Placing a first spread bet is mechanically simple — the hard part is doing it in a way that protects your money. This guide walks through each step, from demo practice to reviewing your first closed trade, with the risks kept in plain sight.
Step 1: Understand what you are buying into
A spread bet is a leveraged bet on price movement: you stake a number of pounds per point, and every point the market moves adds to or subtracts from your account. Because you put down only a small deposit, losses build far faster than most beginners expect. If any of that is unfamiliar, read what spread betting is before going further. The risk warnings providers must display tell you plainly that most retail accounts lose money — typically somewhere between 60% and 90%.
Step 2: Open a demo account and use it properly
Before risking a pound, practise on a demo account. Place the same small trades you intend to place live, at the same stakes, with a stop attached to every position. Treat it as a rehearsal, not a game: the point is to make your mistakes where they cost nothing. Be honest with yourself too — a demo cannot reproduce the discomfort of watching real money move, so expect live trading to feel harder.
Step 3: Decide your maximum loss before you fund anything
Work out, in pounds, the most you are prepared to lose in total and on any single trade — before you open a live account, not after. Fund the account only with money whose loss would not change your life. Check any provider you consider on the FCA register, and treat anything resembling a joining incentive as a warning sign: the FCA banned sign-up incentives in 2019. UK retail clients get negative balance protection, meaning the account cannot go below zero — but everything in it remains at risk.
Step 4: Read the deal ticket line by line
The ticket shows two prices — the sell price and the higher buy price, the gap between them being the spread — a box for your stake per point, and a margin figure. Be clear about what that margin figure is: a deposit the provider holds while the trade is open. It is not your maximum loss. At £1 a point on an index near 10,650, your true exposure is £10,650; the margin shown might be just £532.50, because the FCA minimum for major indices is 5%. Your loss is set by how far the market moves against you, not by the deposit.
Step 5: Set your stop before you enter
Choose your stop level before you touch the buy or sell button, and attach it on the ticket itself. Pick a level that would prove your idea wrong, then size the stake from the distance: if you will risk £50 and the stop sits 50 points away, your stake is £1 a point. That habit — loss first, stake second — is the heart of risk management. Our guide to stop-losses covers standard and guaranteed stops, and why ordinary stops can fill at a worse price when markets gap.
Step 6: Place the trade, then manage, close and review
Enter at the minimum stake your provider allows, even if it feels trivially small; early trades are paid lessons, and small stakes keep the fees low. Once in, do only two things: let the stop do its job, or close early if the reason for the trade disappears. Never move a stop further away to dodge a loss. When the trade closes, write down what happened and why. A few dozen reviewed trades teach more than any amount of reading — though our worked spread betting examples show what the arithmetic looks like first.
Spread betting should always feel like a considered decision. If it starts to feel like a compulsion — chasing losses, hiding activity, betting for the buzz — stop and seek support at BeGambleAware.
The rule that outranks every guide: never bet more than you can afford to lose.
Risk management →