Can you really make money spread betting
- Thread starter bluedental
- Start date
- Watchers 69
If you can get the philosophy right and thats nowhere near as easy as it sounds.Whether you comfortable taking a loss is a good gauge of if you have it right
If you trade very a small amount of your pot 1-2%
If you manage not to overtrade and have strict rules that you stick too including risk reward and money management.
Then you might make money at it but most never get past or even look at point one.
imo spread betters these days are much better than they were and most of the complaints against them are because traders don't like admitting their own poor trading,the exception being that I don't think they are good for fast scalping as their platforms are just not good enough for that. Scalp traders in the us can pay a lot of money for professional platforms to do this.
If you trade very a small amount of your pot 1-2%
If you manage not to overtrade and have strict rules that you stick too including risk reward and money management.
Then you might make money at it but most never get past or even look at point one.
imo spread betters these days are much better than they were and most of the complaints against them are because traders don't like admitting their own poor trading,the exception being that I don't think they are good for fast scalping as their platforms are just not good enough for that. Scalp traders in the us can pay a lot of money for professional platforms to do this.
Sure, completely agree with you : training , discipline , risk management and focus,
Will make the difference.
You get more sick if you blow you're account a couple of times, if you don't apply the necessary trading disciplines.
____________
"Take control with Risk & Money Management"
You get more sick if you blow you're account a couple of times, if you don't apply the necessary trading disciplines.
____________
"Take control with Risk & Money Management"
With a successful system all the above is included.
Pat494
Legendary member
- Messages
- 14,614
- Likes
- 1,588
Famous last words of the average newbie.
Of course Dave is going to say he's been making millions for years and is THE big expert
You do it your way bud and let the sensible use a bit of patience etc.
Maybe I got you all wrong but I would bet against it
So who gives a tuppenny toss anyway
neil
Legendary member
- Messages
- 5,169
- Likes
- 752
Although it's not my choice of words, I actually, and maybe controversially agree with uk dave's post.
I've started more than 1 spread bet account with under £500 and turned it into reasonable sums of money. As an experiment I started an account with £25 with a £2000 one year target and achieved the goal. Risk Vs reward was out the window, it was about tried and tested probabilities.
The limitations preventing most profiting from spreadbetting is not necessarily the individual's ability to read the markets - that is the easy bit to learn, just takes a year or 2 of daily study.
The most difficult part is controlling yourself, avoiding over trading, chasing losses, mistakes that practically all of us have made, and even after many years trading, probably make the same mistakes on occasion to this very day.
You don't need to have a system with rules, but it's ideal because it takes the human part completely out of the equation and allows you to trade mechanically and emotion free.
If you have a tried and tested strategy then there is absolutely no reason why you cannot turn £300 into a large sum of money. In a spreadbetting account £300 allows you to take 5 £1 per point trades with 50 point stop losses. Once your up to £2000 go to £2 per point and so forth for each £1000 you increase your balance.
Demo accounts didn't work for me - I just couldn't trade them or learn from them in the same way I could from a real account with real money. I lost many £1000's in my learning curve, but it took a couple of years to realise my calls were consistently spot on, yet my trade management was dreadful and cost me money. I developed a system that fixed this.
Recently, I've realised I'm wasting too much of my life sitting at the screen trading, so I've thrown away my day trade and scalping systems and concentrate on swing trading where all of my trades are taken around resistance or support.
Once you've learned how the markets move, and you've learned to control your mental weaknesses (which you can never do fully without a mechanical system), all you need to do is learn how to accurately define support and resistance and how to trade them, and you will succeed regardless of your risk/reward and regardless of your account balance.
Everything is easy if you can do it.
You might have succeeded this time, but this kind of risk taking in the long run will lead to ruin. You just need to get a run of normal statistical variation and you're out. I do not believe in trading systems, they might work for a while but suddenly for no reason start to fail. I do believe in experience (there are no short cuts here) and risk & money management in order to stay in the game at times, when the statistics goes terribly against you.
____________
"Take control with Risk & Money Management"
Last edited:
You make some good points gle101, and it's fair to say I omitted from my post details of £500 pots that I've turned to zero - re-reading my post and it becomes apparent that we automatically talk up our successes over our losses!
