Spreadbet Challenge

[dc2000]

I am offten asked questions like " How much money can I make ?" " How much money do I need to make a living in trading ?" all difficult questions to answer objectively.

My challenge is to take a pot of £2,000 and trade it with a spreadbetter, with the goal of providing an income equivalent to that of a worker in a high street store. The time frame for this is one year.

Having looked at various spreadbetters I am looking for any recomendations you may have

The criteria is :
They must allow stop losses to be moved
They must allow limit buy and limit sell orders to be active at the same time away from the current price
They must allow a small amount per point ( this would currently rule out City Index and IG index as theirs are £3 and £2 respectively)
They must have an online platform that once logged in you stay logged in with no need to re-enter password before trade
The quotes must update in real time
There must be no more than 2 clicks to trade

At the moment the favorite seems to be finspreads but I am welcome to all suggestions

 

[chump]

DC,
Have you identified a specific market or instrument to be traded ?. This criteria would also limit your scope re an SB.

For what it is worth Finspreads platform to trade appears a bit on the slow side..you will often find "market suspended" as they adjust to moves and the quote process to trade can sometimes take a while as i intimated above. On the otherhand they have a wide selection of US stocks both cash and futures. Spreads are also wider than CMC..don't know about Capital Spreads..

Be interesting to follow your activity although you might post a warning for us ' kids ' along the lines of "Don't try this at home"...LOL

 

[donaldduke]

CMC meet all criteria except they use an Application not a browser front end.

A full time high street worker might take home 750 a month so you are aiming to make
on average about 40 pounds a day or 2% every day!

Hmm, although this would be easier with direct access it might be hard with via SB.

 

[neil]

No Risk money making plan

CMC meet all criteria except they use an Application not a browser front end.

A full time high street worker might take home 750 a month so you are aiming to make
on average about 40 pounds a day or 2% every day!

Hmm, although this would be easier with direct access it might be hard with via SB.

Get a job in Marks and Sparks and you can guarantee that amount a month with no worries about losing at, or suffering the stress of spreadbetting. :idea:

 

[iceman1265]

At the moment the favorite seems to be finspreads but I am welcome to all suggestions

Yes Finspreads would be good, but also check Capital Spreads as they offer tighter spreads, although they don't always fill at the price on screen.
Given that you only need to make £40 per day it shouldn't be too difficult. I daytrade Wall Street Cash with CS and average over 50 points per day. So at £1 per point it should be achievable.

 

[sidinuk]

Compound 2% per day for a year starting with £2,000 and you'll end up with about £350,000. Keep it going for 2 years and you'll have over £60 million. A tad better than most shop workers, except perhaps Philip Green.

 

[neil]

Good theory but..

Compound 2% per day for a year starting with £2,000 and you'll end up with about £350,000. Keep it going for 2 years and you'll have over £60 million. A tad better than most shop workers, except perhaps Philip Green.

Have you done it - £350000?

 

[sidinuk]

Neil, I was just trying to point out that although making £40 a day on £2000 sounds easy enough, in practice it represents an extraordinary effort.

 

[Bluewave]

Interesting thread dc2000 and I look forward to seeing how you pick your trades to make a retail worker's income!

Finspreads suits my purposes at the moment because, although slow at times (especially with my connection), it has a good range of shares etc to trade, you don't have to keep logging in, and small bet sizes are allowed. The main disadvantages are lack of being able to set limits before opening a trade via the online platform, and if attempting to day spread-trade, you wil see the dreaded "phone only" fairly often.

But for end-of-day traders the platform is good. You don't say whether you will concentrating on end-of-day or day trading....

Good luck!

 

[neil]

No probs.

Neil, I was just trying to point out that although making £40 a day on £2000 sounds easy enough, in practice it represents an extraordinary effort.

Sorry if I appeared abrupt - I take your point

 

[sidinuk]

No worries Neil. I didn't turn £2000 into £350000 when I was spreadbetting - more like £2000 into £40 and a lot quicker than a year!

 

[dc2000]

Thanks everyone for your responses looks like it will be cmc or capital 2nd as fins do not yet offer the limit order facility online.

I am told take home pay is £9k+ which is a bit less than I thought but I think it will still be hard to get consistancy, there are times in the year when you fall out of bed and make money and others where even if you had a twoway bet you would lose.

Im not sure what sort of trading I will be following yet I will have a think over the weekend but it will probably be on the US and UK indices

 

[TheBramble]

No worries Neil. I didn't turn £2000 into £350000 when I was spreadbetting - more like £2000 into £40 and a lot quicker than a year!

Absolute empathy with that situation Sid. As I imagine a few others have from their early days.

All we'd need to do to make our fortunes is write a book/run a seminar/burn a CD set - "How I turned £2000 into £40 in less than 6 months". Byline "Watch what I did and then, do something different, anything at all - just - DON'T DO THE SAME!

 

[sidinuk]

Nice Idea Tony, though I fear most beginners would rather go for something that tells them how to make loads of money not how not to lose it. That's the critical paradigm shift when you start thinking in terms of how much you can lose rather than how much you can make.

 

[adrianallen99]

You could start with explaining how you lost £50k in the stockmarket crash, got fired, started selling mobile phones to get money to trade. Then made £500k spreadbetting.

Oh no wait, that's Vince's sales patter

 

[CityTrader]

I am offten asked questions like " How much money can I make ?" " How much money do I need to make a living in trading ?" all difficult questions to answer objectively.

dc2000 - who exactly asks you these questions? Nobody has EVER asked me such banal questions... where on earth does making the same as a "high street shop " worker come into things? What's with the " challenge" ? This whole thing seems very bizarre to me, or am I missing the whole point?

 

[dc2000]

Hi CT they are usually asked after explaining what it is I do for a living and how it is done. The retail wage was just an example without using any specifics. As for the challenge it is just that a challenge to see if it can be done. Rather than saying you need at least £50k to trade, data feeds etc



dick_dastardly if the internet platform goes down you can close a trade over the phone even for 50p per point but at this time you can't set a limit order to open a trade over the net ie: if price falls to xxx buy, if price gets to yyy sell.

 

[Uncle]

Dick .............Finspreads will go phone trading only at the first sign of volatile markets to stop you profiting from a trade or just as important getting out of a trade that has gone against you. They cost me dear and as a consequence closed my account with them.

John

 

[dc2000]

+335 points this week but unfortunatly I could only trade my account rather than new CMC one

FSA rules and all, you can go into a bookies and put £2k on a donkey but try and put £2k into the market and they want to know your life story

 

[Bluewave]

+335 points this week but unfortunatly I could only trade my account rather than new CMC one

FSA rules and all, you can go into a bookies and put £2k on a donkey but try and put £2k into the market and they want to know your life story

Strewth, that's good. On which markets? Bet sizes? Techniques?

I have been doing my accounts and it doesn't look too clever....