Is financial spread betting gambling or investing?

Zoran,

It seems that your objection is not to FSB per se but rather to investing in individual stocks & commodities in the short term? It is possible to hold FSB positions for long periods and to use the lack of CGT & stamp to your advantage. It is also possible to cover your positions without leverage (as recommended by Shipman). I agree with you that it is easy to lose your shirt very quickly with leveraged positions and Shipman warns against this.

I think I understand where you are coming from - FSB is very often (usually?) a short term leveraged gambling play with all but the most expert traders losing over time.

Shipman however is advising the use of FSB as a tax-efficient way to invest over a much longer term than would be usual with FSB (months and years). I don't think his approach is gambling even if his trend following approach and belief in commodities are completely misguided. He also advocates that his approach should only be used in conjunction with the usual range of other less risky investments which is just common sense.
 


Bankrupt,

Yes, I have the objection of individual non professional investors thinking they can make money trading short or medium term.
Academic work proved such fact that even professional active managers on the longer run are under-performing the simple market index (the benchmark they are following when comparing results with - e.g. S&P 500 or any other).

Also do not forget that spread betting and futures or options markets are not making any value and they are in general zero-sum game.

How you are making non-leveraged play in spread betting?
You cannot choose the leverage factor but rather do it yourself somehow.
Why is that?
Spread betting companies should allow you to do that, is not it?
How you are making such non-leveraged position on 10 years?
Did you calculate costs and everything?

Do not forget to keep something long term you need to play futures game and the pricing and everything around futures is different then in direct market.

With spread betting companies you even do not have long term futures graphs covering 1, 2 or more years.
People are usually using spot price graphs to enter futures positions, do you?


If you are looking every week for exit or entry it is not long-term startegy.
It is market timing based on the simplest possible technical rules.
Those rules can be back tested on historical data easily.
Do you really think it is working?
If yes, test it and then come back and tell me I am stupid.

If it is even in profit such strategy needs to be better then some less risky investment method and also win over the inflation.

Usually the strategy is tested against simple buy&hold strategy over the longer period of time.
 

Why would you enter highly competitive leveraged game with the pros in futures/options marker?

You should have the proper trading strategy with an edge, back tested across many markets and against long historical data.
Even it is tested on old data it may not work in the future.
This is really the game for pros as individual investors has no chance apart from being lucky like flipping the coin.
On the long run you will be worse with this as somebody will be on the other side who will get money from you.

Harchibald said:
We agree (I think) that short positions in the stockmarket are gambling whilst long term holds are investment. What is the cut off point?
Click to expand...

Proper long term investment is not gambling.
Even shorting is not gambling for pros who knows something, e.g. these people that will win on the other side of your long position.
Market makers are winning regardless of being short or long as they know there are milk cows on the other side of the position.

What is my point that as individual investor you are taking too much risk in doing investments the wrong way.


You are dead wrong. The prices are based on the futures from LSE market.
Look is MAR-08 lower price then FEB-08 for crude and brent oil?
How is that possible, we must have the deflation

If you are looking spot price graphs and deciding to buy the future (e.g. JUN-08) position you are dead wrong about your entry or exit position.
What you are doing is buying the last available quoter future and then rolling it forever without thinking what is the cost, what is the risk and probably without even having the proper charts as spread betting companies are not providing them.

Harchibald said:
The Nobel Prize winners have as much of a clue about whether the current price is right or wrong as the average chimpanzee.
Click to expand...

They do not know what will price be neither but they are putting their odds in their favor by knowing more then you.
E.g. they are testing trading strategies and rules on the historical data and across markets so they know your method is not working in advance.
They also know academic research and what is working and what is not.
They have teams of people thinking and information that we cannot grasp or have at all.
At the end the CEO's of stocks they are trading are on their phone list.

If you think you are better then good pros then fine.
I agree you may be better of some pros as they are also loosing money.


You are holding just a few positions and that is bad as it is risky.
How the hell you know what you should hold and what will go up or down?
Based on that simplest MA trading system that everybody knows?
Such system is easy to test even in the Excel spreadsheet and you can do it yourself.

Look the Japanese market that did not recover for 15 years or stocks that still did not recover from the last bear market.

