Three key spread betting skills

By Deputy Editor Tim Bennett Mar 18, 2010

Tim Bennett

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Once you understand the mechanics of spread betting, how do you get good at it? Here are three top tips.

Practice, practice, practice

The best spread betters make money because they are experienced. Anyone else who has made a few quid is just lucky. It's vital that you don't confuse the two! The beauty of most online spread betting platforms is they offer dummy accounts where you can practise for as long as you like before going live. Take advantage.

Set goals

Spread betters need to be cold and calculating. Emotion is not their friend. Decide when you will take profits and when you will cut your losses. For example, you might set a trigger point of a 25% drop to sell and pay for a stop loss at that level.

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One way to make sure you maximise gains, but still duck out when a bet goes wrong, is a trailing stop. This is where a stop loss trigger point moves up as a bet starts to make money. For example you might place an up bet on the FTSE at 5,200 points with a 2% stop loss triggered at 5,096. Say the FTSE surges to 5,400, the stop loss now automatically resets to 5,292. That protects some of your profits should the market then plunge.

Don't get carried away

Spread betting isn't easy – you need to know as much about a market as someone trading the actual asset, be that shares, property or currencies. So the best bet is to stick to one market and become an expert. Don't jump around in different markets, placing bets wildly on the last thing you saw reported on Bloomberg News or in the morning newspaper. Stay focused; know your market and only bet when you are confident of making money.

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Published in Spread betting explained | More articles by Tim Bennett

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