Punters bet on Support holding above 10,000 on DOW

Spread betting traders have been attempting so far this week to pick the bottom of the downward move in stock markets.

Many punters were stopped out on their longs on individual stocks by the sharp falls in the Dow, FTSE and Nikkei between Thursday and Monday, although bookmakers said that others managed to make profits with short positions, particularly on the S&P and Nasdaq.

IG Index said that most clients have been looking for a bounce this week, while Finspreads said that its customers were betting long, apparently on the view that support would hold above 10,000 on the Dow. IG said that AstraZeneca and the banks were among the busiest individual stocks.

Two markets were punters have generally been making money in the last week has been the dollar and oil. Finspreads said punters have been shorting the dollar against the pound and the euro, and also holding onto short positions in Brent and Nymex.

Betting is hotting up on the General Election, with spreads on the possible Labour majority in the new parliament rising sharply from 50-56 a fortnight ago, to 71-77 now.

This morning, Sporting Index is quoting Labour to win 358-363 seats, down from 413 in 2001, with the Tories to win 192-197, up from 166, and the Liberal Democrats to get 64-67, up from 52.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, April 20th, 2005 at 10:10 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.