InterTrader has launched a new online training course catering to spread traders of all levels.  Hosted by expert trader Steve Ruffley “The Building Blocks of Trading” consists of five two-hour sessions every Tuesday, starting on 17th January and finalising on February 14^th.

The training programme covers the fundamental aspects of trading, ranging from routine planning all the way down to trading psychology.  Attendants will be supplied with training material and Steve Ruffley will be available to respond to any questions during the sessions.

Course Schedule:

    Title                        When                 Description
                                                      Setting goals is a
                                                      main part of life
                                                      and also business.
                                                      Devising a trading plan
                                 Tuesday 17th January is the key foundation
    Session 1 - Trading Plan     7.00-9.00 pm (GMT)   of stock market trading.
                                                      The markets are volatile
                                                      by their very nature and
                                                      a spread trader has to
                                                      absorb and react to a
                                                      constant stream of
                                                      new information. Learn
                                                      how to absorb the info
                                                      and take advantage of
    Session 2 - Planning &       Tuesday 24th January fluctuations in the
    Preparation                  7.00-9.00 pm (GMT)   stock markets.
                                                      Learn how to manage
                                                      your risk capital and
                                                      when to follow your
                                                      risk strategy consistently
                                                      to the letter, but
                                                      even more importantly
                                 Tuesday 31st January when to adapt it to
    Session 3 - Risk Management  7.00-9.00 pm (GMT)   market conditions.
                                                      Managing and controlling
                                                      your mindset (psychology)
                                                      is probably the most
                                                      underrated part of
                                                      trading. Learn how
                                 Tuesday 7th          to turn from a good
                                 February             trader into a great
    Session 4 - Psychology       7.00-9.00 pm (GMT)   trader.
                                                      In this section you
                                                      will learn how to
                                                      use advanced
                                                      oscillators in
                                                      conjunction with
                                                      the overall trend
                                 Tuesday 14th         and how to capture
    Session 5 - Oscillators and  February             the market
    technical analysis           7.00-9.00 pm (GMT)   sentiment.

Spreadex have announced changes to several of their NTRs on a number of markets due to recent changes in volatility. For example Silver Daily Future has been reduced from 150 to 80. The full changes are as below -:

Meanwhile in separate news, Capital Spreads have changed their policy on the treatment of dividends on futures-style bets for individual stocks. In the past dividends were included in the pricing of the futures bet, in addition to interest adjustments. Now the prices of futures share spread bets only take into account the interest adjustment, with dividends being dealt as a separate transaction at the appropriate time (in a similar way that they work with the rolling daily bets). The benefit of this is of course that it removes confusion in the pricing of futures style products.

WorldSpreads has released a statement saying that the company is very pleased with the client response to their recent mobile spread betting platform launch. As of 12 January 2012, a WorldSpreads spokesman stated that over 17% of their clients have utilised the mobile trading platform to access and monitor their trading positions whilst on the move.

The encouraging figures show that over 4% of active clients utilise some part of their daily trading activity on their mobile gadget. The United Kingdom is in the lead with about 8% of active clients have used the mobile platform to place a trade. WorldSpreads claims that those figures are likely to continue improving as their development team works on optimising the mobile trading platform for other operating systems, particularly when taking into context the ever-increasing adoption of smart phone and tablet devices. Company statistics show that mobile clients trade very much the same instruments that they trade on the WorldSpreads desktop version of the trading platform, with a slight inclination bias towards index trading.

Conor Foley, WorldSpreads CEO had this to say: ‘It is encouraging to receive the feedback that there has been widespread satisfaction from WorldSpreads’ clients regarding our new mobile trading platform. I am confident that the next releases will continue to improve the client’s mobile trading experience.’ The company is preparing the launch of a new mobile platform, optimised for Android, due for launch in Q1 2012.

Capital Spreads are now offering a trailing stop facility, permitting the stop to be moved automatically every time the trade moves by a user defined amount in the spread bettor’s favour.

Trailing stops help you to secure your gains as the market moves in your favour, giving you added flexibility as they will automatically track your profitable positions so that you don’t have to continuously monitor your position and move your stop manually.

Trailing Stops at Capital Spreads

 A powerful risk management tool to enable you to implement your trading strategy, simply tick the ‘Trailing’ box on the order ticket when placing a trade. You can also change a present stop order to be set to trailing from Order Book by clicking on the AMEND button.

