As I write this a year on in February 2010, I have still lost money. I feel however that I am turning a corner with my trading and will hopefully start to recoup some of my losses. I aim to be profitable by the end of the year.
You are probably asking yourself how much I have lost. Well at the last check it was around £600. This is quite a lot of money for me at least. It's a big enough amount to make me think that spread betting is not for me. It's not as bad as it seems thought. I have opend spread betting accounts with 5 different companies and received bonuses of £450 for opening them. The 5 companies are paddypower, tradefair, cmc markets, E*Trade and Capital spreads.
Paddy Power
This was the first account that I opened back in 2009. I opened an accound wuth £50 thinking I could easily turn it into £100, £200 or more. How wrong I was. It wasn't long before I was adding another £50 to the account. I then discovered that if I open an account with them and fund it with £170 I could get £75 funded to my Account. This was fantastic news as this covered all of the money I had lost and more.
Tradefair
After realising that spread betting companies wanted your business I started searching for new ones that offered an incentive to joint them. I found Tradefair. They offered £75 when you opened and credited your account with £75. This in my opinion has one of the best trading platforms currently offered purely based on it simplicity and ease of use. This has been my account of choice for some time. So much so that I closed my paddy power account withdrawing £160 and put it into this account.
CMC Markets
These offered £100 bonus when opening an account with £200. These have the most comprehensive trading platform. Their marketmaker platform offers one of the best charting packages of all the spread betting firms currently on the market.
E*Trade
These offered £100 bounus when opening an account with £250. I have to say their platform is pretty rubbish. They offer the same platform as paddypower which I found a bit awkward and not very nice to use.
Capital Spreads
These offered the same as E*Trade, £100 bonus when crediting £250 to your account. I should note that all of these have strict terms and conditions for getting the bonuses. Most of them include making some non-equity trades and you cannot withdraw the bonus within the first 3 months.
Update 22-2-10. Capital spreads have just re-vamped thier spread betting platform. It is now very similar to Tradefair. I cannot make too much of a comment on it yet as I have not used it enough to give it a good critique but I will update soon with my thoughts about it.
Paddy power, Tradefair, E*Trade and capital spreads are all basically the same company. They are all part of the london capital group. I think this is fairly obvious from looking at their trading platforms. They are all very similar.
If you would like any more information on any of these spead betting companies please feel free to e-mail me and I'll do my best to answer any of your questions.