Commodities are even worse as they did not produce above inflation long term return. But who knows if Shipman is saying he must know better.
The time will show the future but my bets will be on more certain things.

Harchibald said:
I repeat, long FSB equity positions are biased in favour of the punter even after allowing for spread costs. But the volatility of actual outcomes swamps this small bias and makes short term FSB (CFD, Futures, GDT) positions gambling IMHO.
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Spread betting is invented to be leveraged.
You cannot choose the leverage. Why is that?
They do not like it.

OK, you can choose S&P 500 index and keep it forever in artificially made non-leveraged position, but did you calculate the cost of doing that through the futures market?
Do you have the historical data to prove your strategy is working or will work?

I will buy simple passive indexed ETF or fund with management yearly charges of 0.1% and brokerage fee to buy it and will have it for the spot price and not for some higher future price.
Calculate all costs of owning the future.
 
Zoran said:
You are dead wrong. The prices are based on the futures from LSE market.
Look is MAR-08 lower price then FEB-08 for crude and brent oil?
How is that possible, we must have the deflation
Click to expand...

Strong words Z

Before getting into the oil, I am dead right on futures equity prices. Consider the following example - I'll work on a year's futures rather than the usual quarter's, so as to use more familiar percentages.

Say the spot price of XYZ stock is 100, and the FSB 1 year price is 110 and you can borrow at 4%.

Sure profit strategy:

Sell FSB at 110.
Borrow 100
Buy XYZ at 100

In a year's time, let's say XYZ is 200 (doesn't matter what it is)

Settle in FSB for a loss of 90
Sell XYZ for 200
Pay back loan of 104

Hey presto, a profit of 6, guaranteed no matter what happened, and I didn't have to put a hand in my pocket.

The FSB future price of a traded equity has to be the spot price plus interest no matter what you or everybody else thinks is the most likely actual price in the future.

Trust me, I am right on this and not just because Delta states that is exactly how they calculate their prices.

Now the Oil is interesting, and you are dead right http://data.tradingcharts.com/futures/quotes/SC.html does expect oil to fall in price over the coming months.

Because of the physical nature of Oil there are complications storing it as a long position or being physically short of it. Say we wished to profit from the falling future prices we would need to borrow oil today, sell it in the cash market, buy it back more cheaply from a futures position and then give it back with interest. The problem is who is in a position to physically lend you barrels of oil?
 

Ah, sorry for hard words.
My only intention by spending time on this is to learn more and maybe grasp something I do not understand while offering other people to judge.
Also to offer people opinion that what looks simple is hardly that.

What is the spot price of FTSE 100 and S&P 500 and the price for MAR-08?

So we now know the price may be in contango or backwardation.

How are you calculating the risk of contango in your long term futures holding strategy?
Is this factored in your cost of keeping long term position?

Look this table where what commodity is at the moment:
http://indexuniverse.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=3215&Itemid=42

OK, so your simple investing strategy becoming more and more complex, is not it?

Harchibald said:
Trust me, I am right on this and not just because Delta states that is exactly how they calculate their prices.
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One addition to above is are prices of the offered futures the same for all spread betting companies and why not?
Are they all automatically tracking the futures market or they can also have their own mathematics involved?

Is that additionally complicating the simple strategy to invest money?

Harchibald said:
Now the Oil is interesting, and you are dead right http://data.tradingcharts.com/futures/quotes/SC.html does expect oil to fall in price over the coming months.
Click to expand...

Is that good or bad?
So, would you go long with oil by your strategy and what future you will buy?

I assume you know how to invest in futures through the spread betting company?

It is all dead simple.
 
Zoran said:
Ah, sorry for hard words.
How are you calculating the risk of contango in your long term futures holding strategy?
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I presume by contango you mean rollover. This is half the spread on Delta. It is they who say 4 years is the equilibrium point between the cash market and the FSB market. I haven't checked their sums, but I presume they are allowing for rollover/contango costs.
 
Zoran said:
Spread betting is invented to be leveraged.
You cannot choose the leverage. Why is that?
They do not like it.
Click to expand...

Zoran - why do you say that?

You raised that very topic a couple of days ago and i outlined how you were in fact incorrect.
I explained how you choose your own leverage with spreadbetting.

