Independent Investor

We’ve done a lot about how contracts for difference and spread bets are affected by the austerity budget and also about which sectors to look at.  How about looking at which companies are likely to grow?
The first thing to do is to sell short companies that are dependent on government contracts.  It is true that there will be a large amount of business shifted out to the private sector as this is an easy way to save money once the unions are broken, however this is not going to compensate …

OK we called it wrong on BP.  We still may be right, and the fundamentals look good, but management is all important at times of crisis and when you’ve got an American President who seems to blame the British for everything, a Swedish chairman who tells everyone that he really cares about “the little people” and a chief executive who says that he wants to get his “life back” then you are looking at a lot of trouble.  And despite a recent relief rally, …

With the current debate about the rise of Capital Gains Tax many people are looking at spread bets as a way of getting around capital gains tax while still being exposed to the share market.  Another area where both contracts for difference and spread bets really work well is with stamp duty.
Stamp Duty is charged at 0.5% for every transaction that is made.  This may not sound like an enormous amount of money when compared to the 18% Capital Gain Tax, particularly when this …

David Laws has been lost as the UK’s Chief Secretary of the Treasury.  And verily there was much gnashing and wailing of teeth.  According to George Osborne, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, this was the job that David Laws was “put on earth to do”.
So what does this mean for the markets, particularly for CFD traders and hedge betters?  In the short and long term not a lot, but it could be quite significant in the medium term.
In the long term the government is either …

It used to be so simple, if your country had a problem with keeping its house in order you could let your currency devalue.  This would mean that everyone in the country would get poorer as they could buy less with their currency with holidays and imports becoming more expensive.  But getting poorer was going to happen any way, just in slightly more visible ways.
What devaluation would allow, however, were for your exports to become a lot cheaper and so your exports would rise, …