It’s becoming a familiar routine now: home from work; dinner cooked, eaten, and all washed up; kids tucked up in bed; and now logged in to the Barclays Stockbrokers  website to check my ‘portfolio’. Sounds good, doesn’t it?

This is interesting. The shares I bought in my Investment ISA in February as a bit of ‘educated speculation’ have since risen more than 20%. Time to take my profit while it is available (as things haven’t always gone this well, I can still feel the pain from a previous loss earlier in the year), so I place an at best that will sell them automatically on the market opening tomorrow. At this rate and with the markets presenting this many opportunities, I may yet one day be earning more from this trading hobby than I am from being a full-time customer services manager. Then I’ll have the ultimately flexible job, which will be very handy for me

Now, what should I do with the proceeds when they land in my account? I could do with some retail therapy, but it would be a shame to lose the ISA tax breaks by withdrawing the money (sensible me talking here). So it’s time to look for new investment opportunities by consulting my ‘watch list’ - a list of shares that I am watching with a view to possibly buying in the future.

My list features a large variety of sectors and some interesting companies, one of my current favourites being a blue chip pharmaceutical company - I like their products, and a glance at the six-month chart shows me that this week the share price has broken upwards out of what the guy on the trading seminar called a ‘trading range’ – by piercing through the ‘resistance level’ at 490p. Anyway, this key event suggests that the price may well rise even higher, it may not of course, it may fall, but of course I do hope it rises, because I’m about to place a limit order to buy in at no more than 500p per share when the market opens, thus giving me some degree of protection. I always keep a ‘float’ in this account, so it doesn’t matter if I have to pay for my purchase before I receive the proceeds of my recent sale.

Tomorrow night I’ll check whether my order was executed and I’ll place my usual stop order, at around at 450p (approximately 10% below my purchase price) – just in case I’m wrong about this ‘breakout’ leading to a sustained uptrend. I don’t like to place my stop too close to my initial entry level though – it is impossible to be spot on with your timing every time you make a trade, so I think it’s sensible to leave a little ‘breathing space’.

Mental note: I’ll also read up on covered warrants again tomorrow. As my confidence grows, I think I might allocate a small part of my overall portfolio to speculate through these geared products. I am aware that from the little bit I have read today that while covered warrants are geared and can magnify positive returns if you speculate with them in the right direction, that losses are still possible, although limited to your initial stake. Crikey! It’s 11 o’clock and I have an early start in the morning, as usual, but I can sleep safe in the knowledge that my investments are under control!