Obviously you just chose to ignore that fact and continue thinking you were right.

SO - read the thread again.

It might be an idea to consider you may be wrong on some things.

http://www.askaboutmoney.com/showthread.php?p=554036#post554036
 
Re: The difference between Investing and Gambling


Brendan - it is very frustrating that you continue to say that 'informed' people realise that spreadbettiung is gambling and not investing.

In fact - the very opposite is true.
ANyone who is properly informed will realise the opposite.

ANoyone who thinks otherwise only think they are informed based on incorrect assumptions when in actual fact they are not.
You Brendan, are clearly one of these people.

Anyone who has read up on spreadbetting will come to the informed opinion that it is not gambling.
(i.e. Based on teh definition of gambling and investing as outlined by brendan earlier - a definition that i personally would go along with)

The 2nd part of your post is more accurate.

The main point anyone needs to take away from this whole argument is as follows:
Spreadbetting is basically identical to CFDs !!

And that,my friends, is absolute fact having taken the time out to research both.
 

OK, I agree that you can make it non-leveraged yourself.
That is what CCF funds and ETF's are mainly doing.
But that is not possible through the spread bettors in systematic way.
I am just curious why. It must be easy for them to allow people such thing.

But that is not making you correct about the main topic at all.
What you are doing is gambling as you have no trading strategy, at least what you posted here.

You used leverage 10x so why?
You are invested in 3 commodities only. Is that diversified? How big risk it is?
Are you recommending the same to other people?

I would like to see at least one person to reply to this and tell me he has non leveraged position including you.

If it is not leveraged then the point in investing through the futures market (read hard way due to many things) looks pointless.

Commodities are tracking the inflation and even under-performing it on the long run. That is a proof.
That means you are entering commodity market leveraged to market time it and through speculative nature of investment gain big profit.

Do not forget you cannot based your strategy on lucky 2 months and 3 non-diversified positions.

If I want to win some competition in investing I will put all my money in something crazy leveraged and in one position and pray it will go up.
I probably have some chance (even maybe 50%) to win the competition that way.

But I will not say this is investing at all.

What you are saying and what you are doing is different. Why?

And please, I am replying to all your questions. Please try to answer my main questions so to see who is more wrong.
 

Say you rollover MAR-08 to SEP-08.
You believe that will cost you a half a spread.
But what is the spread when you are in contango is actually the difference between: sell of MAR-08 and buy SEP-08 at the rollover time.

Think it twice if you believe it will be only 4 points (if the spread on future is 8 points - example).

It may be huge difference.

I asked you earlier is your spread bettor offering you real futures long term charts so you can see jumps between rollover periods or you have continuation graphs.

Or I will rather say you are looking spot price graphs and deciding your strategy without knowing what it may cost you in reality and what is the discrepancy in future price.

Also, do not forget that even spread betting price may not be in line with real futures price from LSE market (Pryor's book).
 
Re: The difference between Investing and Gambling


I will backup Brendan as he is to say 99% correct for individual investors.

Only one point is that trading (spread betting, market timing, futures, options, CFDs, ..) is not gambling if you have the winning trading method with an edge against other players in the game.

Short term trading is zero-sum game so you are against other people.
Small number of people (usually pros or smart individual investors) are wining almost all the money while majority of people either loosing it fast or slowly decreasing their money over time.

Do you have the knowledge what is that you are investing in?
e.g. for spread betting you need to master futures market
Do you have the winning trading strategy?
Did you put it on the paper so you know how to behave each step or problem arise?
Did you back tested it?
 

Z, you are stubborn, and I notice you haven't accepted even one of either mine or keyboard's clear refutation of some of your prejudices.

Referring to the quote, will you please (please, please for just once consider that you had a misunderstanding) accept that a FSB futures equity price is directly and absolutely calculated from the spot market plus interest, even if it is using the LSE futures quotations as the source. Similarly, the futures FX rates are absolutely determined from the spot market adjusted for differences in the interest rates.

Of course, Sep 08 will be significantly higher than Mar 08 because there is an extra 6 months' interest in the price. Do you not get that, Z?
 

Harchibald said:
Now the Oil is interesting, and you are dead right http://data.tradingcharts.com/futures/quotes/SC.html does expect oil to fall in price over the coming months.
Click to expand...

