Spread betting on the markets is loaded with traps and unknown instances which are likely to put the brakes on even the most experienced of spread bettors. Nearly every trader at some point in their ventures, has made the mistake of withdrawing before they should have rather than wait to realise the upside of their trade.
Winning and Losing Spread Bettors Differences
However, there are a few integral disparities between a winning spread bettors and a losing one. All of which are important to know before to ensure that you leave your trades with a profit rather than a loss.
1) Set yourself a Target:
Traders who are orientated by goals plan efficiently to know when and where they intend to enter the market and leave it. By forward planning what you are hoping to achieve and preparing yourself for an exit rather than avariciously defying reason and continuing to the point of guesswork. You can better safeguard some decent wins rather than budget for the sizable losses that more than often follow.
2) Selecting your perfect platform:
Before you start planning to spread bet or even decide which trades you are going to choose first, you need to ensure you have selected the perfect partner and platform to bet on. There is no point giving most of your money away to fees or loose spreads, so opt for sites like CMC Markets, that feature an abundance of research material and trading strategies for free. A large choice of markets to spread bet on and of course tight spreads to ensure you keep your winnings and not them.
3) Training your Mind:
No doubt most of your will have heard of the different signals that exist to gauge your bets on, but many of these can be highly useful. If you are patient enough to learn them, you can select from Price/Earnings ratios all the way through to shifts in total volumes.
Many spread bettors will ignore these in a frenzied attempt to guess their way to riches. Focus and the use of some of these tools can help give you that competitive edge can turn your spread betting experience from a guessing game to a calculated risk that pays dividends.
4) Look at the Bigger Picture:
Most major indices are influenced by ‘headline’ news events such as a rate rise or a corporate profit warning, and having an intimate knowledge of these things can ensure you become a better and arguably winning spread bettor.
This also applies to those who take the time to look outside of the ‘daily trading graphs’ on offer and reviewing the history of the stock and trades in the previous weeks, months and years to trace any volatility or trends that may have been present in the history of the stock.
5) Setting Stop Losses:
For anyone who doesn’t want to find themselves spiralling into debt on the back of a bad trade, stop losses are an important thing to learn about. While implementing them can carry the risk of you being forced out of a trading position before it has a chance to recover its’ ground.
It is also there to ensure that a slide doesn’t continue, leaving you in a position that you could not possibly recover from or afford to be in.
6) Start small and grow bigger:
One of the major differences between losing and winning spread bettors is their potential craving to ignore risk and indulge a trade. Whereas most platforms will allow spread bettors to trade on several stocks and shares at the same time.
It is not always prudent to do so, especially if the market place is volatile and the risk of you missing the best buy in point or cashing out point is high enough that it outweighs your potential rewards.
7) Select your trade carefully:
One of the keys to becoming a winning spread bettor is having the ability to hone most of your effort on a smaller portion of the market. Thereby giving you a competitive edge against the field in terms of understanding potential trading patterns and researching the stocks.
Should you ignore these points of insight, you could miss out on obvious changes and patterns that may have happened before. While others who have done their research will simply use what they have learnt to pip you to the prize.
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8) Everyone loses at some point:
A key difference between a winning and losing spread bettor is their ability to handle defeat. If the markets were truly predictable, then other people would have cracked them a long while back. No matter how skilled you may be at seeing patters and analysing the information in front of you. Everybody will at some point in time find themselves on the wrong side of lady luck. It is coming back from it that separates the winners from the losers.
9) Understanding the difference between Wins/Losses and Profit/Loss:
If you made 10 individual bets and won 8 of them, while another makes 10 but wins just 2, is it really obvious who the better trade is? The answer is not what you’d necessarily expect, as a single successful trade can easily out weight several unsuccessful ones of smaller losses. Remember that your gross profit is the true number here, not the amount of winning trades that you made.
For more tips and tricks on winning recipes or to find out more information on becoming a successful spread bettor, stay tuned for regular updates. 🙂