Independent Investor

There are a number of ways of speculating or hedging on house price movements.    Spread betting is the most popular way, although there the futures can also be used, but this tends to be used by professionals.
There are a number of advantages of spread betting on the housing market; the first is that there is already a liquid market as there are a number of other people betting on the market.  This means that there are no delays or difficulties in market timing.  However there …

FTSE 100 bounces back, despite plunging in the morning more that 1% on the GDP data from the Office for National Statistics.
It was a bumpy but upwards ride on the stock market today and day traders had another great day of volatility.
Are there any positives to take from today’s markets performances? The answer is more complicated that just a simple Yes or No as FTSE100 companies make most of their money abroad and with the rise of consumer confidence in the US it is no …

Today’s figures from the Office for National Statistics showed growth in Q4. It was widely expected that UK would finally crawl out of recession and most of the economists were preticting growth of 0.4%. The shock was that UK growth was only 0.1%, thus sending FTSE100 plummeting over 1.5% along with the pound tumbling against major currencies.
Are there any positive to take from this recovery, slow, but still recovery? It is the question that plays on everybody’s mind, are we really out of the …

The fall in the market was triggered by President Obama’s remarks about splitting up banks.  So what’s behind this split and what would this mean for the banks in the long run?
The first thing to notice is the timing.  The Democrats lost one of their safest seats in the Senate last week.  This can’t help but scare a politician.  It seems to have given the Obama team a taste of their political mortality.  There would have been some scare like this at a later …