fifteen grand
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15K,
It is very public-spirited of you to relate your experience. I (and many others I suspect) have some understanding of where you've been. It's all too easy when you first start out to let losses mount up. When you have little experience and have read just a few books that explain how simple it is ("but it ain't easy" as one contributor's byline truthfully says) it's almost an insult to your intelligence that you could actually be wrong! But I've been there & would be surprised if others haven't also.
In the old days before spreadbetting, all you could do as an amateur punter was to buy some shares and that, unless you were exceptionally unlucky would limit your loss to about 50%. After a few doses of that, you began to suspect something was wrong, had a think, and set off in a different and hopefully, more scenic direction. There was no T2W either in pre-internet days. So, you can see that it's a lot more dangerous these days.
You have learned that SB'ing can be dangerous - but that applies to any leveraged instrument. "Experts" have been caught out also - and they "knew" what they were doing. It seems that you have just succumbed to normal human failings despite the warnings in the SB Co's terms etc - but smokers ignore the "it can kill you" message on every packet, so it is a common trait. Not that that makes your loss any better but at least you know you're human!
Do also remember that the credit crunch has also arisen from basic human failings. I hope that once you have repaid your losses - and that's got to be your immediate aim & will certainly give you some thought in discipline and determination etc - that you will come back to investing / trading and make a success of it. Like many things, it's not rocket science but you do need to understand and practise the basics. Not many of us can equal Lewis Hamilton but most can learn to drive safely and competently - if you can do that in the markets you'll do ok.
It would be interesting to know more details of your loss-making trades - was it a poor system? Poor personal discipline? Bad advice? I appreciate you may not feel like revealing this to 100K readers but as you say in your post, it may just make someone else think twice.
My suggestion would be to forget about encouraging the regulation of SB Co's etc. People whose main aim in life is to empty your wallet are like molesThey keep popping up all over the place and it's just like the cartoons - you go round bashing them down with a big mallet and they just keep popping up. Best put your energy into wising-up on how to look after your interests. And you are the best person to do that - no one else has your concern.
So, "chin up". When you look back, things are never as bad (or as good) as they seemed at the time. Some of the best traders ever (see the "Market Wizards" series of books by Jack Schwagger) have won & lost fortunes - maybe if you'd been more expert you'd have lost more!
Good luck and best wishes for the future.
thank you so much for your reply. I much appreciate it. IG closed my account today, after I sent them an email requesting it to be terminated. I only fond out they did it when I try logging in to my account. After everything, didnt even get an email back, confirming they did close it.
I work within the financial media industry. I have been learning about investing and find it very interested. i wanted to invest in shares at first. But then a friend went to a course from Win Investing and they offer spread betting accounts to people. They market it well, tax free.. etc... The opportunity is great. But it demands great self discipline which I proved to fail greatly. Once I made 1600 out of 50 pounds. But I lost straight away. I got nervous after I first lost 3k, started to spreadbet all day, everyday, hoping i was going to make it back.If I had bought 30k in shares, and lost 50%, at least I would have something back now. The odds to lose everything would be a lot smaller. But now I have nothing, just a loan to pay and money in my credit card, which was completely free of debt. I was able to apply some intelligence to it at times but I think I got completely hooked. It will take me at least 3 years to pay for everything, but if I work constantly and not spend at all. I will have some 150 pounds to live after all expenses. It makes me depressed to think about it,
but I wont give up. I will never spread bet again as i think it only suits the very disciplined. But I will continue to follow the markets and maybe in about 5 years time, I can start buying some shares again.
If I continue after having debt, then I would be completely insane. I put bets of 50pounds per point on the DOW.
But hey, I could have lost my house, it could have been worse. It could have taken ages until I realized what I was doing wasn't healthy. No one else knew, people asked me how i was doing but I lied all the time.
In regards to telling you my strategies, I don't think it would be more embarrassing then telling people that I lost all this money.
I placed short term bets on the Dow. Started with the FTSE, but as I got home later on, i thought it was better to bet during market hours. The first big chunck of money I lost was when the US was reporting employment figures for March. I placed a 30pounds bet that the dow was going to go down, a bit before 1:30pm london time, on the first friday of April. But when they announced the results, the dow shot up more than 50 points and triggered my stop loss. Just before it happened, IG logged me out and when I managed to log on again, i lost 1800 pounds. I opened other accounts with other companies and none of them went up on the dow that day as much as IG did. I phoned them up and they stood by their figures. I shold have known then but I got really stressed and just wanted to make it back. Never did. Just lost more and more, completely lost any sense I had.
Thank you for your support.