Scalpers and Trading the News!!

Spread betting is not suitable for scalpers. Full Stop. The spread betting companies do not want the scalping business although they will not admit this. That is not in the least surprising, since they are dependent on trading on the London Stock Exchange order book to match positions taken by what is probably a largish number of traders, often acting in unison or nearly so. Even with clever computers they would be dependent on trading using aggressive orders thereby costing themselves the spread and making 'dealing for free' totally uneconomic for those trades.

Personally I don’t believe any forex or spread betting company has your interests at heart either, but there again I don’t believe that they will directly rip you off. That said, put yourself in the position of the managing director or director or whoever is "Big Cheese". How would you feel about giving tons of cash away every major news report, imagine at 13:29 on the first Friday of the month your system is fit to bust with every man and his dog trying to get their straddles in place. If I was that person I would be very keen to find a way to even things up a bit, if I could body swerve only half of the punters and put them on the wrong side of the trade, wouldn’t that solve the problem because the losers would pay the winners. If your trading desk struggles and throws everything into confusion for that vital minute would you want to fix it??? If orders disappear off the screen while the system is trying to keep up with the trading and only get filled when there is a lull in the battle in other words the top of a whipsawing spike is it in your interest to fix that??? I think not

My attitude is, if something doesn’t suit you change it or work around it. I have traded the various news reports with mixed results, I don’t think it is the way to become a good trader (personal opinion) as too much is left to chance and in my experience a lot of split second decision making. I still have a little dabble but only with tiny amounts. I find it much more profitable to play price action on 1hr and 4hr charts, and its a lot less stressful.

If they’re available to you, spread bets are a very tax-effective way of trading the markets (there is no tax to pay on profits in the right jurisdictions) although they also have certain disadvantages, the main one being that you’re effectively trading against the company giving you the prices, namely the bookmaker. Now, in reality, the prices quoted for spreads can’t move too far away from the standard futures for too long otherwise there’d be a significant arbitrage opportunity, but it can be very frustrating when price servers ‘inexplicably’ go down at times of rapid price movement, or the bid/ask spreads widen dramatically outside normal market hours, or a seemingly winning bet is revoked on the basis of ‘unfair advantage’! (That last one’s a cracker – win too much and they’ll say you’re taking advantage of them. A bit like winning at a casino – you’re not meant to do that so “go away and play somewhere else”). As you can probably tell, my own opinion of spread bets is that tax efficiency is probably the only advantage they offer to the serious trader.

However, during the learning process, spread betting offers an economic way to hone your skills and steadily build your trading bank given that you are not affected by any of the above potential negatives – we trade serious amounts of money so we expect everything to be absolutely perfect, but don’t be put off using a spread betting service as a stepping stone to bigger things.

...Picture this "spreads of 1 & instant execution" (no mention of any names) a dream for any trader...
then you start making consistent money - your account is limited...
the instruments you were successful with are now
"not available for internet trading"...
wait it gets better... your account gets set to manual execution...
and better than than... quotes as a result of manual execution come back upto 2 mins later AND upto 6 pips away from the actual market price at that time...!!!
but you still make some money so they stop you from trading...
they don't tell you they've done this (earn interest on your cash etc)...
I don't notice this because I trade from various accounts (spread the eggs - diff baskets) - when I do notice you call them and they tell you that you are trading on incorrect prices - WHAT?... and I'm the ONLY ONE? - WHAT?... They're gonna fix the issue as its a price feed issue (Only for Me!!?)... should take 2-3 weeks... Lucky I got other baskets!...
Anyway... want to give them a fair chance...So I wait and wait... then decide to trade 1 month later... and it says I am not allowed to trade!...
Phone up... My account is closed! - WHAT? And no one told me!?!
Surprise surprise... I was making money... anyway needless to say the account is closed and my money is mine (they did return it promptly)
They are still happy to send me "junk emails"???!!!

I know someone with an account who made most of their money on a particular instrument - they've just experienced they can’t trade that instrument online anymore!

Anyway... excuse the sarcasm... you can probably tell that this just happened recently so I'm still a little mad at them!... ok...

(sharp intake of air..... and..... exhale... ahhhhhh....)

I am still trading with a Capital Spreads and they are really good for the most part - only issue is "price no longer valid" means you miss out on a lot of the volatile times as you simply won’t get into (or out of) a trade... but that’s the only issue... the trades I get into are fine... and the CGSL is a good idea and you can move the SL to a more manageable level as your risk appetite dictates...

CMC are good - I have traded with them from the start (and still do) originally CFDs until I discovered they did spread betting too, and someone mentioned above about auto rollover of positions... that is brilliant - you can take a truly long term view without worrying about expiries! They have instant execution too, spreads are reasonable and they are open 24 hours and have a chat system built into the software which helps rectify issues immediately if they arise.