What markets can you trade in spread betting?

This ensures that you can create a diversified stock portfolio - 24 hours a day. Below we have listed some of the most popular asset classes that you can trade on a spread betting website.

Stocks: you can spread thousands of blue chip stocks across dozens of marketplaces. Think along the lines of the LSE, NASDAQ and NYSE.

Indexes: If you want to trade the broader stock markets, spread betting platforms also host indexes. This includes the S & P 500, Dow Jones, FTSE 100 and NASDAQ 100.

Energies: You can also trade energies. This includes the major oil and natural gas markets.

Hard Metals: The hard metals space includes everything from gold, oil and copper.

Agriculture: If you want to look at agricultural products like wheat, grains, sugar and cereals, betting platforms usually support these markets.

ETFs: Further highlighting how extensive spread betting platforms are - you can also trade ETFs.

Currencies: Similar to forex trading sites, spread betting brokers also allow you to speculate on the future direction of popular currency pairs like GBP / USD and EUR / USD. Cryptocurrencies: Some spread betting sites also allow you to trade the future value of popular cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin and Ethereum.

Spread betting - key terms

Now that you know the basics of spread betting, we need to look at some of the key terms you will almost certainly come across.

Long vs. short

First and foremost - make sure you know your longs from your shorts. As we briefly discussed earlier, a long launch means that you believe the asset will do this Energy In Price. This is equivalent to buying an order when buying CFDs in Exness metatrader 4 or a call option when investing in an options contract.

If you have not reached a spread betting market, it means that you believe the value of the asset will go down. This, in turn, would correspond to a sell order when trading CFDs or a put option on the Internet option trading space.

Leverage and margin

Spread betting platforms allow you to trade with more money than you actually have in your account. For example, let's say you wanted to buy £1,000 worth of Disney shares. If you buy 1,000 GBP worth of shares from an online stock broker, you will usually receive 1,000 GBP worth of shares.

However, on spread betting websites you can apply leverage to your trades. So with your 1,000 GBP balance you can trade significantly more.

For example:

•     Let's say you only need to bet a margin of 10% to trade Disney shares.
•     Your margin is essentially a non-refundable deposit that the broker can keep if your trade goes against you by a certain amount
•     You have €1,000 in your account that you can use to trade Disney stock worth €10,000
•     This is because 1,000 GBP is equal to 10% of the required margin

Crucially, margin trading can go one of two ways. You either win your spread bet trade and increase your profits, or you get liquidated and lose your margin.

For example, if you were long Disney stock and the price went up 20%, you would have made a total profit of £200 (20% of £1,000). However, when you applied a leverage of 10: 1, your profit was actually 2,000 GBP (200 GBP x 10 GBP).

If the markets had gone the other way and Disney shares had fallen 10%, you would have lost your margin. As such, the trade would have been liquidated and the broker would have held your 1,000 pound margin.