A question to successful spread betters

I am just starting out and this is a question for successful traders. When I say "successful", I am not talking about how much money you make; I'm talking about people who win most of the time.

Having read some posts here, I understand that if you are too successful (win a lot of times), your account could be closed by a broker. It shouldn't happen but apparently it does. In some cases, broker's explanation for closing an account was that they didn't like a "particular style" of trading!? WTF???

I may lose, I probably lose some but like anyone in this game, I am intending to win a lot if I can. So what do you do to avoid your account from closed down?
Do you have a several accounts and trade from each account on a weekly rotation?

SB

My opinion on this is that you are, probably, worrying about something that hasn't happened to you, yet. If you listen too much to negative opinion, you'll end up doing nothing. There are three alternatives to financial trading/betting.

1. Don't do it.

2. If you can afford it, go to a broker.

3. If you don't have the capital to try a broker, try a spreadbetting firm.

I don't think that you will come to any serious damage if you try small stakes with a SB firm. If you get so good that you are asked to take your custom somewhere else, so be it- it's no big deal, is it?

But cross that bridge when you come to it. A lot of people do complain about trading filling times, etc. I'm not a good enough trader to be a menace to the financial security of one of these firms but I aspire to be and so should you!

Split

Avoid latency scalping or very short term trading.

And if you do so, do not ring up and complain about bad fills.

Hi,

I'm not necessarily answering this as a 'successful' spread bettor, but I've just finished reading a book called "The Financial Spread Betting Handbook" by Malcolm Pryor, and I would point you in the direction of section 7. "Pricing and Hedging", and in particular the subsection entitled "Do they really want you to win?". The "they" referred to in this heading are the spread betting companies in general. It's a very interesting section and answered a lot of questions that I've had along similar lines over the past couple of years.

Hope this helps and best of luck to you with your trading.

Cheers,

Ian

You can still win most of the time and end up with a net losing balance. It is all about reward to risk ratio against percentage of profitable trades.


Paul

Spread betting is not yet a mature market - but eventually it will be - which means the number of newcomers will dwindle rapidly. If spread betting firms continually close accounts of those that win then they are not operating a sustainable business model - which I'm sure they are all well aware of.

Having been a losing trader to a now successful trader I personally have not experienced any difference in the way I'm treated by my SB.

As trader_dante says - those that experience account closedowns and disputes are usually the ones that try to profit from comparing an SBs lagging quote with an up to date live feed and profitting from the difference. An SB will stamp down on this behaviour as there is no way for them to hedge against it - it is pure loss to them.

You first target is to be profitable - don't worry about the rest - you can move your money when you are finally making it - which will probably be longer than you think.

Hi, just wondering which sb firm you are intending to use as some are better than others...........

There are also some that are known for being rubbish - just search there name on this site and you will soon get the idea of sb firms that are not worth getting an account with.

Regards

Thank you very much everyone for sound tips.

I am intending to day trade (about 50 bets per day), not sure if it is classed as scalping as I won't be in and out in seconds or minutes but more like anything from 5 mins to 20 mins. I guess that's called short term trading? Just looking to make £10-£50 profits per bet.

I am not particularly looking to trade as Hoggums described above but I will be trading throughout the day so if it happens or as and when it happens, if SB is quoting late for whatever reasons, it's no my fault and I'd take my profit if it's there regardless.

SB market may not be mature yet but I bet brokers must be thinking there will always be newbies.

I won't moan for unfilled orders. It seems to happen quite a lot across the board so looks like I'll have to bear with it.