ShortsandLongs Review


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Life After ShortsandLongs

Important: ShortsandLongs has closed.

ShortsandLongs you get all the normal advantages of Spread Betting:

  • Tax Free Investments*
    • No Stamp Duty
    • No Capital Gains Tax
    • No Income Tax
  • You can buy or sell indices, shares, forex, commodities
  • No commissions
  • A wide range of markets – see ShortsandLongs Markets, below

Why Open a Spread Betting Account with ShortsandLongs? Here’s what they say:

Covered Risk

“Spread betting offers the chance to make vast sums of money, but there is also the risk of losing more than your initial stake size. ShortsandLongs recognises the importance of managing and protecting risk. A ShortsandLongs Account protects you from unforeseen market events by guaranteeing that if the markets moves against you, in a worst case scenario, you can never lose more than your account balance”.

Free Guaranteed Stop Loss Orders

“These enable you to set your risk levels with confidence. ShortsandLongs offer free guaranteed stop orders to protect you against ‘gapping through’ both overnight and in times of volatile market movements”.

Exceptional Prices

“ShortsandLongs offer some of the tightest spreads available, minimising risk and maximising your potential for profit”.

Range of Markets

Below you will find a sample of the markets offered by ShortsandLongs along with their typical in-hours spread size and the minimum stake for that market. See ShortsandLongs for full details.

ShortsandLongs also provides updated details of the day’s best (Hot Longs) and worst (Hot Shorts) performers, see below.

ShortsandLongs also offers spread bets on a range of other Indices including: SPX 500, Germany 30, France 40, Eurostocks 50 and more.

The company also offers spread bets on other commodities.

ShortsandLongs also offers spread bets on a range of other Forex markets including: JPY/USD, CAD/USD, CHF/USD and more.
Please note:


The Trading Floor

Competitive prices are important for all traders.

Looking at the ShortsandLongs “Trading Floor” they say they “aim to ensure that the difference between our buy and sell prices are the smallest you can find…we cannot guarantee that every spread we offer is the absolute best in the market. But we are committed to ensuring that every price is unusually excellent and clearly superior by comparison”

The business end of the website is the Trading Floor. Unlike a number of other spread betting sites you can see the prices without logging on.

They also provide some interesting views of the markets:


Hot Longs

Shorts and Longs - Hot Longs

Go long if you believe that a market will rise, or go up. This is known as ‘Buying’. Spread betting lets you benefit from movements in the markets without the need to own the underlying physical stock.

Hot Shorts

Shorts and Longs - Hots Shorts

Hot Shorts – Why Go Short?

Go short if you believe that a market will fall, or go down. This is known as ‘Selling’ or ‘Shorting’.

Spread betting differs from conventional share trading in that it is possible to profit from a falling market. This can be used to trade successfully in a downturn and also to hedge risk from elsewhere in your portfolio.

Most Traded

Shorts and Longs - Heavily Traded


Popular Markets

Popular Markets

Two Way Pricing

“Trade in falling as well as rising markets. In the current economic climate it makes sense to find a way of profiting from the downturn. Spread betting allows you to sell as well as buy, so even if the market falls you can still increase your wealth”.

(Please note that the FSA’s decision to temporarily ban short selling on certain financial stocks means ShortsandLongs members cannot currently sell a limited selection of shares).

Low Cost of Entry

“Spread betting enables you to benefit from movements in the markets without the need to own the underlying physical stock, enabling your money to go further”.

Hedging

“With spread betting you can offset risk in an existing investment portfolio. No doubt you’ve spent time and money building up a considerable investment portfolio. You can protect your ‘pension pot’ from market downturns by using spread betting to hedge your positions”.

How ShortsandLongs Works

ShortsandLongs allows you to manage the risk on a trade in a guaranteed way such that you will never be able to place trades which could lose more money than you have in your account.

By using the complimentary profit level settings you can govern your profit or loss within guaranteed objectives.

UK 100 Trading Example

Let’s say you are looking at the UK100 (FTSE 100) September future price. On the ShortsandLongs website you can see the spread at 5400-5403 and you take the view that the market will move downwards.

Therefore you would ‘sell’ or ‘go short’ at the ‘sell’ side of the price, 5400.

You now have to decide exactly how much you want to risk on this trade (obviously up to a maximum of the funds available to trade in your account).

This figure can either be input as:
  • a monetary risk level, or
  • a price level
Supposing you had entered your Sell for a stake of £20 per point and had an ‘available to trade’ balance of £1,000, of which you wished to risk £500, leaving a further £500 available.

You could either enter a monetary risk of £500 or a price level of 5425 (either way, the equivalent amount or price would show on your dealing ticket). This number can be calculated by:

(Trade price of 5400 – Risk level of 5425) x £20 per point stake = monetary risk

25 points x £20 per point = £500.

Because ShortsandLongs guarantees all risk ‘stop’ levels (for free), there is no fear of you losing more than this.

If the buy price in this market now trades at 5425 or below, your risk (‘stop’) level would be triggered and you would automatically buy £20 per point to close your trade, losing the £500 risk you had specified.

The amount that you choose to risk is up to you, within the bounds of the minimum stop distance and the amount available to trade.

New Trading Example

So, on the trade above you could have chosen to risk your total available balance (£1,000) which would have set a risk level at 5450, or you could have set a risk level at 5423 (the minimum distance), which would have risked £460.

If your stake had been smaller or larger, these numbers would change proportionally.

You could choose to trade £3 per point rather than £20 per point. If you set your Stop Loss to 5423 that would markedly reduce your risk.

(Trade price of 5400 – Risk level of 5423) x £3 per point stake = monetary risk

23 points x £3 per point = £69.

Setting Profit Levels

Optionally, you are also able to set levels at which to take a profit. There are no constraints on the levels. Profit levels, once set, are also guaranteed to deliver the required profit, if triggered.

As you can see, this model of trading with mandatory guaranteed risk levels offers both peace of mind and ultimate flexibility. Any view can be expressed within the bounds that you set yourself, constrained only by your ‘available to trade’ balance, your stake and your risk level.

Guaranteed Profit?

One further sophistication to this simple model is the concept of ‘Guaranteed Profit’.

Let’s assume that the market fulfils your expectation and falls to, say let’s 5258-5261. At this point, you would have an unrealized profit of £2780

(Trade price of 5400 – Current Price of 5261) x £20 per point stake =

139 points x £20 per point = £2780.

Therefore you could choose to move your risk level to a point where it was guaranteed to result in a profit from your original trade price. You could set your trade to close at, let’s say, 5300 points, which would ‘guarantee’ a profit of £2,000.

(Trade price of 5400 – Risk Level of 5300) x £20 per point stake =

100 points x £20 per point = £2,000


Balance Increase

ShortsandLongs would label the above as ‘guaranteed profit’ and would increase your ‘available to trade’ balance accordingly, which would now be £3,000 (original £1,000 + guaranteed profit £2,000).

Who are ShortsandLongs.com?

ShortsandLongs.com is a trading name of Spreadex Limited which is authorised and regulated by the Financial Services Authority.

Spreadex is a spread betting firm founded in 1999 that specialises in the leverage and credit area of the industry. Spreadex created and designed ShortsandLongs.com in order to bring the benefits of its experience to the wider market.