Once you have ticked the ‘Trailing’ box you need to set the distance you want your trailing stop away. If the market then moves in your favour, the trailing stop will move in that direction at a set size of increments. For details of the minimum distances and set size of increments applicable to trailing stops please check the Capital Spreads website.

Please note that trailing stops are not available on all markets so you should check the Market Information sheets to see if the trailing stop facility is available. There are no extra charges for selecting your stop order to be trailing but trailing stops are not guaranteed.

Example of a Trailing Stop

Let’s take an example of how one could use a trailing stop loss. Let’s suppose you buy £10 per point of GBP/USD Rolling Daily at 1.6050. The level of the stop order is set at 1.6030 and the ‘Trailing’ box is ticked. Should the market move in the direction of your trade (i.e. higher) then the trailing stop will follow in that direction according to the set size of increments applicable to that market. If it is set to increments of 10 points (you can find this out from the Market Information Sheets), then if your GBP/USD Rolling Daily position moves higher by 10 points (to 1.6060), your trailing stop will jump up 10 points to 1.6040.

If GBP/USD Rolling Daily continues to rise without moving down, then for every 10 points it rises, your trailing stop will keep on stepping higher in increments of 10 points. If at some point GBP/USD Rolling Daily does turn lower, then your trailing stop will remain in place at the last level it has stepped to, acting as a normal stop order.

Quarterly Shares

Capital Spreads is also changing the equity future pricing policy to no longer discount future cash dividends. Instead, Capital Spreads will apply a cash adjustment to a client account to reflect the dividend, if this is applicable – which is on the whole a more transparent pricing policy.

Meanwhile, on separate news Capital Spreads has announced that it has won two awards this year: ‘Best Spread Betting Provider’ by What Investment and ‘CFD provider of the year’ by Financial Times and Investors Chronicle readers.

GFT has announced that it has added a number of additional markets to its binary offering.

We are told that GFT’s binary dealing platform was designed in-house specifically for binary traders. Every aspect of the binary platform, including the revolutionary DealWheel trading tool, has been developed to permit traders to react quickly to fast-moving binary markets.

New markets consist of -:

• Hourly up/down and ladder binaries for all of GFT’s 10 FX pairs
• Netherlands 25 up/down and ladder binaries
• Daily Euro Stocks 50 up/down and ladder binaries
• Daily AUD/USD ladder binaries
• Daily AUD/JPY ladder binaries
• Daily EUR/JPY ladder binaries
• Daily USD/CAD ladder binaries
• Daily GBP/JPY ladder binaries

“We are pleased to continue with our long tradition of listening and responding to our customers and delivering the markets they want to trade,” stated Jo Benton, Global Product Marketing Director for GFT Markets. “These additional markets will allow our customers more options in their trading portfolio.”

Binary customers can expect the GFT standards of fast execution, competitive spreads, access to free trading educational tools and resources, and knowledgeable 24/7 customer service.

CMC Markets has announced that it has added nine new cash commodity markets for clients to trade on its Next Generation platform.

The markets added are Feeder Cattle, Lumber, Rough Rice, Oats, Orange Juice, Cotton, Coffee Arabica, Palladium and Platinum. With this latest addition, clients can now choose from 26 different markets. CMC Markets has also cut its spreads on a number of commodity markets and popular cash commodities such as gold and brent crude oil are now quoted with typical spreads of just 0.3pts and 3.5pts respectively. The company now claims to offer the lowest spreads on cash commodities. A company spokesman stated that CMC Markets’ Next Generation trading platform, launched just over a year ago has resulted in a three-fold increase in new and migrated customers since the trading platform launched.

While the volatility seen in the wider market is unwelcome to many investors, some see it as an opportunity. Peter Cruddas, Founder of CMC Markets pointed out that spread traders tend to switch to commodities trading when markets are volatile to spread their risk.

He stated: ‘A key part of our strategy has been to invest heavily in bringing our customers the best technology on the market, and our Next Generation platform allows us to trade efficiently so that we can pass the cost savings onto our customers. These spreads are some of the tightest anywhere on the market, and we are also committed to keeping our average spreads low.’