But, at this stage of my trading career, give me a £500 pot and if I really focus I will quadruple it relatively quickly. I could probably do this 8 times out of 10. I find it's when I have a large pot with plenty of cushion that things are more likely to go wrong.
It's the times when you are not focussed that you lose it in the blink of an eye.
I've tried countless strategies and projects (most published live on another forum) where I've worked to improve odds of making a success of trading.
I now chart my performance and increase or decrease stakes based on whether my chart is bullish or bearish - That side of it is a bit of fun really, but it's amazing how focussed it keeps you because you tend to approach risk more carefully in your desire to keep the chart trending up!
But, at this stage of my trading career, give me a £500 pot and if I really focus I will quadruple it relatively quickly. I could probably do this 8 times out of 10. I find it's when I have a large pot with plenty of cushion that things are more likely to go wrong.
It's the times when you are not focussed that you lose it in the blink of an eye.
I've tried countless strategies and projects (most published live on another forum) where I've worked to improve odds of making a success of trading.
I now chart my performance and increase or decrease stakes based on whether my chart is bullish or bearish - That side of it is a bit of fun really, but it's amazing how focussed it keeps you because you tend to approach risk more carefully in your desire to keep the chart trending up!
Perhaps I'm missing something here, but if you can quadruple a £500 pot relatively quickly, eight out of ten times, you must potentially be one of the richest people on the planet. If you're stuck for things to do with all that wonga, I've heard there are some European worthy causes in a need of a few trillion.
Thanks a lot, but this kind of hair raising statement 'quadruple it relatively quickly' make me wonder how long you have been trading?
____________
"Take control with Risk & Money Management"
Fellas.... I didn't mean to come across as hyping myself up. That I am definitely not.
Yes, I could turn £500 into £2000 over and over again, but having this ability does not happen overnight. It's taken me tens of thousands of hours dedicated to studying the markets and I'm still more than capable of cocking it up. Once balance achieves £2000, it moves up much slower as I'll then trade £1 per £1000 of balance, i.e £2 per point averaging £60 profit per profitable day based on an average 4 profitable days per week. The average single losing day per week can vary and I haven't been able to, or really bothered to trend it.
In accounts with significantly higher balances, my % returns are significantly smaller and so are the number of trades I take, usually 1 - 2 per week and these tend to be swing trades that form my main income.
With my £25 project (in which almost every trade was published live online), although a ridiculously small amount of money to start with the idea was to prove that anybody could profit from the markets regardless of how small their initial pot. Building the first £100 was incredibly difficult and time consuming, waiting days or weeks for a high probability trading set-up before taking EUR:USD positions of 25p - 50p per point and using guaranteed stop losses (to allow more margin). Once past around £300 things sped up and £1800 was achieved within 5 Months. Over the following 3 Months, absolutely everything I touched went wrong.... I just couldn't seem to take a winning trade (same in my main trading accounts), so I went on holiday for a few weeks to re-charge my batteries. On my return things improved, and on the 1 year anniversary a £2030 balance was recorded.
I've only been trading for myself since October 2007 after choosing to leave the industry and completely change my career path (I didn't exactly see the crash coming, but knew things were going to get out of control but nobody would listen to me. RBS taking over ABN Amro was the final straw for me). Prior to that I'd worked in the Finance industry for 10 years, but even there, everything I learned was self taught. I have over 800 trading books, and have never read a single one! They may help some people, but for me, if I'm to be able to think outside of the box, I need to avoid influence.
As for "potentially being one of the richest people on the planet", absolutely not....Put me on large stakes of my own money and it all goes wrong - I have always traded small and always will. £20 per point is the largest I've ever traded per individual trade, but generally I'll trade 1/4 of that maximum unless something is dripping free points all over the place and set ups like that don't come often! It's a good idea to stick a couple of £20 notes on your monitor to remind yourself of the value of the numbers on your screen....and if like me you started with nothing, to remind you of those early days where having £20 was the difference between eating an evening meal or going hungry!
