Are there any advantages to using spread betting to speculate on the price of gold as opposed to futures contracts or Exchange Traded Funds?
Angus: The main advantages are the margin, bid/offer spread, commission free and liquidity available in spread betting. So pretty much everything is to the advantage of a trader using a Spread Bet as above the instruments mentioned. FSB: Suppose I wanted to make a longer-term spread bet (6 months from today) on the price of oil betting that brent oil will move from $63 to over $100 a barrel. Is this possible with Capital Spreads? How much margin would I need to place a spread bet to gain say $10 per each whole dollar movement? Please detail with an example and explain how you quote the oil price. Angus: The example above for Gold can be used for Brent. The only differences are that Oil is quotes in cent moves and Capital Spreads quotes a spread of 5 cents (i.e. 47.65-47.70) and Oil is quoted in Monthly expiries so you would need to close your bet each month and move into the next contract. The minimum margin for Oil is $150 for a $1 bet. If you bought at 63.00 and sold at 100.00 you wo
