FTSE Spread Betting
May 29th, 2010I was chatting to my mate the other day about investing. He has been priced out of the housing market and would like to invest some of his savings. We were chatting about it and I suggested that he looks at FTSE spread betting.
He looked at me as if I was mad. We had a discussion about it and I thought that not many people know about FTSE spread betting so I decided to put this site up about it. I think discussing it will allow you to see some options even if you don’t decide to do it yourself.
OK before I suggested ftse spread betting I knew that he wanted to invest in the UK as this is what he would feel most comfortable doing. He knows what it is and hears about it on the TV so he would be able to follow it.
We first discussed holding individual shares and the risks involved in doing that. He was quite adamant that he wasn’t interested in individual shares.
We then spoke about managed funds, trackers and I raised the issue of etfs. As we were speaking about that I could tell that he liked the idea of a tracker. Cheaper than a managed fund and tend to have better returns (apparently).
It was at this point that I mentioned FTSE spread betting. He didn’t like the word betting so I explained some of the benefit of it.
FTSE Spread Betting has lots of advantages and I will briefly go over them now before going into more detail in future posts.
- With FTSE spread betting you don’t have to pay tax on your profits or stamp duty in the UK.
- You don’t have to pay commission so you can start of with a small amount of capital.
- There are small minimum capital requirements so he would easily be able to open an account.
- If you wanted to do something other than FTSE spread betting then you could do so from the same account.
- It is easy to learn.
The next point I will make about FTSE spread betting can be positive to some people and negative to others. You trade on a margin so you use leverage. This is great when you make a profit but can be devastating when making losses. It is important to understand this risk before you start. It is possible to lose more than your initial deposit with FTSE spread betting.
Talk soon