Is anyone here a full time consistent spreadbetter?

Hi,

I was wondering if anyone is a full time spreadbetter and makes a good living from it. I dont expect you to give away any of your closely gaurded trading secrets, unless of course you are kind enough to share them but i was just wondering what you trade, how much you risk per point and your trading timescale i.e intraday, daily swings, buy and hold. Also what your success rate is.
Id be very interested to see if there are many people consistently winning, and if so a little insight into their trading world.

Many thanks

Tom

Hello Tom

If you are looking for a nice swing trade for abot 20 to 80 points S/B will be ok,but anything shorter than this you wont make money.I be showing live trade on the 22nd Aug.looking for a short term trend of 20 to 60 points. This week frugi will be showing live trades but they more of scalps.trades and for this you would need to trade with IB or Globex futures for a 1 tick spread

sun

tommog said:

I was wondering if anyone is a full time spread-better and makes a good living from it.

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Spread-betting isn't really suited to intra-day trades - the spreads are too large - so I spread-bet off EOD data. I place my orders in the evening, after the markets have closed. My positions typically last for 1-20 days. I still work, and I enjoy my job, so I'll probably keep working (I live off my wages and leave my profits to compound). I often make more in a week from spread-betting than I do from work, especially after tax, but the average profits are about half my wage. Compounding and money management should reverse that in about a year's time.

I trade the FTSE and Brent Crude through Capital Spreads. I'm considering (looking into) direct access.


Steve

There are many different styles of trading utilized by traders, actually the techniques are more or less using the same basics.

Some make fast profits everyday, while others, well, as one grows younger by the day the roller-coaster ride may not be that exciting any more, so more accurate entry points with bigger profits using fewer trades would be preferred by those whose hair is becoming more colourful.

All in all, consistent profits? Yes.

Morning guys,

I have been out of the loop for a while, with respect to financials. Been over at the sports exchanges. Recently started looking back at spread betting the financials, so this could be an interesting thread.

Last time I was into the financial spreads, I was talking privately with a senior member of one of the bigger firms. I asked him if they had many profitable clients and if so what were there particular style of trading. I really did not expect him to spill many beans, but was surprised when he gave me a fairly forthright answer to my questions. Cutting a long story short, he said that the most successful clients were swing and trend traders. Those playing the intraday markets faired "very poorly". Combination of the spread and other in-house techniques, ensure the day traders dosh consistently added to the firms bottom line.

So if I was getting back into financial spreads, I would be looking at swing trading, but which market? Well hopefully this thread will stimulate a few of our members, who are already swing trading on the spreads, to join in and give us their opinions.

sjalmond has already told us he plays the FTSE and Brent markets. Perhaps he may expand and tell us why he has chosen these over other markets

Personally I split my trading into 2 parts
1. Longer term futures, say at least 1 month leeway
2. Intraday say 1 or 2 bets per day
Both on spread betting the Dow or S&P. The U.S. markets definately lead the world markets and are very covenient for European players time wise ( no early morning rises !). The Dow averages a daily move of about 60 points currently. If one can get it right enough to make a profit, a few points cost of spread betting are OK.
Best of luck

I've used spread betting for about 1/2 my market involvement for the last 2 years. I tend to agree with what's been said here - I only consider it for trading when I''m planning to pick up 20 points or more. SB companies will take their chunk of spread and I've found that slippage is much worse than normal with them too, so it's a risky business for very short term stuff and best avoided.

I've found that traders are often divided on spreadbetting - some loving it and others vehemently against it - but the way I look at it is it's just another market entry tool, with it's own advantages and disadvantages. The aim is exactly the same: make money. A good trader will make money whatever the platform (although it's possible that they'll make more money on a platform they're comfortable with of course).

Could this work:

2 Spreadbet accounts, on one, open a long position for the DOW with a relevant stop-loss, on the second account open a short position on the DOW with yet again a relevant stop-loss.

If the average move is around 60 points then that should conver the loss of the first incorrect position and still make a small tidy profit? Has anyone tried this?

Search4Truth said:

Tom

Just look at the facts from spreadbetting companies which effectively say that less than 5 percent of their punters make any money even if they are full time. It is hard enough making profits using DAT for most people without having to think of the additional problems which a spread brings as well.

S4T

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As far as I'm aware, something close to that figure's true across all forms of trading - the overwhelming majority of people lose. I'll grant you that there'll be a higher percentage of losers amongst spread betters though, simply because it's far more accessible to the beginner than virtually any other form of trading I can think of, hence there will be more losers.

hmmm interesting, this thread has had nearly 500 views at time of writing and only a few people have actually said they are making a living from trading spreadbets. By full time i dont mean you have to be a day trader, in fact i'd like to modify the thread at this stage to is there anyone that uses spreadbetting as their main form of income? This can include day traders, buy and hold as well as people that work in jobs but spreadbetting is their main form of income.

Search4truth, im sure your figures are correct regarding only 5% of spreadbetters are profitable but i think this figure is used as an industry standard of winners success regardless of what instrument is used.

tommog said:

hmmm interesting, this thread has had nearly 500 views at time of writing and only a few people have actually said they are making a living from trading spreadbets. By full time i dont mean you have to be a day trader, in fact i'd like to modify the thread at this stage to is there anyone that uses spreadbetting as their main form of income? This can include day traders, buy and hold as well as people that work in jobs but spreadbetting is their main form of income.

Search4truth, im sure your figures are correct regarding only 5% of spreadbetters are profitable but i think this figure is used as an industry standard of winners success regardless of what instrument is used.

