What is spread betting?

Spread betting is when you wager an amount of money on the outcome of an event, or bet that the price of something will change. The purpose of spread betting is to allow an individual to bet that something will go either way.  You don’t necessarily have to bet against the favourite team winning a football match. You can choose to go with the underdogs and still have a chance of winning a large amount of money.

Spread betting does however carry a large amount of risk and you should be aware of this before you start to spread bet. Spread betting has grown in popularity in the UK over recent years because of the chances of being able to win a large amount of money without having to put up a large amount of cash up front.  In addition, any winnings from spread betting are tax free.

There are also stop losses in place to avoid the better losing too much money. The better can decided at which point he will stop betting on an event should it be losing him a significant amount of money.  On the other hand there is also the stop win which will close the bet should it have moved in favour of the better.