This is the user friendly area of your spread betting companies website, where you can monitor trades in your chosen market. You will place trades and close trades using your spread betting platform, as well as setting up and monitoring charts and your open positions.

You will need to find a spread betting platform that is easy to navigate so that you can find your way around clearly. These may seem complicated at first, however with practice you should easily be able to navigate your way around the platforms features. These will include a list of all the markets available, the current prices for each different market, different types of trade for each market, i.e. spot fx, futures, options etc, and a list of your open positions in a separate area, with the ongoing price and details of your current exact profit or loss on each trade.

Trading platform charts and tools

Each market will have direct access to a current chart by clicking on the charting icon. You will be able to set the charts to your preferred display on your spread betting platform. You can also vary the timescales displayed on the chart. Typically spread betting forex providers allow you to display candlestick charts with 1 minute, 5 minute and hourly, daily monthly and six monthly charts, with variations depending on what is suitable for you. Don’t worry if you don’t know at this stage, as you learn more about forex spread betting, you will learn to understand and analyse charts.

You will also require an understanding of charting patters such as flag patterns, and an understanding of candlestick patterens and their meanings. You may wish to add these tools onto your trading charts and save them on your spread betting platform under the my account section, with the tools in place. Moving day averages, bollinger lines and fibbonacci calculations can also be saved on your charts. Typically most spread betting platform accounts will allow access to basic tools such as trading lanes which you can save on your charts, however if you wish to save in depth charts you may need to pay an additional monthly fee for the service.

Spread betting platform demo account

The majority of spread betting companies offer a demo account and training area. You will be able to access this when you sign up for an account and set up and save your own charts with any relevant tools that you may wish to use in order to manage your trades. Your demo account will offer both written and video training, and you will be able to access full customer support via the helpline and your account manager.

Look at each spread betting company in turn and get a feel for the spread betting platform and what the spread bet company offer in terms of training, stakes and spreads before you decide which one to sign up with. Choose the one that you feel most comfortable with. Each spread betting platform will differ in terms of ease of use and layout between companies, however essentially they all offer the same opportunity to carry out forex spread betting.

By Independent Investor