Spread Betting Academy – Learn, Open Account, Trade

Tax-Free Trading at Your Fingertips

Spread betting represents a low-cost way to trade, deploying inherent leverage and low trading costs to provide a more efficient way of trading in shares, commodities, currencies, indices, and a variety of other markets absolutely tax-free.

info Spread betting is a derivative product which allows traders of all walks of life to speculate on and profit from rising and falling markets in a cost-efficient way. Since it’s a leveraged product, traders only need a fraction of the capital to take bigger positions and benefit from its tax-free status.

Spread betting is a low-cost leveraged product allowing traders to benefit from rising and falling markets.

What Is Spread Betting and How Does It Work?

What you need to know before placing your first spread bet, and how to make your experience effortless.

How to Spread Bet – Placing Your First Trade

Explore the basics of spread betting, key concepts and terms, and how retail traders can benefit from it.

Spread Betting for Beginners – The Basics

Spread Betting at a Glance

An ideal instrument for day trading in the UK
Utilise the power of leverage
Enjoy the benefits of tax-free spread betting
Profit from rising and falling financial markets
A simple and cost-efficient trading product

Choosing the Right Account

Broker offers the markets you want to trade?
Trade on the platform you feel comfortable with
Check the extra features you need for trading
Keep spreads and other trading costs low

Choose Spread Betting Broker and Platform

How Is Spread Betting Different?

Trading Markets Directly (Owning the Asset)

When a trader invests in the stock market, they buy shares in one or a number of listed companies, having reasoned that external market factors combined with business strategy are likely to lead to an increase in value over time. This increase in value, combined with an ongoing dividend to reflect the trader’s share of the company’s ownership is where the money in stocks and shares is to be made, and the security of a tangible, valuable asset in the form of a share is sufficient to slim down the risk profile.

Trading Markets Through Spread Betting (Speculating on Price Movements)

Spread betting, on the other hand, operates on an entirely different principle. While to think of spread betting as gambling isn’t always helpful, it is perhaps a valuable lens through which to analyse the theoretical structure of what spread betting is and how it works. With spread betting, the transaction being entered into when you trade on a company’s shares is not a share transaction. There is no transaction per se, and no change of ownership of any tangible asset – simply an agreement between trader and broker to enter into a wager on set terms, based on the outcome of some underlying market.

As such, spread betting can be equally deployed as a mechanism for speculating on financial markets, sports or just about anything that can be measured – for the operation of the spread betting model, there is no need for anything financial or economic, nor even for anything predictable or controllable.

Features	Spread Betting	CFDs	Share Trading
Tax	No Capital Gains Tax, no income tax, no stamp duty	Subject to CGT, no stamp duty	Subject to CGT and stamp duty
Go Long/Short	Yes	Yes	Buy only
Leveraged	Yes	Yes	No
Commission	No	Yes	Yes
Good for Long-Term?	No	No	Yes
Markets	Wide range of markets	Wide range of markets	Shares only
Currency	GBP (or currency of your choice £/$/€)	Currency of the underlying asset	Currency of the shares
Regional Availability	UK and Ireland	Global (restrictions apply)	Global (restrictions apply)