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.
.