Hope I've explained myself and redeemed the wrong impression my post may have given. I do like writing essays so aplogies for that, but ultimately, in answer to the OP's question, yes, you can make money, or even an income from spreadbetting.
P.S On another SB project I worked on, I looked at closing all but 5% of every day trade that was taken in the same direction as the main weekly trend, placing stoploss below/above the 3rd to last Weekly candle. There were various rules I added to the system over time, but it worked and the results were impressive. Over time, you can build quite a sizeable position in a particular market without having to use any margin, or risk an overall loss. I think it's a strategy that could benefit many day traders who are relatively new to spread betting, but for some reason, most wont entertain it.
Yes, I could turn £500 into £2000 over and over again, but having this ability does not happen overnight. It's taken me tens of thousands of hours dedicated to studying the markets and I'm still more than capable of cocking it up. Once balance achieves £2000, it moves up much slower as I'll then trade £1 per £1000 of balance, i.e £2 per point averaging £60 profit per profitable day based on an average 4 profitable days per week. The average single losing day per week can vary and I haven't been able to, or really bothered to trend it.
In accounts with significantly higher balances, my % returns are significantly smaller and so are the number of trades I take, usually 1 - 2 per week and these tend to be swing trades that form my main income.
With my £25 project (in which almost every trade was published live online), although a ridiculously small amount of money to start with the idea was to prove that anybody could profit from the markets regardless of how small their initial pot. Building the first £100 was incredibly difficult and time consuming, waiting days or weeks for a high probability trading set-up before taking EUR:USD positions of 25p - 50p per point and using guaranteed stop losses (to allow more margin). Once past around £300 things sped up and £1800 was achieved within 5 Months. Over the following 3 Months, absolutely everything I touched went wrong.... I just couldn't seem to take a winning trade (same in my main trading accounts), so I went on holiday for a few weeks to re-charge my batteries. On my return things improved, and on the 1 year anniversary a £2030 balance was recorded.
I've only been trading for myself since October 2007 after choosing to leave the industry and completely change my career path (I didn't exactly see the crash coming, but knew things were going to get out of control but nobody would listen to me. RBS taking over ABN Amro was the final straw for me). Prior to that I'd worked in the Finance industry for 10 years, but even there, everything I learned was self taught. I have over 800 trading books, and have never read a single one! They may help some people, but for me, if I'm to be able to think outside of the box, I need to avoid influence.
As for "potentially being one of the richest people on the planet", absolutely not....Put me on large stakes of my own money and it all goes wrong - I have always traded small and always will. £20 per point is the largest I've ever traded per individual trade, but generally I'll trade 1/4 of that maximum unless something is dripping free points all over the place and set ups like that don't come often! It's a good idea to stick a couple of £20 notes on your monitor to remind yourself of the value of the numbers on your screen....and if like me you started with nothing, to remind you of those early days where having £20 was the difference between eating an evening meal or going hungry!
Hope I've explained myself and redeemed the wrong impression my post may have given. I do like writing essays so aplogies for that, but ultimately, in answer to the OP's question, yes, you can make money, or even an income from spreadbetting.
P.S On another SB project I worked on, I looked at closing all but 5% of every day trade that was taken in the same direction as the main weekly trend, placing stoploss below/above the 3rd to last Weekly candle. There were various rules I added to the system over time, but it worked and the results were impressive. Over time, you can build quite a sizeable position in a particular market without having to use any margin, or risk an overall loss. I think it's a strategy that could benefit many day traders who are relatively new to spread betting, but for some reason, most wont entertain it.
Last edited:
Sorry mate, but you don't come across as one I would trust with my money (not that I imply you are), you talk too much and not about trading issues that really matters. You have a nice way of putting the words though.
____________
"Take control with Risk & Money Management"
Last edited:
we talking 49 months experience times an average of 30 days per month equals 1470 days. spending 8 hours every single one of those days studying the market equals 11760 hours. i think most here agree that studying the market for 8 hours a day for 1470 days in a row is toss. so based on the fact you have over exaggerated your efforts. its highly likely you doing the same for your results.
MajorDutch
Established member
- Messages
- 865
- Likes
- 87
convincing vendor in the making?
Similar threads