From your chart you posted yesterday:
MAR-08 - 90.77
SEP-08 - 89.43

MAR-08 > SEP-08

It may be true for other things too and not just crude oil at some point in time.

http://www.investopedia.com/articles/07/contango_backwardation.asp

I am accepting that I am wrong about rolling cost as it should be
a half of the spread of the future.

By the way the main topic here is about spread betting and gambling.

Spread betting is gambling when you do not have the winning trading strategy.
The majority of people are loosing money as the small amount of people are getting huge money as they have the winning trading strategy.
You are against pros and spread betting fees so chances are minimal to success.

If you are feeling lucky or you have the winning strategy go for it Harchibald.

But please leave other individual investors without spread betting as they will save money.

This is not the proper way to invest money and it is not the long term investment strategy at all.
 
Zoran - I'm just looking for some quick clarification as to what you are saying.
Very briefly - Are you saying that people should not play the markets at all as it is a zero-sum game and given that there are so many pros in the game then the small investor is bound to lose?

Or are you just saying this specifically about spreadbetting?

Also - do you accept that spreadbetting is the same as CFDs ?

And if you wouldn't mind could you make your answer brief - i can tend to get lost in some of your posts given the length of them.

And by the way - you were asking me in another post how if I geared up tenfold then do I think that is investing or gambling. You felt it was gambling.
The answer is with that kind of leverage I am using then it is gambling due to the potential volatility.
But I am knowingly having a punt there and am not trying to dress it up as a recommended investment strategy.
That doesn't mean that spreadbetting cannot be used as an alternative vehicle for investing - so lets not get too bogged down in my own current positions as I am well aware that it is gambling.

SO anyway - just so I can get an idea of where you're at will you answer the questions above please.
 
qwertyuiop said:
Very briefly - Are you saying that people should not play the markets at all as it is a zero-sum game and given that there are so many pros in the game then the small investor is bound to lose?
Click to expand...

Individual investors (I assume majority on this forum) that are not pros and with enough knowledge should abandon spread betting, futures and options market. Who thinks 1 book and 10 minutes per week is enough to approach above mentioned vehicles is deadly wrong.

They should invest all their money (or at least majority) in the proper investment vehicles proved by academics and valid books are long term saving strategy. Simple it is long term buy&hold strategy with the portfolio of passively managed funds and/or ETF's.

qwertyuiop said:
That doesn't mean that spreadbetting cannot be used as an alternative vehicle for investing - so lets not get too bogged down in my own current positions as I am well aware that it is gambling.
Click to expand...

Agree. Spread betting, futures market, CFD's and options can be used as alternative vehicle for investing if you know how to do it.
I am just pointing out throughout this discussion it is with huge risk, against pros as it is short term zero-sum game.

You do not need to believe me but you should people who are managing trillions of dollars for tiny management fees of 0.1%, people which books are well accepted and you can discuss with, academics who are working for glory. Biggest world pension funds are invested that way.
The only sure thing from the history is that on the long run the stock market is returning value.
 
But hang on - you seem to think that spreadbetting just for short-term trades.

Is this what you're saying?

If it is - and i think it is - then I am saying that spreadbetting can be used for longterm holds as well as short term.

And it is the long term positions that I am referring to when I say that it can be classed as investing.

With spreadbetting you must make c. 5.6% a year before you break even.
Given that the maerket on average returns low dounble-digit returns,then you are left with a net return of c. 6%-8% - which isn't bad at all given that it is a leveraged position.

So - which bits do you agree/disagree with from the above?
 
Zoran said:
I am accepting that I am wrong about rolling cost as it should be
a half of the spread of the future.

By the way the main topic here is about spread betting and gambling.
Click to expand...

Fair enough Z, I commend you for accepting the rollover point.

I have stated that IMHO FSB is gambling if pursued on a short term strategy, no more than CFDs or direct trading.

There is a separate issue arising in this debate: is FSB any different from CFDs or direct trading? The answer is no, and probably cheaper and/or more tax efficient in the short to medium term than its two rivals.

Keyboard is absolutely right - FSB is not in any way akin to conventional sports spread betting, it is an alternative way of investing in the market.
 
qwertyuiop said:
But hang on - you seem to think that spreadbetting just for short-term trades.

