Move over Wall Street, we’re all traders now

It used to just be Wall Street high rollers who were able to cash in on the movements of the world’s stock markets. But those days are over. Thanks to online betting apps provided by established online specialist gaming firms such as Tradefair just about anyone can now access the markets whenever they get the urge.

Tradefair specialise in financial spread betting online which offer the means to play the world’s financial markets at a fraction of the traditional cost and without any of the traditional blocks to access. It is possible to invest in amounts that are well below the level usually required to invest in markets that typically see volumes traded in the millions.

Tradefair will allow you to open an account with as little as £50. But there are people who regularly make profits well in excess of that figure.

Financial spread betting (FSB) is a derivative-based product which means that rather than actually buying and owning the stocks, currencies or bonds that you are ‘investing’ in you simply place a bet on what you think might happen to them. Any profit you make is derived (hence derivative) from the movement of the stock or currency in the actual real-world market.

If your chosen stock moves ten points in the market beyond a preselected range, your winnings will equate to ten times your initial deposit. If the movement is 20 points the win is 20 times the deposit. With returns like that it is easy to see why Wall Street traders wanted to keep it for themselves.

But the ease with which the trading software can be downloaded and operated means that we are all capable of becoming the next Gordon Gekko. The Tradefair app, for example, takes only a couple of minutes to download and set up an account.

In truth, mastering the subtleties of FSB does take a little longer. But the good news is that the leading providers offer free-to-play demo-apps that have many of the features of their trading apps, including a real-time trading desktop. These allow players to familiarise themselves fully with the practicalities of using the software as well as to begin to formulate their trading strategy.

And FSB is all about strategy. This isn’t your average gut feeling way to gamble. FSB is all about knowing what’s happening in the real world and making it pay. It tends to be most popular at times of stock market uncertainty. So with Russia’s Vladimir Putin causing instability Europe, the British general election looming and with the developing economies of the east continuing to draw on the world’s commodities, 2015 look like it has the makings of a highly volatile year.

Before you get too excited, though, you do need to be aware of the downside. There may be phenomenal profits to be made, but losing is also very much part of the equation. Regular traders tend to have multiple positions open at the same time, with some winning, some losing and some not doing very much at all. The point is that FSB is all about a highly developed mathematical appreciation  of what is going on. It is not to be taken lightly and it is not for the faint hearted.

Much like the traders who make their living in the world’s trading markets – Wall Street included – the people who make FSB pay are the ones who work on the basis of a steady accumulation of small, low-risk gains. The idea of a one-off deal that effectively breaks the bank is all well and good, but it is very much the  exception rather than the rule . That’s not to say it doesn’t happen, but as any Wall Street trader will tell you, a predictable profit beats spectacular speculation every time. The good news is that thanks to FSB we can all trade on that logic now.