I've been making reasonable sums from spread betting on silver and other metals such as platinum, mainly to get the practice - starting from a very small position I've quadrupled my money, but have 'lost' a good few £ on downswings in the process. I'm now considering taking a large position.

Narrating my Strategy - Spread Betting Silver

In the early days I opened a few positions...things went well. Then I increased my positions, and having read up a little more, I put stops in place. Then two things happened:

1. A few markets I was invested in moved against me, losing me money.
2. Some of my stops tripped during swings, losing me money.

At one point, having been smugly sitting on about £1000 of profit, I was over £4000 in the red. I received margin calls - and rapidly had to shovel several thousand pounds into my accounts to keep my positions open. And that's the key - keeping them open.

You really have to stand back and think "am I confident my predictions are right?" ... if you are, then you MUST NOT sell on the falls. You'll only kick yourself when you walk away saying 'spread betting is dangerous' only to then see the price go through the roof over the coming months.

Since then, I've adopted this approach and to-date it's working very well:

1. Open positions to a level at which you're comfortable.
2. Don't use stops. Especially in a market as volatile as silver, selling on dips is a bad move and you'll get shaken out quite often.
3. Instead, set up limit orders to BUY small amounts when the price drops significantly. I do this so that IG Index send me a text and it alerts me to the drop. I can then log in and make a decision on what to do.
4. When the price then rises above its previous average, sell a few of those positions that you bought on the dip. If your long-term view is correct, this method WORKS.
5. Remain professional and unemotional in your dealing. Don't monitor the market too closely or you'll have days when you see your "net worth" drop by several thousand pounds in a day. It can also affect your job if you're constantly logged into your account wheeling and dealing.
6. In general, I'm convinced that a "hands-off" approach is generally better than a "hands-on" one. Follow the same approach that the long-term physical holders use. You don't hear of Goldfinger sloping off to sell his bullion if the price dips, so why should you do the same? You're using financial instruments instead of physical because it's easier and has less margin, however you should adopt the same strategy. As I say: avoid stops.

I'm aware that this system will be absolutely useless in the event that my predictions are wrong. If you follow this system to the letter and the price consistently falls you'll end up chasing the market down and burn all your cash faster than Bernanke's been burning the dollar. Similar to today's young bankers who've only ever worked in a credit-fueled bull market, you need to spare a thought for what might happen. However, as long as you're convinced that the price WILL rise, hold onto those positions.

Silver and Platinum are quite volatile and you can make good money playing the moves. But honestly I've made far more from my long gold and short GBP positions - with next-to-zero (daytime trading) effort.

Financial-spread-betting.com monitors and reviews spread betting sites like ETX Capital and CityIndex so you know which sites offer the best experience for you to spread bet at.

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