As I write this, I’m nursing a tiny sore head and an empty wallet. In the last a month I’ve lost almost £30,000 spread betting for approximately one hour each day five days a week. So I managed to blow around £1,500 an hour. That’s really quite a chunk of cash. Actually, it’s nearly as bad because it looks. Fortunately, I was betting using a few spread-betting companies’ demo sites. They are simulations of the live betting sites that allow you to practice before you start betting with real money. I realise that I’m no financial genius otherwise I could have been rich long ago. However, the truth that I managed to squander so much money so quickly does pose the question – if spread betting seems so easy, why achieve this lots of people get completely wiped out extremely quickly?
We’re increasingly seeing advertising for spread betting in investing and money management publications. In usually the one I subscribe to, 4 or 5 different spread betting companies take full-page colour ads each week, outnumbering any type of advertising. Spread betting ads are actually common in the business sections of several weekend newspapers and will most likely soon start to look in the non-public finance sections. Spread betting could appear deceptively attractive to many savers. In the end, profit a bank, shares or unit trusts will at best give us about an unhappy five per cent per year before tax. Yet a fair run on spread betting can certainly enable you to pocket ten per cent a week – five hundred per cent per year – completely and gloriously tax-free. So spread betting can enable you to earn in only one year what it’d take a hundred years or even more to reach with most other investments.
Spread betters gamble on price movements of anything from individual shares, currencies and commodities to whole markets like the FTSE, Dax or S&P. It is named spread betting because the business providing the service makes most of the money by putting one more spread around the cost where something will be bought or sold.
It’s tax-free – When you buy or sell shares, receives a commission dividends or receive interest from a bank you will have to pay taxes like stamp duty, capital gains and income tax. Unless spread betting can be your full-time job and only source of income, you will find no taxes to be paid as it’s considered to be gambling.
You are able to bet on a rise or fall at the same time frame – If the FTSE, like, is trading at 5551-5552, you are able to place two bets, one that it will rise and one that it will fall. These only get triggered when the FTSE actually moves. So when it starts increasing, your bet that it will rise gets triggered. Similarly when it drops, only your bet that it will fall is triggered. So it could seem that, come rain or shine, you’ll probably win.
Huge leverage – In the event that you bet say £50 a pip (a pip is normally the minimum price movement you are able to bet on), it is possible to win 4 or 5 times your original bet if the cost moves in the right direction. On an excellent bet, you are able to win much much more.
You are able to await the breakout – Prices on many shares, currencies, commodities and other activities people bet on tend to have periods of stability accompanied by bursts of movement up or down, what spread-betters call ‘the breakout’ ;.You are able to place a bet that’s only activated when the breakout comes.
You are able to adjust mid-flight – With most bets, such as with horse racing or on roulette, when the race has begun or the croupier has called ‘you can forget bets’ you have to wait helplessly for the effect to see if you’ve won or not. With spread betting you are able to decide to close your bet at any time. So if you’re ahead, you are able to take your winnings; if you’re behind you are able to either cut your losses or wait in the hope that things will change and you’ll be up again.
Given each one of these properties of spread betting, it ought to be pretty easy to create a fair little money without a lot of effort. If only.
Industry estimates suggest that around ninety per cent of spread-betters lose most or their money and close their accounts within 3 months of starting. There appear to be another eight per cent approximately who make reasonable levels of money on a typical basis and you will find around two per cent of spread-betters who make fortunes. I’ve been to a couple presentations run by spread betting companies and at one of these simple the salesman let slip that over eighty per cent of his customers lost money. Even many professionals lose on about six bets out of each ten. But by controlling their losses and maximising their returns once they win, they are able to increase their wealth.
The companies want you to lose – When you initially open a demo or real account, you can get several calls from extremely friendly and helpful young men and women at the spread-betting company asking if there’s anything they are able to do to aid you to get going. This is customer support at its very best. Most of the people contacting you will parrot the line which they would like to help and that they’re happy if you’re successful as their company only makes money from the spread. Some will reassure you that they need one to win as the more you win, the more you’re likely to bet and the more the spread-betting company will earn. This could make you’re feeling good, convince you that the business is open, honest, trustworthy and supportive and encourage one to utilize them for the betting. But it’s also a lie. It’s true that the business will make plenty of its money from the spread. However, with many of one’s bets, you’re betting against the business and so เว็บเดิมพันไก่ชนที่ดีที่สุด that they hope you lose, big time. In reality, over the past month I’ve seen several companies change the conditions on the sites to make it more likely that people using them will lose. So, lesson one – spread betting companies aren’t your friends. The more you lose the more they win. It’s that simple.
It’s difficult to break even – In the event that you bet say £50 a pip and the cost does go the way you want, the spread betting company takes the first £50 you win. So the cost has to maneuver two pips in the right direction for you yourself to win your £50 back and three pips for you yourself to emerge with £100, doubling your money. However, if the price moves three pips in the wrong direction, you lose your original bet plus £50 a pip, giving a total loss in £200, a loss in four times your original bet.
Losses may be massive – With most gambling, you are able to only lose that which you deposit on a horse, blackjack or roulette. With spread betting you are able to quickly say goodbye to much more than you wager. I forgot to place an end loss using one bet and managed to lose over £800 with only one £50 bet. Because your bet is leveraged, you can make both fabulous gains and excruciatingly painful losses. Too often it’s the latter. The tiny size of several bets, often £5 or £10 a pip can lull betters right into a false sense of security. It’s only when the losses go five to ten times the original bet which they realise the chance they’ve taken.
You are able to waste thousands on courses and systems – At one free spread-betting seminar I attended we were more than strongly encouraged to sign up for a two-day weekend course teaching us how to spread bet successfully. This may normally cost (we were told) £6,995, but there is a unique offer for the first five people to sign up of only £1,997. There are lots of such courses and also gurus offering to market you their special spread-betting systems, guides, webinars and a number of other advice. With so many supposed experts apparently making a living teaching others how to spread bet, there must be plenty of takers. But I’ve found that you need to know and more can be acquired free on the Internet. Together specialist said, ‘Don’t bother wasting your cash on ‘Guru’ books published by so-called experts. Those books are crap and not worth the paper they are printed on. Nobody sells a secret trading methodology if they are really successful. The only real reason these guys are writing books is basically because they didn’t allow it to be as traders’ ;.