Who punts on the stock market?

[BlasterBates]

Be very careful of stop-losses.

Firstly sometimes the price will dip momentarily, say over a day trigger the stop-loss, cause a sale and a day later they're back up. That happened to me so I don't use them anymore. But then I do buy and sell volatile stocks.


Secondly there are spreads so when you buy and sell you can lose 10% easily simply on the spread, nothing to do with the price. So it is expensive, it can mean a triggered stop-loss on 10% causes 15-20% losses. But admittedly this does depend on market liquidity.

Thirdly if the market suddenly crashes you may very well find you get the crappiest price of the day.

Personally I prefer to do without.

[_V_]

What's the consus on spread betting? I don't really do stock market investments (I love property ), but spread bets look like fun and no tax either.

A good thing to play with?

[Pondlife]

What's the consus on spread betting? I don't really do stock market investments (I love property ), but spread bets look like fun and no tax either.

A good thing to play with?

I think that there's the potential to get seriously burnt. In short your losses are not limited to the money you've put in.

[_V_]

I'm playing using https://www.tradindex.com/index.asp

I've just managed to lose £1K in about 15 seconds.

Thank god it's not real money.

[BlasterBates]

It just looks like futures trading. Futures are very similar in that they go up and down with the current market, and give you an opportunity to speculate on stocks indices, FX rates etc. It would be interesting to compare.