirus on Trading

One of the effects on Coronavirus has been to crash the entire stock market only to see it recover strongly. However, the impact of Coronavirus for the private investor and retail trader has been huge. Social media has contributed to market inefficiency It is a widely held view that the internet has created a more

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The Trader: Spread Betting

Spread betting is another way of buying and selling shares. Instead of buying the actual stock when we purchase through our broker, in spread betting we are literally placing a bet on the stock that it will either rise or fall as defined by the spread. The spread is the price to buy and the

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The Trader: Working Through Rough Periods

Unless you’re an Instagram trader, set with a laptop by the pool and a Lamborghini in the background, everybody goes through rough patches in trading. It is a fact. So much of this business is uncertain, and ironically people want to get into trading for the ‘freedom’ it provides. But free we are not, and

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The Trader: A Day In The Life of a Stock Trader

One of the questions I’m frequently asked is how I structure my day. Time is a trader’s most important currency because sometimes it can be the first person eats, the second person goes hungry. Being alert and organised is the key to performing well. My day starts early compared to most at 04:45. Before I

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The Trader: Knowing Your Market

We have covered many aspects of trading in previous articles, such as Why You Should Be Using R, Exit Strategies, and How To Avoid Blowing Your Account, and having had conversations with recent traders it is clear that knowing your market in what you trade is a necessary criterion. This article will introduce new traders

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The Trader: Examining Retail Trading Behaviour

One of the many oft-repeated quotes around traders is that 90% of traders lose money. However, this depends on how one classifies a ‘trader’. Many people – and I can believe that it is 90%+ of people – lose money when they enter trading. But often newcomers aren’t coming into the market prepared. There’s a

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The Trader: Taking advantage of ShareScope News

In this article, I’ll show how you to set up your news feed in order to get the best out of your subscription. First of all, we need to click “News” at the top of our ShareScope across the main toolbar. This brings up the raw RNS feed that we need to filter and make

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Sharepad the trader one position at a time

The Trader: Five rules for traders

A combination of market volatility and being locked in during lockdown has led to many turning their eye to getting involved in the stock market. The failure rate for traders is estimated to be around 90%, and many of the spread bet firms report that 70%+ of clients lose (the real figure I believe is

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The Trader: How to Avoid Blowing Your Account

The market is moving with extreme volatility in recent weeks. This offers traders many opportunities to prosper and profit, but volatility is a double-edged sword. It can be your best friend one day and your worst enemy the next. Many traders love volatility when the trade is going in their favour, but struggle to deal

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The Trader: Why You Should Be Using R

R is a component in trading that we use to define risk. It is a crucial aspect of trading systems and by thinking in terms of R we can improve our results. In this article I will introduce to you the concept of R and how to use it for your own trading. It is

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The Trader: Why the trend is your friend

“It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife.” Whether or not you agree with Jane Austen’s opening line in Pride and Prejudice, by the end of this article I hope you will agree with my version. “It is a truth

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The Trader: Exit Strategies

In April 2017, I had a real nightmare. I had been trading full time on the market for four months and had had enormous success buying bubbley story stocks and riding them upwards. I was convinced that I knew what I was doing. I made all the classic mistakes of complacency, which turned into denial

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