Im thinking about spreadbetting.
Is there anywhere i can get free software?
Who are best to use for spreadbetting?
How much does it normally cost to make a trade?

Who has the best trading platform?

Where do people hunt down info?

Anywhere that lets me trade for free?

Any info really useful so i can get my head around it.

>Is there anywhere i can get free software?

what sort of software do you mean? Spread betting sites I've used all just run in your browser using java etc.

>Who are best to use for spreadbetting?

Assuming you mean financial spreadbetting I don't really know as I've never done it. Always preferred Spreadex to IG though for sports betting. Much lower margin requirements for one thing, but don't know if that is also true for their financials.
There are other ones which are purely financial I believe - cityindex (not sure if they are related to sportingindex or not) and cmc markets . Have never looked at them though.

>How much does it normally cost to make a trade?

It doesn't cost anything per se, but you 'pay' the bid-ask spread. I.e. for example lets say you are betting on the FTSE index and you can buy it at 6104 or sell it at 6102. The 2pt difference is the margin and where the spread firm make their money.

>Who has the best trading platform?

IG's seems quite good when I've looked at it (unlike their sports trading platform which is a pile of shite). They seem to have a much bigger range of markets than spreadex.

>Where do people hunt down info?

What sort of info do you mean?

>Anywhere that lets me trade for free?

I think there are some 'play money' sites, or firms that offer that facility out there if that's what you mean?

I use IG Index for financials. They send a pack explaining how all of it works and give you a grace period for low-value trading. Mind you, betting is just silly unless you really know something others don't or you want to protect a position in a market with a hedge. I do the latter mostly.

Have a look at capitalspreads. They give you afree demonstration account to start practicing and playing. I would reccomend this before stepping into the real arena. You will undoubtably get burned on a number of occasions, and learn some valuable lessons.

I got into Spread betting a few weeks ago.

I made £2000 on my first trade on betting the price of silver and gold to go up and I sold at the peak. I then got cocky and bet the price of Paragon (mortgage lender) to go down at £120 point when price was at 291. It went against me and rose to something like 310 and hit my stop loss and I lost £2700. As it happens that was the high and it has since dropped to around 261. I would have made about £4000 if I had rode it out but I couldn't afford any more losses at the time and got out. felt gutted about this at the time.

I only bet with the top 10% of my savings as it is high risk gambling. But no risk - no profit.

I recently bet that the India stocks to go down. I was losing £1000 at one point but the shares dropped 4% today. Unfortunately that was at 5:30 this morning and when I checked at 8am they had climbed a bit and had only dropped 2% on the day. I took my profit and glad I did as they have climbed a bit more since then.

Current bets I made today are:

Silver to go up - I got back in after it droped about 50 points. Has gone up 1.3% so far today.
Crude oil to go down - I only expect this to happen in the short term between now and Christmas.
Ericsson to go up - the recent spectacular drop in share price made me feel it was worth a punt - will keep hold of this until early 2008.

As with any gambling - only bet what you can afford.

Don't short something that is going up in price (lesson learned hard way ). The time to short crude oil is when the price is already falling.

Tend to agree, unless you use a smaller position so can run a wider stop. Alternatively wait until it is very overbought. In the case of oil, it is now making new highs so shorting it is very risky as their is no obvious resistance level.

Re markets that are open whilst you are asleep, if you have reasonably tight stops then my suggestion is not to do it. (The main reason I don't trade currencies). One way around this is to set an opposing trade which is triggered automatically when your main trade hits a target price. That way you can set wider stops without incurring any additional risk and close both trades when you are awake. Effectively you are pegging your profit (or loss) but keeping the trade open.