Is anyone here a full time consistent spreadbetter?

[trader_dante]

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.

Actually I use neither intraday chart or datafeed. Since I have the dual problems of being at work and having to constantly look over my shoulder and working on a very slow computer, I can't run any charting programs although I sometimes look at the one in IG Index for EOD data.

Day trading can work fine if you trade in a fast moving market where the spread is only a tiny part of the days range. The DJI and Crude Oil are perfect examples of this.

I've been trading my "loophole" for several months now.

 

[Ripcord]

Interesting reading this thread.

I am someone who derives the majority of their income from spreadbetting. I still have a full time job although its a very flexible senior sales role where I work from home a lot. For the last nine months I have managed to achieve on average double what I take home from working for a living.

This has not been easy in any way. I have been trading for seven years, read all the books, bought systems, tried to trade everything and blown my account up too many times to mention. This will be the first year where I have consistantly taken more money out than I have put in.

I just limit my trading to forex GBP,EUR and CHF and my daily target is 50-70 pips in total across all three. The main reason that I am now successfull has not been some miraculous hidden system that you often see touted on here but the discipline to stick to a trading plan, have a target and when it is achieved then WALK AWAY. I no longer give the profits I made in the morning session back in the afternoon one. My other personal crusade has been correct money management, if you get this and the exits right then you worry less about the entry points.

Just for reference I find the extra £1500 a week comes in very handy. I'll start worrying about the tax man chasing his share if I go pro early next year.

It is possible to win but it is a hard slog to get there! (for me anyway)

 

[Bigbusiness]

Interesting trader_dante. Does your method only work with spreadbets? I would have thought that it might be easier to trade the YM with a 1 point spread than the DJI with a 5 pt spread. As the spreadbet companies seem to follow the futures prices, there might be more profit trading futures.

 

[trader_dante]

Yes - it only works with SB companies unfortunately.

I'm keen to move away from SB and begin "real" trading (preferably in the futures markets) but I think the fact that I can consistently make money clouds my judgement.

I forget that I'm taking it from a company not from the market and of course there is a big difference.

Making money on a regular basis inflates your ego and as many of you probably know, or have heard, the biggest losses come after the consistent wins when you are at your most confident.

 

[hallto]

Day trading can work fine if you trade in a fast moving market where the spread is only a tiny part of the days range. The DJI and Crude are perfect examples of this.

.

Good point trader_dante. If you take that view further, you move to the thinking that there is a positive corelation between the chances of profiting on a trade and either the length of time that the position is held or the volatility of the underlying. The higher either of these factors, the smaller the overall negative effect of the spread on the profitability of the trader. I suppose this is why day-traders prefer volatility as, by there very nature, they will have very little time horizon to work with. Perhaps week-traders are more successful.

 

[Edster]

Making money on a regular basis inflates your ego and as many of you probably know, or have heard, the biggest losses come after the consistent wins when you are at your most confident.

Yup. I can vouch for this. Made a whacking amount in July so thought - right, now if I just double my bets I'll be a millionaire soon enough! As you can guess, it didn't go well and now I'm back to square one. Still, it's all in the learning process. I won't do it again!

 

[houdani]

Yup. I can vouch for this. Made a whacking amount in July so thought - right, now if I just double my bets I'll be a millionaire soon enough! As you can guess, it didn't go well and now I'm back to square one. Still, it's all in the learning process. I won't do it again!

ive got the same sad song to sing,made lumps of money last winter trading the dow.became convinced i had 'arrived' then promptly flushed it all down the toilet thinking this cant be happening to me, all the way down ha ha. a lesson i wont be forgetting in a hurry.

 

[trader_dante]

ive got the same sad song to sing,made lumps of money last winter trading the dow.became convinced i had 'arrived' then promptly flushed it all down the toilet thinking this cant be happening to me, all the way down ha ha. a lesson i wont be forgetting in a hurry.

One of the hardest, but in my opinion, most important things to do when you have had a significant losing streak is to take a break from trading.

Maybe a week or two just to clear your head. When you begin again you should decrease your trading size by half, increasing it to its original size as you regain confidence.

 

[marben]

Hi,

To answer the original question, I trade for a living using SB. I swing-trade UK FTSE100 stocks, typically over timeframes of 1-4 weeks. I have now been trading full-time for nearly a year. For the 1st 3 months my stake was 1/4 of my eventual size, 1/2 size for the next 6 months and then full size for the last 2 months. I'm still learning and am making a small but acceptable (gven trade size) profit for the 1st year.

My trading methods are based on Elder's triple screen trading system.

You can see details of my trading in this thread:
http://www.trade2win.com/boards/showthread.php?p=203974#post203974

Regards,

Mark

 

[PurplePerson]

..the biggest losses come after the consistent wins when you are at your most confident..

Been there, done that.
Made enough in the first 10 weeks this year to last me this year,next year and into the year after - then saw most of it evaporate in 10 days - partly through rolling too many positions simultaneously at the March expiry date instead of cashing them all in. Spent the rest of this summer steadily regaining lost ground when I shoulda been on the beach.

Currently got 4 dozen quarterly sbets running. Mostly December expiry, some September. All small or medium UK stocks. Some positions get cashed in early (weeks/days, VERY rarely same day). I am not quickwitted and fastfingered enough to be an intraday trader. I never touch indices or commodities.

 

[Naz]

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.