Is this what you're saying?

If it is - and i think it is - then I am saying that spreadbetting can be used for longterm holds as well as short term.
Click to expand...

It can be used with the increased risk and praying that the next few years (if leverage is small) or next few weeks (if leverage is high) is not going to wipe you out.
You risk more for more reward due to the knowledge that the market will be very good to you at the beginning.


The only way the history shows the odds are in your favor is if you have the whole market exposure through the cheap passive indexed funds/ETF's without the leverage for longer then 10, 15 years.

Let say we want to make money in the next 20 years.
Do not forget that even 10 years may not give you anything as the worse 10 year period in the past was around 0% return.

OK, let make the most simple portfolio of just 1 world stock index that I have with my spread betting company (iShares MSCI world index - IWRD).
It is new one so we do not have the historical data around it but let trust the biggest ETF maker even they are charging higher management fees then I like.

The current cost of keeping this IWRD with my spread bettor is around 6%. Surprisingly you can buy yearly FTSE index for 2%. Wonder why
This only confirms what I am saying all the time that futures prices fluctuates and depends on many factors.

Yearly return for probably the least riskiest stock market investment is around 9% per year from 1969 till now.

Non-leveraged position in stock market is not that good as it is more expensive then doing it direct holding way. Who will pay 6% risk premium instead of 0.5% per year to own the world stock market.

Leveraged position - you are increasing the risk and hoping for more reward
What it means look for this unfortunate ETF that started at wrong time and tracking S&P 500 with 2x leverage:


As you can see it is all risk/reward game. You risk more for possible more reward.

If we are going to see a couple of good years above 6% then gearing make a lot of sense. But who knows what is around the corner.
If we somehow know when the next bull market is going to start and then go and put the big leverage and earn huge money that will be great
It was my dream for a long time and I am not sure did I get rid of it yet.

Do not forget some markets, e.g. Japan are not recovered from 1990 high after 17 years as it is still more then 50% down.
Of course nobody should own the Japan on its own but that is just the good history example.
Many respectable investors are expecting reduced return from the stock market in the next few decades due to the much higher return in the previous few decades.

You can look some risk/reward graphs on this site as you can drill and see some portfolios and their risk against individual stocks:
http://www.ifa.com/portfolios/

After all of this if you want to try your luck go for it, but at least increase your odds and invest in something that will give you more chance.
Also do that with money you can loose and will not put your life in jeopardy.

Best of luck.
 

I am not seeing spread betting too much different except that with CFD's you can offset losses while with spread betting you have no capital tax gain.
What you will need more is up to you
They are both geared so more risk for possible more reward or unfortunate big loss.
To be honest I will pay the government 20% CGT if I can make 100% gain through the spread betting.
It looks more for me as the carrot for people who does not like paying the government while thinking I know how to earn money in spread betting because I am smart.

Do not forget that government suddenly can put CGT on spread betting so your long time position with rolling it every 6 months or so can suddenly become more expensive option then simple buy&hold.

Best of luck and I hope you will recognize some of your mistakes too
 
Best of luck and I hope you will recognize some of your mistakes too
Click to expand...

Z, I make so very few mistakes I get little practice recognizing them.

You certainly put me right on Oil futures. There is no way lil' ol' me should be dabbling in Oil futures or any other commodity futures or FX futures - that would be pure gambling with the big boys having a significant edge against me. (However, I could go long Oil futures to hedge my future petrol consumption.)

But as an alternative to direct holdings of shares/share indices FSB is very much in there in my book.

In fact (took that Delta course BTW) the following strategy seems just too good to be true - I will need to confirm it with Delta.

Euro Stoxx 50 FSB appears to trade on 1 per mil spread - yep latest quote is 4185-4189. That is 4bp and it can be rolled over at 2bp per quarter. In my book that is nil costs. Okay you have to deposit 5% margin so at 4% interest rate that's 20bp charge per annum.

Compare this strategy to Quinn Life Euro Freeway - that charges 1% p.a. and has an exit tax of 23% on profits with no symmetry on losses. And as all devotees of AAM know, QL Freeway is the darling choice.
 
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