Brits are so used to being ripped off - almost everything they purchase can be obtained much cheaper elsewhere in EEC â they majority just donât seem to care about it anymore â the novelty has worn off. Others are just too lazy/stupid/ignorant to use the internet for a spot of beneficial research.
Brits are so used to being ripped off - almost everything they purchase can be obtained much cheaper elsewhere in EEC I don't know about that, I would say it's pretty much the same, VAT is only 17.5% vs 20% + on the continent . But it sure is a strange country, cops don't carry guns! even when they arrest suspected terrorists, in this town 2 cops got stabbed in the head by one guy,they are still looking for the guy! So what do the cops have to say? Make it tougher to carry a knive! well why don't you start by getting guns? I felt safer in America where you can get a gun at Big 5 around the corner.
More on topic now: there was an article in Friday's Independent about CFD "daytraders", titled something like" £1900 in a day's work" that's what one part- time trader made trading CFD's out of his attic with a £10K account (?) the article made it look like easy money almost as if it was written by one these bucket shops. Another ex oil trader was trading CFD's for a living. I have always wondered why the traders featured in these articles always seem to have big gains the day of the interview , they never lose that day.
In the same vein, I remember a few years ago a couple of Traders featured heavily as star traders on a particular company's website to help sell their software. They apparantly made 100k from a 20k account buying stocks in tech companies in the 3 months just before the bubble burst. I remember looking at some of that charts and thinking "is that all? but most of this stuff went up 10 fold or more in that time." Then my thoughts turned to "I'll bet they aren't doing so well now if all they do is buy on news", followed later by "I wonder where they are now..." Hmmmmm - I still wonder (they were dropped from the site about 3 months after the techs hit the skids)... Natalie
Been a bit late picking up on this thread, but here goes anyway ... I find it interesting that you are so disparaging (esp. Girlpower) about spreadbetting. Right from the off, I'll make it clear I have nothing to do with the industry - I'm a full-time UK trader who happens to make the majority of my trades via spreadbets. Looking back over my book last year, I made around 600 trades - so probably not a huge amount compared to the majority of traders here. These trades were across a variety of markets - gold, equities, indices, currencies. My total costs - INCLUDING the entire bid/offer spread, financing charges, margin interest etc. - represented 0.18% of my turnover. The point is that the advantage of not paying 40% capital gains tax can easily outweigh marginal improvements in bid/offer spreads. If I am shooting to pick up a 300pt movement on the Dow, then paying 3pts more to take the postion thus saving myself 120pts worth of tax seems to be fairly logical. Anyone else out there UK based and using spreadbetting ?