City Index has recently changed its way of quoting the Wall Street rolling and daily future markets. In particular, City Index has now added a decimal place to its quote of the Dow Jones 30 rolling daily spreadbet. The company cited better pricing accuracy as the reason for the change. The spread betting provider will keep quoting the ‘Wall Street Rolling Spread’ market at just 1 point during market hours.

Thus, for instance instead of buying or selling at 11,231 – you will deal at say, 11,231.2, making the price more exact. City Index notified clients that they might need to re-add these markets to their watchlists in the event that they already have them listed. The move is a bit to what happened some years ago when some providers started adding an extra decimal place to certain forex currency pairs like the EUR/USD – ultimately translating in better transparency and increased levels of activity.

Comments: Spread betting companies don’t like scalpers yet such a change only encourages investors to day trade?

Having experienced a 300% rise in mobile spread trading over the past year, IG Index has launched its latest addition to its suite of mobile dealing applications with a new app for the Apple iPad.

IG Index clients can now choose from a range of trading applications that have been specifically designed to work with the different handsets including the iPhone, BlackBerry, Android and Windows Phone 7 – and now the iPad.

Tim Hughes, Managing Director of IG Index, commented: ‘The latest generation of smartphones has given us the opportunity to drastically improve our mobile spread betting software. This has been accompanied by a significant uplift in clients using their mobile handsets to deal on the move. We are confident that the bigger screen of the iPad and the accompanying improvements in functionality we have been able to deliver will make this application just as popular.’

The new iPad application from IG Index permits clients to customise the trading screen to display any combination of watchlists, order tickets and charts side-by-side. Non-clients can still download the application free of charge and access live market data, from the FTSE 100 price to currency pairs, commodities and others.

‘The iPad release puts us in a position to offer clients a tailored app for each of the major mobile devices,’ continued Hughes. ‘The iPhone may be leading market share for us right now, but in the three months since we launched our Android app we’ve seen a significant number of downloads. We have also launched our Windows Phone 7 app this month. It is premature to suggest that dealing on a desktop computer has had its day, but clients are certainly eager to see what can be done using complementary platforms.’

Estimates show that there are about 3.62 million people who presently own a tablet computer in the United Kingdom, having a 73% market share. Forecasts predict that another two million tablets will be sold in the UK during 2012.

UK spread betting provider Spreadex has launched an online casino offering in its bid to positioning itself as a one-stop gaming destination.

The company says that its new online casino offering, complements the company’s core products which now include fixed odds sports betting, spread betting and financial spread trading.

Spreadex clients will now be able to play a range of casino games including table games such as roulette and craps, card games such as blackjack, baccarat and online poker, as well as slots, scratch cards, video poker and other games such as keno and hi-lo. The online casino also features a live dealer webcam application where clients can view and chat with real-life croupiers and blackjack dealers.

Andy MacKenzie, spokesman at Spreadex noted that this latest offering follows their iPhone financial spread betting application launch in August and their mobile sports betting platform and sports fixed odds offering last year.

Andy added ‘New customer numbers as well as bet levels have been fantastic so far this year and we’re hoping the casino product will help to keep business strong before a planned revamp of our financial spread betting platform in early 2012.’

The latest launch follows a successful year for Spreadex with the company registering a profit of £11m at the end of its financial year in May compared to about £5.5m the year before.

Financial Spread Betting provider ETX Capital has recruited IG Group’s Hannes Schadek as head of sales trading for Germany and France, as the company looks to expand its foothold in Europe.

Schadek is reported to have joined ETX Capital on 17th October 2011, having worked at rival IG Group for the last four years where Hannes Schadek was key to successfully launching IG’s German and French business units.

Andrew Edwards, Chief Executive Officer of ETX Capital noted that the appointment of Hannes Schadek will bring much needed experience and focus to ETX’s German and French operations and reflects the company’s commitment to these countries.

‘He brings with him a wealth of experience from IG Markets where he had a similar role. Hannes is a German national educated at French and British institutions and has lived and worked extensively in France and French speaking countries. These unique professional and cultural capabilities give him an unrivalled ability to develop our German and French businesses.’

Dr John Wilson, executive chairman of ETX Capital noted that ETX’s expansion into continental will benefit from the expertise that Hannes bring. ‘We see significant opportunities for revenue growth across Europe and other regions and we are investing in the necessary resources to achieve this.’

ETX Capital is the trading name of Monecor Limited, which is authorised and regulated by the UK’s Financial Services Authority.