Leverage is one of the most considerable factors in the spread betting concept, and a core part of what makes it a popular trading method (in addition to spread betting favourable tax treatment). Without leverage, which represents the core of spread betting as a trading instrument, the opportunities for profiting from incremental ticks in the market would be significantly less frequent, and the spread betting proposition altogether less attractive.
Leverage, also known as gearing, is best described as an artificial amplification of a trading transaction size in order to deliver stronger returns on a given spread bet. In share dealing, for example, you may be able to arrange to cover 5% of a transaction’s total size with your own capital, with the remainder being funded by the broker on a short-term casual financing arrangement, thus allowing you to profit from market movements on the total transaction size rather than on a straight transaction for the same amount.
Leverage: Working Example
Let’s assume you have trading capital of £5. With leverage, you can notionally increase your trading capital to £100 for a particular transaction. When the market moves up 10%, your account will rise to £110, at which point the leverage portion is paid back to the spread betting broker. This leaves you with £110 – £95 – £5 = £10 in profit – a 200% return on your £5 capital. As this example expresses, leverage can be a significant earner, and helps make the most of winning positions when they arise.
How Leverage Works
The leverage component of spread betting works in a slightly different way, and can take place on two separate levels. Firstly, leverage is built into the spread betting transaction in the sense that minor movements are automatically geared up to deliver larger returns. Unlike most forms of leverage, which comes as a result of borrowed finance (and attract an additional cost as a result), the inherent leverage in spread betting arises by virtue of the fact that a one point movement returns 100% of the original wager. Of course, the same is also true in reverse, with a one point decline leading to a 100% loss, and so on. It is this leveraging effect that makes spread betting instantaneously both highly profitable and highly risky for investors.
The second element of leverage in spread betting transactions that can come into play is leverage in the more traditional sense – that’s leverage that is fronted by the broker and then paid for by the trader in the form of overnight financing costs. The impact of this kind of leverage is to artificially bolster the transaction size – so, instead of trading at 10p a point, you might be able to trade at £10 a point. This form of leverage is arguably even more risky than that built in to the DNA of spread betting as a transaction, given that the leveraged portion has to be paid back and accounted for with interest.
The overall impact of leverage is to speed up the trading cycle, and to maximise both profits and losses through trading with larger proportionate stakes. As such, leverage can be seen as the classic double-edged sword – on the one hand, it can deliver wild returns in a matter of minutes that would simply be unattainable in more traditional markets, while on the other it can rip the rug from underneath your feet and cost you your trading livelihood in no time at all, as a result of one or two bad decisions.
Key to tackling the threats and opportunities posed by leverage is understanding, and a working knowledge of both the advantages and disadvantages this leverage effect can bring.
Advantages
Disadvantages
Managing Leverage Risk in Spread Betting
Key to striking the right balance between the positive and negative aspects of leverage is the ability to manage your risk exposure, both in terms of the positions you choose and the amount you stake on each trade. Part of the holy grail of successful spread betting lies in determining when to leverage up, and when to take a modest exposure, and there are a variety of techniques and strategies in spread betting that can be deployed to manage risk in the most efficient and pragmatic ways possible.
While much of the day to day, transactional business of spread betting is fast paced and operational, it pays not to lose sight of the end game. Remember that very few successful traders ever made it big with that home run trade – you don’t need to hit it out the park every time to be successful. When you adopt a longer term mindset, you can start to accept individual losses when they inevitably rise, safe in the knowledge that your aggregate trading portfolio should increase through shrewd trading. To simplify, you can trade profitably 20% of the time and still make money, so long as your 20% of successful trades earn more than the 80% of failures. Key to this is the notion that losses should be cut and profits allowed to run to their conclusion.
While it feels counter-intuitive and somehow more risky to leave a profitable position running, this really is key to helping make up ground on the inevitable losses you will sustain. By adopting a more clinical approach to nipping losing trades in the bud before they gain too much momentum, you can help minimise your losses, to give yourself the best chance of profiting overall. When you do strike it lucky with a successful position, milk it for every last point you can – while it takes nerves of steel to hold out, this is the only credible way of strengthening your account and ensuring you generate an aggregate profit from your trading activities.
Leverage in the round is arguably the single most important topic when it comes to spread betting, aside from understanding the fundamentals of how transactions work, in order to give the best feel for .
While you will no doubt experience both the positive and negative effects of leverage on your trading account as you go, it is nevertheless important to constantly bear in mind the risks inherent in leveraged trading, and the impact these risks can have on your ultimate success or failure as an investor.