Winners and Losers

Although many investors would like to see the back of 2008 it is worth looking back over a few statistics about the year in financial terms as it may help to inform us over our spread betting.

The FTSE 100 took a battering- there’s no other way of putting it- sinking to its lowest value since April 2003. As the start of the year saw the collapse of Lehman Brothers and the Government’s £500 billion rescue for British banks were there any winners at all?

Some investors saw their risks rewarded as did those who gambled on the margins of the fall and rise in market shares. In particular, global bond fund managers who typically invest the majority of their assets with fixed-interest securities outside the UK. According to data from Lipper, these funds have rewarded investors with an average of 13% returns for 2008.

This return begs the question as to whether spread betting was also a lucrative show for punters wishing to gamble on foreign markets. Well, the Dow Jones was also disastrous in 2008 and the Nikkei slumped by 42% so maybe this kind of betting was the best way to make serious amounts of money.

Certainly, the fall of the pound against the dollar and the Euro (to name but two currencies!) should have had those involved fx trading either losing lousily or winning wonderfully.