The UK spread-betting industry deserves plaudits for the way it has served the retail sector, delivering both simple and complex products to an audience that the regulated exchanges and OTC market neglected as unimportant for years. In more recent times, binary bets, which are in effect repackaged exotic options for hoi polloi¸ have proved extremely popular and have escaped regulator scrutiny because the punter knows up front how much he could lose. Even my mum could trade them, which does strike me as a little bit odd as she wouldn’t be able to buy a one-touch from her local HSBC.
Anyway, this week has seen the launch of another new service that aims to tap into what clearly is significant demand. CityOdds, a London-based financial fixed-odds bookmaking company, has released its trading platform which initially has six live products, including cable and EUR/USD. The company says that there are more than 400,000 people punting financial markets online in the UK, and it says it expects this number to grow still further.
“Public take-up of financial betting and trading has continued its rapid growth. More and more people are finding entertainment and profitable strategies using financial markets as their base,” says the company’s chief executive, Mike Chadney.