I'm sure i know that loop hole or one very similar although i wont print it out on the board.
I learnt it from a trader i met in the city who showed me live how he played it.As you say every trade is profitable, unfortunately he couldn't do it with more than £5 a tick which restricted the returns he could make.

Mind you this was a number of years ago and when he first started doing it he made thousands every week because he was able to trade £100/tick.He was soon found out and restricted.

Very interesting to see its still working.

Naz

 

[ukhero]

I'm not a Pro just an amateur. I don't do it professionally. My winnings were meant solely to be pocket money.

I SB the FTSE and the DJ.

Well I've made money, and yes, I've lost it. Well haven't most of us!

So, in regards to SB: what did I do wrong and how can others benefit from it:

A. Stick with what you know. Don't diversify because you 'THINK' you can see a gain. In the long term you'll loose out. I know so little about FX so why the hell did I bet so much!

B. Only view your chosen market / index / FX ect; too much visual data can distract.

C. Don't be fooled into thinking that you need to bet every day. Yes, the temptation is there.

Looking back on this years results, having done my home work, if only I bet on what I really considered as a strong certainty and went to the pub when the market looked uncertain I would have increased my starting bank by 700%. As it is, I ended up with a 70% loss. At the moment, and following my own hard lessons, I'm up by 25%. But it's a damned bitter road.

Yours

UK

 

[Pringle]

Hi,
I am a full time spread-bet trader. I have been making good money doing this for nearly four years.
I trade a £40K account split between two SB firms. I pay no tax and have a letter from the IR stating that I do not have to pay tax on my winnings even though it is my sole source of income. (I have it framed on my office wall)
I average about £3000 profit per month, although it varies a lot. I have made as much as £8K in a month but obviously I have losing months when I can lose several grand.
My preferred markets are the common currency pairs as well as commodities especially gold and silver. Trades can last anything from a few hours to many weeks.

I would say for a good trader making returns of 5 to 10% per month on your account size is quite realistic. Even so I am probably pushing my account to the limit. I need about £2500 p month to live on so I don’t really have a lot to spare. It would be more comfortable with a £50K account to trade so I could reduce my stake size sometimes, and that is my next objective.

The worst parts of the job are of course the stress when things go wrong. Having to withdraw funds from your trading account to live on when it is taking a hit is very worrying. I have had draw-downs of nearly 50% twice now and I hope never to have to experience that again although I probably will.

I do not regret leaving my day job for a second. I work from home, see lots of my wife and kids, have lots of free time and enjoy what I do.

Long may it continue!

I would be interested in hearing from any other full time spread betters out there to compare notes, stories etc.

Cheers

Pringle

 

[Anonymous]

loopholes in some of the companies

I don't think they should be called loopholes, if one company acts as a market maker it makes the price according to what it thinks will allow it to make money.

A trader taking the opposite position would be looking for something which gives him an advantage over that company.

Given that a trader knows how to handle market risk, the other opportunities could come not by the market price from say charts, but rather the particular platform which he is using. One company which I am testing out at the moment gives that particular advantage although there is rule there preventing its customers from benefitting too much from that "loop hole". With that company alone a trader can double his account every month.

 

[BinarySoft Chris]

I don't think they should be called loopholes, if one company acts as a market maker it makes the price according to what it thinks will allow it to make money.

A trader taking the opposite position would be looking for something which gives him an advantage over that company.

Given that a trader knows how to handle market risk, the other opportunities could come not by the market price from say charts, but rather the particular platform which he is using. One company which I am testing out at the moment gives that particular advantage although there is rule there preventing its customers from benefitting too much from that "loop hole". With that company alone a trader can double his account every month.

how do you know that you and trader_dante are talking about the same thing?

 

[Anonymous]

There may be many reasons that allows for consistent winnings, one being mispricing, I don't think trader_dante could be talking about something too different, like a complete problem with that particular company's management.

 

[trader_dante]

To clarify: The "loophole" I speak of is due to mispricing. However, the other trading strategy I use is scalping on profitable opportunities caused by a high level of volatility in the Crude Oil market.

 

[Anonymous]

I was just making a blind guess.

 

[orky]

St Albans Area

Interesting reading this thread.

I am someone who derives the majority of their income from spreadbetting. I still have a full time job although its a very flexible senior sales role where I work from home a lot. For the last nine months I have managed to achieve on average double what I take home from working for a living.

This has not been easy in any way. I have been trading for seven years, read all the books, bought systems, tried to trade everything and blown my account up too many times to mention. This will be the first year where I have consistantly taken more money out than I have put in.

I just limit my trading to forex GBP,EUR and CHF and my daily target is 50-70 pips in total across all three. The main reason that I am now successfull has not been some miraculous hidden system that you often see touted on here but the discipline to stick to a trading plan, have a target and when it is achieved then WALK AWAY. I no longer give the profits I made in the morning session back in the afternoon one. My other personal crusade has been correct money management, if you get this and the exits right then you worry less about the entry points.

Just for reference I find the extra £1500 a week comes in very handy. I'll start worrying about the tax man chasing his share if I go pro early next year.

It is possible to win but it is a hard slog to get there! (for me anyway)

Great Post. Just noticed you are in St Albans. Well I am also in your area. Perhpas we could share info. for mutual gain!

regards

Orky

 

[Spreadbetteur]

Interesting that the two loopholes mentioned only worked with small bets. Why is that ? I guess because the SB companies treat larger bets differently and are more liekley to offer a requote or price expired ticket if the price has moved in your favour in the time between placement of bet and confo their end.