Betting on the Stock Market

Hardup_Hester

Has anyone heard of this?
I'm assuming it's a scam, one of hubby's friends has been doing this for about 4 months now, he paid £5k for a 2 week training course, £3k for 6 months support & has managed to lose between £200 & £2k a week ever since. The only reason he has the money to lose is because he recently got married & sold his house & moved in to his wifes house.
During the training course they did a 3 day dummy run of 'free live betting' & he made money every day, but didn't get the winnings as it was a dummy run. He's now trying to persuade hubby to join him, telling him it will be an easier way to make money than being a labourer. Hubby can't get involved easily as he doesn't have a credit card & he too is suspicious, but not as suspicious as I am. Hubby's friend is convinced it will make him big bucks once he gets the hang of it, his wife is beginning to panic, but he won't listen to her. I have tried to find out the name of the company but haven't so far managed it. I would really like to find out some concrete information about this, before they lose all their money.

geordie_joe

Hardup_Hester wrote: »

I'm assuming it's a scam, one of hubby's friends has been doing this for about 4 months now, he paid £5k for a 2 week training course, £3k for 6 months support & has managed to lose between £200 & £2k a week ever since.

I would say it is a scam, but even if it isn't a scam, it isn't working!

teabelly

Quite a few of the spread betting firms are dodgy. They are regulated by the FSA which gives the impression that it isn't gambling but a lot of them behave as though it is the house's right to win and take your money all the time. If he's consistently losing money then either a) the firms are deliberately manipulating prices to make his trades lose b) the systems he was taught on the course don't work or c) he's not applying the systems correctly and managing his losses properly d) he's news trading which has wide spreads and higher risks with price volatility and he's setting his stops in the wrong place.

You don't need to spend all that money. There are plenty of books which are much cheaper. Malcolm Pryor's book on spread betting is about £20 ish and will probably contain everything he'd need to know.

snax

Sounds like the sort of scam deal offered by companies like Win [Winn? Wynn?] Investing ... I hear their advert on the radio all the time. "Book a free place at our upcoming seminar and you could be making thousands in no time blah, blah, blah" ... it's all bollo**s.
If you could be taught to trade sucessfully in that short a time frame then we would all be doing it.
Learning how to trade profitably [consistently] takes years to get right.
You need to put in hours and hours of research [virtually become an expert in the company/sector you are investing in] as well as have well developed rules and strategies for different trading conditions [risk management].
The most important one of all is your exit strategy [when to get out of a trade - winning or losing]. Without experience and diciplines you're as well to chuck cash at a bookie and hope for the best.
I suspect that your hubbies friend has swallowed the sales patter and is intrigued by the possibilities.
I fear there may be a rather harsh lesson to be learned soon.

fifteen_grand

HI
Think more than twice when before start spread betting
I have lost nearly 30k since i started spread betting with IG Index few months ago. I started well at the beginning and then gradually lost all this money. Today I closed my account. It was such a stupid and expensive mistake to make. Of course deep inside I blame them about it. of course after myself. But considering I am on a salary of 30k per year before tax, its ridiculous that I was allowed to do it in the first place.
But hey, It happened and dont think I can do much about it except work my a... off and pay a loan for 20k and a credit card for 5000 (i also lost my savings of 4k that i had before my stupid attempt to sb_) my life is pretty much ruined for some years now as I havent got money to do anything else.
I decided to write this because I wanted to make people aware of the perils of sb, although we do not think it would happen to us, it happened to me, it clearly became a gambling addition. I didnt know when to stop, clearly should have been stopped by someone else. I wish someone stopped me.
I did trading with IG Index from the beginning. Never gave a s... about me, and even though they were getting a lot of my money, customer service was appalling.
I do think that I lost money because I am terrible at it and with no discipline, it just gets worse. But they should stop people from losing so much money. They knew my situation before. I hope more regulations are introduce in regards to this so other people don't do the same mistake as I did.
I havent told anyone about this as I am embarrassed. I dont have the courage to tell people what I have done cause its too embarrassing. Thank you for taking your time to read this. and think twice about spreadbetting. they do manipulate numbers to get more money, specially at the end of trade
vbrep_register(

teabelly

Funny you should mention IG.... I lost 50 quid and was outraged so I am amazed you doggedly stuck with them losing 30k!!! Most of the good trading books warn against trading to get back a recent loss. It is always better to walk away for at least a few days. Often this is enough to make you step back to see that the company tends to win. They often let you make a bit then try and take as much of it back as they can, preferably more and preferably your entire account if they can manage it.

Spread betting firms like people that lose money as they are the most profitable. I think it is misleading for them to be regulated by the fsa. If there were regulated by the gambling commission then people would realise what they were getting into more.

Hardup_Hester

Hubby's friend has now spent anothr £16k on training & is still losing £2k a week, hubby no longeer has any interest in joining him, thank heavens.

teabelly

IG index also manipulate prices to make sure stops are hit so they make money. I have done identical trades with them and another demo system , entered at the same time and the results were different!

All the spread betting companies take positions opposite yours so you will, never, ever make money. The only way to make money is to trade proper derivatives that have their prices regulated by the LSE or equivalent.

The most misleading thing is that these companies are regulated by the FSA. It should be the gambling regulator then everyone would know, beyond a doubt, that they are unlikely to make money.

Their platform was unreliable and slipped me out of winning trades and I lost £50. I knew I had been essentially cheated out of it but it is virtually impossible to prove.

teabelly

Hardup_Hester wrote: »

Hubby's friend has now spent anothr £16k on training & is still losing £2k a week, hubby no longeer has any interest in joining him, thank heavens.

I could do with £2k a week, why doesn't he just save himself the aggro and give it away

Seriously tell hubby to tell his friend that spread betting is for suckers. If he wants to earn/lose money for looking at charts then he probably ought to try forex trading. There are plenty of free courses and info around so he won't have to waste any more money. babypips.com and forex4noobs are the best places to look.

Encantador

There is a way to make money spread trading but it`s NOT by spending thousands on training.

You can try for free and use a dummy account and not spend a penny until you see how it works, just takes 5 minutes a day.

The biggest problem is that eventually you have to start betting with real money and if you have a limited bank, say £500 and you hit a couple of losing trades, you are out of the game and think the whole things a scam.

No system is 100% accurate, just as you can be the best horse racing tipster in the world and make a lot of money but if someone starts following your tips just as you hit a losing streak, they think you are crap.

Losing trades happen, you have to live with that, all you can hope is over time you win more points than you lose. And at the start, hope you drop on a couple of wins. Fear and greed are the emotions you have to try and control.

It is not something to be tried with the housekeeping though, only trade with what you can afford to lose. If needs be get a few family / friends together and put £50-100 in each.

darkfibre

Hardup_Hester wrote: »

Hubby's friend has now spent anothr £16k on training & is still losing £2k a week, hubby no longeer has any interest in joining him, thank heavens.

I'm not being funny here, but I think this guy needs some help getting out of this spiral before it eventually ruins his life.