Yes, absolutely you can make money (and I do), however do keep in mind that the values you get from a spread bet company are set by them, and while they may expire at market value, up until expiry they can and WILL tweak values depending on how they think the market will go. OTOH, if you can outthink them, that can be used to magnify your gains.
Basic answer is, be careful, but yes. Get an account, look at the values they give you (especially out of hours), paper trade, see how you do before you put any serious money on trades.
Basic answer is, be careful, but yes. Get an account, look at the values they give you (especially out of hours), paper trade, see how you do before you put any serious money on trades.
stay away
they promise the world but steal the carpet from right under you. cmc are masters at this especially on fx. they say 2 pip spread but in actual fact it is more like 4-5 pip spread. the reason i say this is because they take a few pips when you close a position. i confronted them about this and they denied it. so i set asside a weeks testing and i tested during very quiet hours when currencies flatline between ny and asia session. even on a market thats flat and by flat i mean tiny flat sideways bars i still got nailed a consistent 3 pips at exit.even with instant entry and exit while price remained on the bid and offer. they kept telling me its the market movement that i closed at a diff price but you tell me at hours of flat market and over a week of around 20 test trades how can it be a perfect 3 pips every time. their reporting is also useless so you cant prove it with hard evidence.
if you want a fair market try an ecn dealer, once i moved away from these spreadbetting jokers trading became more of a business and less rubbish.
they promise the world but steal the carpet from right under you. cmc are masters at this especially on fx. they say 2 pip spread but in actual fact it is more like 4-5 pip spread. the reason i say this is because they take a few pips when you close a position. i confronted them about this and they denied it. so i set asside a weeks testing and i tested during very quiet hours when currencies flatline between ny and asia session. even on a market thats flat and by flat i mean tiny flat sideways bars i still got nailed a consistent 3 pips at exit.even with instant entry and exit while price remained on the bid and offer. they kept telling me its the market movement that i closed at a diff price but you tell me at hours of flat market and over a week of around 20 test trades how can it be a perfect 3 pips every time. their reporting is also useless so you cant prove it with hard evidence.
if you want a fair market try an ecn dealer, once i moved away from these spreadbetting jokers trading became more of a business and less rubbish.
The best pip spread is no spread and FxClub just gives that. Its a 100% zero spread system, so you can get profitable even with just 1 pip move in your favor, so the risk is minimal.
Currently they have a promotion of giving $100 free for joining (non-withdrawable though). Instead of profiting from spreads that can keep changing from time to time, they charge a fixed $0.60 commission per position, but they refund it completely if your trade is not profitable. In my opinion, they are best to try if you want to minimize risk and if you are do not have positions open for long times.
I don't know why you are plugging that firm. 60 cents per $1000 traded is equivalent to 9 pips spread on EUR/USD and 12 pips spread on GBP/USD (on "profitable" positions) - so you can't "get profitable even with just 1 pip move in your favor".
It would only make sense if the customer's trading method has a low win percentage (around 25% or less).
nine
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There is no such thing as a zero pip spread. If they trade in pips then the minimum spread is 1 pip.
If like interactive brokers they trade in half pips then the minimum spread is half a pip.
If you are "big enough" to use a broker (ie an ecn model rather than a bucketshop model) then the broker, by its nature, will give you a better deal. If you aren't then bucketshops is all you have left and the challenge is to find the fairest one (that doesn't just mean spread, it means honesty, lack of price distortions etc ... so study the threads here and be careful not to be influence by one or two people who might be broker's shills).
Note that before I gave up moderating we discovered one scam that had been going on here for several years involving 8 different identities that we eventually traced back to egypt. So, if you see an opinion and you can't find useful knowledgeable posts from that person then ... buyer beware!
If like interactive brokers they trade in half pips then the minimum spread is half a pip.
If you are "big enough" to use a broker (ie an ecn model rather than a bucketshop model) then the broker, by its nature, will give you a better deal. If you aren't then bucketshops is all you have left and the challenge is to find the fairest one (that doesn't just mean spread, it means honesty, lack of price distortions etc ... so study the threads here and be careful not to be influence by one or two people who might be broker's shills).
Note that before I gave up moderating we discovered one scam that had been going on here for several years involving 8 different identities that we eventually traced back to egypt. So, if you see an opinion and you can't find useful knowledgeable posts from that person then ... buyer beware!
wasp
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I think its us Nine, don't enter the foray of FX, we are all dodgy scum!
Just look at GJ!
£10kLoser
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Forex Spreadbetting
CMC are only any good if you only use your stops and limits to close trades - if you do it manually, you often get requoted or have to wait so long the price has changed. I once waited two minutes and lost £500 because the price moved that much to hit my existing stop. I challenged them about this (I'd been trading for about three years with them for serious money) and they told me it was tough. I closed my account and moved elsewhere...
Both Cantor and IG Index close trades precisely at the price you click. You need to have a Standard Account (not a Limited Risk Account) with IG, though, or you'll have to pay the extra 3 pips for guaranteed stops. 99.9% of the time the normal stops are honoured even if they close them several minutes later. IG is the best in my experience and I've been trading a while...
CMC are only any good if you only use your stops and limits to close trades - if you do it manually, you often get requoted or have to wait so long the price has changed. I once waited two minutes and lost £500 because the price moved that much to hit my existing stop. I challenged them about this (I'd been trading for about three years with them for serious money) and they told me it was tough. I closed my account and moved elsewhere...
Both Cantor and IG Index close trades precisely at the price you click. You need to have a Standard Account (not a Limited Risk Account) with IG, though, or you'll have to pay the extra 3 pips for guaranteed stops. 99.9% of the time the normal stops are honoured even if they close them several minutes later. IG is the best in my experience and I've been trading a while...
cmc also nail you on spread, if you trade fx you will notice on the initial order say gbpusd 4 pips taken when you enter a trade, what they dont tell you is they take another 2 pips at exit. i noticed this and challenged them they told me its rubbish. yet i did some testing at out of trading hours when the market was flatl over 20 test trades. each trade takes exactly 2 more pips at exit. now i am sorry but them telling me it is the market moving and the consistent resulsts just dont match. if this was the case then hell i must be one unlucky guy to have the market move exactly 2 pips away from my exit price over 20 trades when the market is flat.m CMC are scammers and they have fals advertising for fx with only 2 pips here and 4 pips here when in actual fact gbpusd is a 6 pip spread and eurousd is a 4 pip spread...
fxmonkey55
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Not sure about elsewhere but in Ireland, spreadbetting profits are tax free so that's one incentive over trading with a broker, where you should be paying capital gains tax on FX profits.
£10kLoser
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Tax
If you trade for a living, you pay income tax on the profits - which can be 40%. there's no way a normal broker is that much better than a good Spread Bet firm like IG.
If you trade for a living, you pay income tax on the profits - which can be 40%. there's no way a normal broker is that much better than a good Spread Bet firm like IG.
