Financial Spread Betting Experiences

[acceleratoraccelerator is verified member.]

Has anyone here tried financial spread betting? I'm thinking of giving it a go. Do you find it rewarding? I'm particularly interested in down bets, i.e. going short, with controlled risk products, i.e. setting a stop loss.

Any comments anyone?

Rgds

 

[retired_member16]

Has anyone here tried financial spread betting? I'm thinking of giving it a go. Do you find it rewarding? I'm particularly interested in down bets, i.e. going short, with controlled risk products, i.e. setting a stop loss.

<alan partridge> That was just a noise </alan partridge>

I have no idea what you just said.

 

[acceleratoraccelerator is verified member.]

I have no idea what you just said.

Fair enough!

I think what I'm really asking here is for those that have experience in this field, is it worth the effort? i.e. in terms of the time and effort for research, is the effort vs reward ratio there when compared to other activities such as domaining and site development.

Rgds

 

[stender]

I work in the trade.

sorry saw you said financial.

It depends on how much you have to play with and what risk you want to take and how quickly you want to turnaround i.e. day trading?

Cfd's might be a better option but i wouldnt do either without learning a bit first. You didnt post this on the ukbusiness forum did you? I answered a same post today?

 

[acceleratoraccelerator is verified member.]

What's the link to that post then?

Yes I'd be looking at shares. Have you tried much trading yourself and how did you find it?

Rgds

 

[stender]

I didnt go into detail just suggested to the guy that he open a fantasy portfolio somewhere first like advfn.com as it's not something to jump into without knowledge.

I used to trade financial futures and options on liffe I also traded cfd's and shares once liffe went screen based.

An example.
If you buy shares you will also be charged brokerage and stamp duty (0.5%)
e.g. buy 1000 shares at £1 = £1000 + Bro (say £10) + £50 = £1060
so if you only speculate £1000 and the stock moved 10% (big move) you would sell at £1.10 = £1100 - bro say £10 = £1090 = £30 profit.
Not really worth the risk is it?

You need some decent money to actively trade.

Shares you cannot go short i.e. bet on them going down, unless you borrow the stock first.

cfd's are synthetic shares. You can buy or sell and can gear up too but are more risky. You can open an account at my company for £10k
But you can gear up which means you can buy/sell more shares as you only pay a margin therefore can buy more than £10k worth of shares. Risk is you can lose more than your £10k. Similar to spreadbetting.
Also you dont pay stamp duty on cfd's or spread betting.

I've probably bored everyone bar us. I would advise reading up and doing the fantasy bit first.
I stick to betting on the dogs and seem to do better at that!

 

[cvs]

Read Amazon.co.uk: Reminiscences of a Stock Operator: Edwin Lefèvre: Books

When you are winning it is the best "job" in the world! For newbies I would recommend covering your downside with some calls unless of course you have deep pockets and prefer flying by the seat of your pants. I don't recall stops being guaranteed especially if the markets go crazy and remember your stop is only as good as the 'person' watching it!

You might want to look into (charts) candlesticks, elliott wave or some simple moving averages with an oscillator to give you some idea of current market trends before you take the plunge.

Have you thought about trading FX - much more fun!!

 

[acceleratoraccelerator is verified member.]

Have you thought about trading FX - much more fun!!

I don't think FX is going to be for me, I am more interested in financial spread betting on shares. CMC Markets has a very slick website and also a spread betting guaranteed stop loss product which took my interest.

Rgds

 

[yesterday]

its a dangerous business and you can lose your shirt and house.

good luck

yesterday

 

[cvs]

If you for instance see an obvious chart pattern, set your position just at the right place, set your stop loss exactly where you should etc. In the wee hours of the small market e.g mid afternoon or even after hours, you'll see the price whisper its way up to where you and every other sucker has put their stop loss (because its the "right" place) and stop you out -taking all your money - thank you very much and you can kiss my ass while I do it.

The overseas offices of a bank I used to work at were masters at taking you out at the absolute high or low (if you blinked you would have missed the price trading) and then calling you in the wee small hours to ask you if you wanted to get back into the position they has 'so kindly' taken you out of!

 

[acceleratoraccelerator is verified member.]

Thanks for your comments yesterday, this is the kind of feedback I wanted to get.

I would definitely not be attempting FX, and currency movements just always seem random to me.

Surely the amount of manipulation a spread betting firm can do is limited because their spreads have to be based on market prices??

To give you an idea of what I wanted to use it for, it was short selling on shares such as Bradford and Bingley, where I knew their whole business was basically buy to let mortgages, which would be adversely affected by the property market decline, and their share price has basically been a straight line down for the past year. With a limited loss short sell spread bet that seemed like a reasonable opportunity.

I won't be doing any real trading before running simulations for a while ...

Any further comments anyone?

Rgds

 

[yesterday]

cvs - I agree, that stock trader book is a good one.

yesterday

 

[stender]

Many many Times I said "it can't go any lower", bought the dips and guess what.
I also had a knack of having a long position when some terrorist f*cker would blow up a train or some company would go bust. Your stock may of been a solid company and you did your homework but it only took one glitch in the sector and your stock got hit with the others.

I've been tempted to sign up for a betfair api and get something written.

 

[robrob is verified member.]

I've been tempted to sign up for a betfair api and get something written.

Thats something I would be interested in - let me know if you do go down that path

 

[acceleratoraccelerator is verified member.]

What makes you think that you're better at determining where the *next* move will be - say Bof E reduces interest rates next month, what do you think will happen to BandB shares then? - clue - you're pretty late into this bet.

Just to clarify, I used Bradford and Bingley as an example of a past opportunity, it's not something I'm thinking of doing now.

Rgds

 

[yesterday]

sure.

Though for any bet think it right through.

good luck!

yesterday

 

[disruptive]

I've made Squillions!

Can lose your shirt though!

 

[acceleratoraccelerator is verified member.]

What were you spread betting?

Rgds