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I think our members are being shy. Although "retired", I trade spread bets for a living and have done so for a good few years, profitably. I've had a few losing months but never a losing year.

I'm a swing trader, holding a position for a few days up to a week or so. One of the instruments I trade is the Dow, but as I'm looking for gains of 100 pts plus, the spread of a few points is immaterial. This would not be the case for an intraday "scalper", seeking perhaps just 10 or 15 points, where the spread becomes a significant overhead, sometimes intolerably so.

For the record I also trade the DAX, occasionally the S&P and Nasdaq100, and a limited number of currency pairs, typically the €/$ and cable.

orion,

well done on your trading success

Out of interest which charting platform do you use? I am a forex trader and trade with a forex only broker, im interested in concentrating more time on my spreadbetting account because i can trade many different products through one broker. I have a good system that works on forex however i would like to try and apply this to other products but cant find a decent free charting service. People suggest advfn but even that is pretty basic compared to the forex charts ive been working off.

Orion,

Yes that bears out what my "inside" contact was getting at. You have to nullify the effect of the spread (plus any other in-house negative bias). Day trading on the spreads is definitely out as far as I'm concerned. I suppose you could try to gain an advantage by waiting for significant market momentum, when the spread prices are way ahead of the market and then place a reverse trade. But personally I am trying to avoid sitting at the PC all day. That is why I am moving away from trading on Betfair etc. Life is too short to spend it goggle eyed at the PC screen.

Swing trading the Dow appeals to me, using EOD data and a minimum of input. So anyone care to discuss entry/exit techniques for swing trading the Dow using the spreads?

tommog

I use EOD data for the Dow, for example, and Metastock for EOD charts. I've used Metastock for ages and know it backwards so am loth to change. All my EOD trading systems are programmed into Metastock and back-tested using its System Testing facility, which is pretty good.

For real-time charting I use deal4free and Refco. Trades are placed using a range of spread bet companies, including deal4free and IG.

Other FX traders I know use Metatrader.

Hope this helps.

The Wall Street quotes on spreadbets are roughly: Daily about 4 ticks, Futures about 8 ticks.

If the execution speed isn't fast enough I wonder if it is worth the while to trade intraday.

Orion said:

I use EOD data for the Dow, for example, and Metastock for EOD charts. I've used Metastock for ages and know it backwards so am loth to change. All my EOD trading systems are programmed into Metastock and back-tested using its System Testing facility, which is pretty good.

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Metastock used to be my tool of choice too, but I've recently started using Wealth Lab, which I'm very impressed with.

For real-time charting I use deal4free and Refco. Trades are placed using a range of spread bet companies, including deal4free and IG.

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I have eSignal for RT charts but I'm going to switch to ShareScope Realtime. From that I can all the EOD data I need to export to Wealth Lab too.

I have been spreadbetting for nearly six years and have made profits every single year. Whilst it is not my only income, I certainly could live on it if I need to.

I am a trend follower using my own system (if you do a search of this board you will see it is commercially available) and have made consistant profits following it. Intra-day spreadbetting is very tough and I wouldn't recommend it. My philosophy has always been for people to feel comfortable in the longer time frames first and then attempt some shorter term trading strategies.

Good Trading

AT

Volatility & cost

delboy trotter said:

sjalmond has already told us he plays the FTSE and Brent markets. Perhaps he may expand and tell us why he has chosen these over other markets

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I chose the FTSE because it had the best ratio of average trading range to spread of the indices on Capital Spreads, and I chose indices to limit my universe of markets and to keep me as far as possible from those 'orrible fundamentals! I'm British, so the FTSE is quoted in papers and local news, and that helped cement my decision.

Brent Crude had the best ratio of trading range to spread of the energy commodities. I've been bullish on energy since... high school. Or earlier. I don't know anything about the other commodities except Gold but CS was only showing five days data for that - not enough. Commodities seemed like a good diversification from Indicies.

Next? Further diversification, probably into Forex. I've not crunched the numbers to say which.


Steve

Currently, I'm consistently profitable in my trading.

This is largely due to the fact that I have discovered "loopholes" in some of the companies I trade with that allows me to profit from a trade a high percentage of the time. However, I am somewhat limited in the returns I can make because I need to keep the amount I trade at small in order to get a fast quote.

I trade with a 10 tick spread on Crude Oil and a spread of 5 of the DJI and I've never found this size a problem.

trader_dante said:

I'm consistently profitable with trading. Although I don't claim to be a good trader.
I have discovered loopholes in some of the companies that allows me to profit 100% of the time. Since I started I have placed thousands of trades and never had a losing one - although I sometimes get one that exits neutral.
The one downfall I suffer is that to take advantage of the loopholes I have to trade at a maximum of £5 a tick which limits the returns I can make.
To be honest though, I've never found the spreads a problem. My system always wins with a spread of 5 on the DJI and 10 on WTI Crude. Positions are held for a maximum of 30 seconds.
Like I said - I'm not a great trader - infact I feel like I'm cheating and I guess I am really but its a means of supplementing my otherwise poor income!

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I wouldn't call it cheating, aren't we all here to cash in on the markets what ever method we use?! If your trades last 30 seconds then I guess your monitoring some sort of intraday chart and/or datafeed? Just day trading hasn't worked well for spreadbetting interesting how you have overcome this... How long have you been trading your loophole? Just if I was a spreadbetting company I'd continually monitor my customers whom never seem to lose and isolate the problem with a view of eradication.