Spread betting is the flexible and tax-efficient way to back your judgement in the financial markets.

Financial Spread Betting is a way of trading on a financial market or product such as a share or a commodity without having to physically own it.

Spread Betting allows you, an investor, to bet on whether the price of a financial instrument will go up or will go down in value. For every point an instrument moves in your favour, you win multiples of your stake and for every point it moves against you lose multiples of your stake.

Your profit or loss is the difference between the price at which you buy and the price at which you sell. As you do not physically own the product, but bet solely on price movements, you can profit from falling markets as well as rising markets.

If you think that a certain financial market will rise in value, then you ‘buy’ the product, known as ‘going long’, and you will aim to sell it at a higher price. If you think that a financial market will fall in value, then you ‘sell’ it first, known as ‘going short’, and aim to buy it back at a cheaper price.

What is the "spread"?

The 'spread', also known as the 'dealing spread', is simply the difference between the price at which you can 'buy' and the price at which you can 'sell' a particular market. When opening or closing a bet, you buy at the upper end of the spread and sell at the lower end.

For example, say we are offering the FTSE 100 Daily at 4023 / 4025. The spread is two points: if you want to 'buy' you do so at 4025 and if you want to 'sell' you do so at 4023.