An analysis of why some people win, some lose and how you can be a winner

By Paresh H. Kiri and Alpesh B. Patel

No other book has ever provided this kind of vital information – the kind that traders need to win at spread betting. The authors have taken data from the daily trades of hundreds of traders over a five-year period – tens of thousands of trades. Then they analysed it. This analysis has allowed them to answer the following questions:

– Which clients win and lose? What are their characteristics?
– Which markets are the easiest to make money on?
– Which markets should retail investors avoid?
– Do investors make more money in volatile markets or quiet markets?
– Which is more profitable: to go long or to go short?
– Do short-term/day traders make more money than long-term traders?
– What are the most common mistakes made by losing clients?
– How much do the top spread betters actually make?
– Which trading systems work best?
– Do technical analyst traders outperform fundamental analysis traders?
– How long are the most profitable positions held?
– What impact do dealing costs have on your ability to beat the market?
– What rules do profitable traders use for setting trade size and stop losses?
– What do winners do differently from losing spread betting traders?
– What size accounts do the most profitable traders have?
– How many spread betters win and how many lose?
– Do losers become winners and winners become losers over time?
– Do winners mimic what big winners like George Soros do?

What does success look like? What puts someone in the top 10 of spread betters? What are they doing right? That is what this book teaches.

The book is packed with hardcore insider data – taken from other traders and the authors’ own trades – all carefully dissected to provide you with the answers you need to succeed.

As insiders, the authors’ aim is to show you how to beat the market. They now it can be done because they know the winners who do it. In this book, they show you how to do it.

Paresh Kiri has vast experience as a floor trader on the worlds second largest derivatives exchange, LIFFE, and as a portfolio manager for 18 years. He is an FSA regulated Investment Manager.

Starting his career on the LIFFE floor in 1993, Paresh was one of the first traders to embrace screen trading, through the LIFFE online trading platform APT - Automated Pit Trading. Making progress under the guidance of the legendary LIFFE trader David Kyte, he was one of the most consistent traders on the largest product on the floor - the Japanese Government Bond.

After successfully completing the Investment Management Certificate in 1996 he was one of the founders of Kyte Securities. From trading financial futures and option products, Paresh had his first taste of trading shares. During the next three years he was instrumental in discovering bespoke strategies for trading equities globally.

In 2000, Kyte Securities became Eden Financial - which is now one of the most respected wealth management companies in the City of London, and the strategies developed were then incorporated as the backbone to the Tomahawk hedge fund, run by Marble Bar Asset Management.

Since leaving Eden Financial in 1999, Paresh has been managing private client and institutional money. He has also been developing an Index Options Desk, and seeking ways of bringing the strategies he developed to the wider public audience by structuring managed accounts services using online trading platforms.

Paresh regularly coaches and holds private seminars on trading the markets.

Alpesh Patel is co-founder of asset manager, Praefinium Partners and www.alpeshpatel.com and has had over 200 columns on trading published by the Financial Times in his The Diary of an Internet Trader column. Alpesh is a former Visiting Fellow in Business at Corpus Christi College, Oxford University and a qualified barrister. He won the competition in the Financial Times to predict the value of the FTSE 100 over a 12 month period, coming within 0.5% of the final value. For Bloomberg TV he presented trading shows for three years.

Alpesh has lectured on trading in Beijing, Hong Kong, Singapore, Guatemala, Spain, Dubai and San Francisco, and his trading books have been translated into German, French, Russian, Thai, Korean and Polish. Alpeshs trading blog is available at www.alpeshpatel.com/blog.

Past clients of Alpeshs company for customer acquisition include Barclays, Goldman Sachs, American Express, Merrill Lynch, HSBC and all the major spread betting companies.