Financial Spread Betting
What is Financial Spread Betting?
A Financial Spread Bet is an agreement between a customer and a provider to exchange the difference between the opening and closing value of the bet.
With Financial Spread Betting, you are simply speculating on the direction of the future price movements in an underlying instrument; you specify an amount you want to bet on each point movement. Your profit or loss is simply the difference between the opening price and closing price of your bet multiplied by your stake.
Financial Spread Betting offers a tax-free* alternative to trading on underlying financial instruments such as equities and index markets. Financial Spread Betting is a versatile tool that can help you to profit from both upward and downward movements in prices (although you can make losses).
Financial Spread Bets are a margined product. You only deposit a fraction of the overall value of the trade (typically 10%). Financial Spread Betting therefore allows you to take a much larger position than if you were buying the full-value instrument. However, losses are magnified in exactly the same way.
In addition to the Margin Requirement to establish a position, if your position moves against you, you may need to make further deposits. This is because you must meet the full value of running losses as well as maintaining the Margin Requirement. It is important to understand that you can make or lose much more than your initial deposit, unless you use a Guaranteed Stop Loss order.
Bets are generally made in Euro (in € per point) even if you bet in non-Euro products. Bet sizes can vary from small to very large although in order to hedge larger bets, there may be a delay while we work the order in the relevant market.
Why do Financial Spread Betting?
There is no great mystery why there are now an estimated 400,000 individuals who are using Financial Spread Betting in Ireland and the UK. Read more »
Our Financial Spread Betting Account
Our Financial Spread Betting account provides you with access to our full range of Financial Spread Bets and our Guaranteed Stop Loss service, which assist in the control of risk by guaranteeing the execution price of a Stop Loss order. Read more »
How Financial Spread Betting Works
In the stock market, when you want to deal in traditional shares, you go to a stockbroker and they will quote you two prices. Read more »
The benefits at a glance...
- Leverage - enables you to produce a greater percentage profit or loss from each trade.
- Hedging - gives you options which could allow you to protect your portfolio against share price drops.
- Trade short - you could profit from falling share prices, as well as rising (trade long).
- Financial Spread Betting is currently free of Irish and UK Capital Gains Tax. All spread bets are currently free from stamp duty.*
- Exposure to UK, US, European and other international equities, indices, sectors, commodities and FX.
* Financial Spread Betting is currently free of Irish and UK Capital Gains Tax. All spread bets are free from stamp duty. Tax laws may change and are subject to individual circumstances.