The leading spread bet and CFD provider IG Markets has launched some chart recognition software, and it begs the question – is this going to bring more people into charting? Charting is controversial. Essentially it is a belief that the near future can be predicted by the near past. More [...]
With spread bets and most futures contracts the only way you’ll see dividends is when they are reflected in the share price. Before a dividend is due to be paid the share price rises and after the dividend has been paid the share price falls. This is not the case [...]
There are a number of ways of speculating or hedging on house price movements. Spread betting is the most popular way, although there the futures can also be used, but this tends to be used by professionals. There are a number of advantages of spread betting on the housing market; [...]
Buying or not buying a house can be one of the biggest financial decisions that someone could ever make, and it’s probably the first big non-career decision that most people do make (unless they are putting off starting a pension). Either you can stay out of the market, and risk [...]
Spread bets, futures and contracts for difference can cover a number of different areas, one of the most interesting of these is for house prices. There are two reasons (we can think of) as to why you would do this. The first is to hedge against a bigger position that [...]
As human beings we are blessed (or otherwise) with not knowing when we will die. This means that we are not quite sure where we are in our physical lifecycle. However we actually have a pretty good idea of where we are in our investment lifecycle. The investment lifecycle is [...]
It sounds like a nightmare. Why would anyone want to put their pension on the futures market? Yes you could retire rich, but the chances are higher that you will be headed for the poorhouse. It really does not sound like a good idea. We will have another post later [...]
Contracts for difference were popular in the hedge fund community throughout the 1990s, but they were unknown to retail investors until the late 1990s. Their growth among retail investors was greatly helped by the growth of online trading. Contracts for Difference, due to the fact that they are a bet [...]
Contracts for difference are a relatively new product that enables an investor to bet on the movement of a share. They were first used in a big way in the early 1990s in the Trafalgar House’s takeover of Northern Utilities, when it was used by the takeover team as a [...]
Spread bets and Contracts For Difference (CFDs) are both bets on a company’s share price without buying the share itself. It’s possible to short shares with both and it’s possible to get exaggerated returns. There are also some tax advantages, for example there is no stamp duty to pay. [...]
