Managing Your Spread Betting Away From the Trading Platform

LONDON, December 14, 2010 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- Financial spread betting should never come before anything else in your life - and, whoever you are, it is not always possible to be in front of the trading platform when there is a decision to be made. Cutting your losses and letting your profits run is a wonderful idea in theory, but how can you maintain that level of control over your spread betting when you are away from the trading platform? Here, spread betting provider City Index (http://www.cityindex.co.uk) looks at how to manage your spread bets around your everyday life.

Money management

Some spread betting (http://www.cityindex.co.uk/spread-betting/) traders focus their analysis on finding the perfect entry price point for their spread bet. Whilst this is important, two equally crucial elements in spread betting are your stake size and the price at which you plan to exit the spread bet.

Concentrating on your stop losses and profit targets just as much as your entry to the spread bet in this way can be an effective way of managing your trading away from a computer, as it means that you do not always need to be there to make a spread betting profit or loss. Limit orders play a large part in this, locking in target profits by automatically closing a winning trade once a market passes a trigger value set by you.

For example, if you bought GBP2 per point of the UK 100 at 5000, and then set your limit order to 5200, you would automatically make a profit of GBP400 (5200-5000 x GBP2) should the index then reach 5200, regardless of whether or not you were logged into the trading platform at the time.

Mobile trading

City Index launched the first Apple-approved spread betting iPhone application ( http://www.cityindex.co.uk/trading-platform/iphone-trading-platform.aspx) in October 2009 and the company's Market Strategist Joshua Raymond believes that the ensuing success of the City Trading(TM) app - City Index won 'Best Mobile Trading Platform' at the 2010 Money AM Finance Awards - is down to the greater level of autonomy it allows traders. "Giving spread bettors the ability to trade whenever they want and wherever they are is completely where we feel the industry is going. No longer are you restricted to making spread bets in front of the computer."

With the internet faster and more widely available than ever before, the flexibility of iPhone spread betting and mobile trading platforms (http://www.cityindex.co.uk/trading-platform/mobile-trading-platform.aspx) can allow you to make use of trading time that you did not know you had. Lengthy train journeys and coffee shop queues can be transformed into time spent researching market movements, analysing charts or even opening and closing positions.

Timeframe consideration

Having the ability to react quickly to market movements can make a significant difference in short-term spread betting. For this reason, unless you have constant access to a trading platform and your spread betting account (http://www.cityindex.co.uk/learn-to-trade/demo-account.aspx), it may be worth considering more medium to long-term spread betting. For a short-term trader apart from a trading platform, there can be a lot of pressure to frequently check the markets, and this can lead to spread betting mistakes and indecision.

Ultimately, financial spread betting in any form requires the trader to employ effective risk management tools and stay in tune with the financial markets on which they are trading. You can learn how to get more out of your spread betting with a free City Index seminar. See a list of upcoming dates and topics at http://www.cityindex.co.uk/learn-to-trade/seminars.aspx.

Spread betting and CFD trading are leveraged products which can result in losses greater than your initial deposit. Ensure you fully understand the risks.

SOURCE City Index