My Spread Betting Story

My foray into spread betting (via CFDs) was about three years ago, as I got bored of buying shares (usually AIM penny shares where I was going to make my fortune for very little effort), doing nothing and then selling them quite often for far less than I paid for them.

So I started afresh with a modest pot of money and traded FTSE350 stocks via CFDs. It started like a train (particularly with the new concept of being able to short) and within days I had made enough to put me in the CGT category. This was mainly due to one trade first thing in the morning when a company had issued a profits warning and I hit the “short” button precisely as the price spiked 90 points and then immediately retreated. That made me about £9000 in 30 seconds! Easy, I thought!

So I switched to spread bets to avoid CGT and my luck continued so much so that I made a return of about 10,000% in 12 months. Of course, it did not last and the next 12 months saw a decline where a large percentage was lost. However, I did take about 4000% of my original stake out of my spread betting account to make sure I couldn’t squander it all, and I started again.

Things haven’t been as easy the second time around and I started dabbling in forex and indices with an unerringly consistent record of failure!

For my part I think I will continue trading equities and again dabble in forex and indices just for fun (all my trading is done with spare cash – I could never rely on it for income) until I have more understanding if how it all works.