History of Financial Spread Betting
Financial Spread Betting began in the City of London in the 1970's, when a banker named Stuart Wheeler introduced this concept of financial trading to a group of friends allowing them to set the price of gold for the upcoming week. The price they set would be the price for the rest of the market for the following week. Stuart Wheeler began by setting a sell price and a buy price and then allowed his friends to speculate the price of gold whether it would increase or decrease in the next week.
The popularity of Stuart Wheeler’s gold offering widespread in the City of London, and it pulled the attention of many dealers which lead Wheeler to set up a company called ‘Gold Investors Index’ which is now known as ‘IG Index’, one of the largest financial spread betting companies in the world, IG Index held a spread betting monopoly for years, but due to the continuing demand for this form of trading; some companies have been introduced to the market (City Index, Sporting Index, Capital Spreads and many more).
In the late 1970's, as the demand for betting on gold prices peaked and Stuart Wheeler added a new range of financial products to IG Index: currencies, commodities and indices, the concept that lead to a continual growth throughout the 1980's.