Time to short the FTSE?

All the technicals on my charts are giving me sell signals at the moment. the FTSE has stormed for 11 days straight and broken out of the 4200-4500 range but is rapidly losing momentum.

Despite good results from the banks, further good news with land registry reporting house rises etc I can't help but be a little bearish and overly cautious.

My portfolio is often a good indicator as generally it moves in reverse to the FTSE and it really has started picking up too so a lot of data and a lot of mixed signals..... i will however be opening a short if the FTSE starts retracing to 4500 and tests this level but I will be keeping my stops very tight indeed and not moving them out if the trade starts going against me.

Views on this topic welcomed!

My post on 22nd May - ITL

If only I took my own advice. Since April Intec Telecom have rocketed 250%. I jumped in for a short £10 spreadbet play and took some good profits. Sadly I have missed out on some fantastic profits this time though with the stock still heading north nicely.

I am definetely having another look at these guys and looking for any dips though as they seem to be getting everything right, had a positive trading update again and its nothing but good news for these guys despite the recession!

Synchronica

This has become my diamond stock now. Probably the company I now know the best about out of the entire portfolio and one that I am the most smitten with.

Synchronica started life as DAT Group with a very ambitious target of taking on RIM's architecture but targetting the entry level customers in the marketplace. They tried and failed on numerous occassions - most likely because their focus was on integrating with Microsoft technologies (not cheap!). They have now adapted their strategy under their CEO and co-founder Carsten to focus on open standards and only on emerging markets (which also happen to be the biggest mobile phone market of which smart phones like that of the Blackberry only have a very small market share despite their apparent ubiquitous nature).

Synchronica provide the facilities to allow network operators to provide push email, mobile backup and other services over their gateway for which they charge a one off cost plus servicing and consulting fees. They have now taken this to a new level trying to capture all possible revenue generating areas by launching their own budget phone pre-configured to work with their gateway solution.

I had the chance to chat with Carsten and he confirmed the approach that I believe the company is taking in that email is just the most obvious initial product to provide over their mobile gateway, although the architecture is in place to support any sort of data dissemination and synchronisation so there are plenty of growth opportunities.

The biggest risk with Synchronica in my mind is the fact that they need to be first to market with this - which indeed they seem to be. There is nothing to stop another company coming in at a later point although the expectation is that there is a year window whilst other companies could develop and get a product / service up to the level of Synchronica's which buys them much needed time.

The final winning point for me is Carsten himself. He clearly has a lot of experience with mobile technology and some very good ideas to take the business forwards, answering my probing questions very diligently. He wants to be the market leader in a relatively untapped area (budget phones) or as he describes it "the company known for producing the 'poor man's Blackberry'". and the phone is certainly not poor - we had a look and play with it, the interface has the same look and feel and is actually slightly smaller than a blackberry. You'd never guess it was 1/5 of the price to manufacture!

I now have over 10% of my portfolio invested in Synchronica at a mid price of 2.86p and I could not be happier. This stock remains a strong buy with an end of year target in the region of 8-9p for me as the company starts to hit profitability. For full and further reports from myself please check out the free bulletin board on ADVFN (alithetrader)

BT and LloydsTSB

Been watching this stock rise, waiting for some bad news to get me a good entry but sadly this has been moving upwards from 89ishp to current 112p since it hit my watchlist. I actually still think there is a lot of short term upside here. BT have really started turning the business around, trimming staff, expanding their fibe optic rollout programme and focusing on their core business. It's a case of battening down the hatches for now and seeing the recession out. I'm going to wait for a down day to pounce but it will be soon I feel.

A stock I am now looking to short is LloydsTSB - the inevitable sell off by UKFI will cause some noise in the markets but I don't think overall this will massively impact the price, as the sales will be staggered and are still some way off given UKFI are sat on a loss over 10 billion at present (RBS + LloydsTSB combined figure). Lloyds were a very good, profitable bank - taking on HBOS was a big mistake and it's all starting to emerge. There is a plan in place to turn this around and long term I'd buy but i think there is a short term play on this, so looking for an entry.

Topping Up

Well how lucky was I? After selling off my Telit shares the other day, a trading statement is out that announces despite margins lowering due to lowersale prices, sales are up and trending upwards nicely. This is not great news and the share price fell 25% as a result with the expectation that they'll underperform for the year. Well this does not bother me seeing as I sold out and think at a 25% discount this is well worth getting back in on - a great company that will do well. So much so that I have bought another 1k of them. This is now my most profitable stock to date since I started recording so I have high hopes to pick up some more cash from this deal.

While in top up mode I managed to purchase some more SYNC at 2.75. I am due to meet the Synchronica CEO at an upcoming Proactive seminar and have plenty of questions for him and his plans for bringing the company to hopeful profitability for year end. So i have 2.5k exposure to them now at an average price of just under 3p a share...!

Account clear out

In preparation for moving across from Selftrade to Barclays Stockbrokers, I've had a clean out and sold all stocks that are in profit at the moment. This includes both my Volex and Telit trades for a small 200 quid profit for the pair. I am sure there is more distance in these, but tomorrow is another day and there are plenty of other stocks out there for me to get stuck into!

On that note, I have a couple of buys that i am looking to make in the new account and will update this page shortly with the details.

PURI Sell

Puricore is a great company that has fantastic prospects producing green, clean and safe sterlisation products that has done immensely well and made me some good cash since I bought in when it was around the 9p mark. i sold at 13p and then jumped in again at 14p (silly early sale there really).

It has been bouncing around for some time now and has been helped higher at 16p today by more swine flu concerns (they have recently announced that their products do work against Swine flu). I am keen to take this opportunity to exit the trade although when the price settles down again I'd be happy to jump back in - currently I think 16p is fair market value and can't see it moving much higher in the short term.

70 quid profit - better than nothing I suppose but a little disappointed!