Getting to grips with spread betting by David Renham

I have spent years avoiding spread betting as it looks extremely volatile. However, having read Dave Nevison’s excellent book “A Bloody Good Winner” I thought I would at least do some paper trading to see if it was worth pursuing with real money. One advantage of spread betting is that there are numerous markets to choose from – this gives horse racing punters far more scope than even the backing and laying scenario on the exchanges. 

Here is an example of one of the markets you can play – the description is adapted slightly from the Spreadex website. Please accept my apologies if you are an experienced spread bettor, but the following explanation will be helpful for the majority.