As well as the tax advantages, spread-bets are simpler in many ways. Commission, financing and the effect of dividends are rolled up in the “spread”, the difference between the buy and sell prices quoted by the broker at any particular moment.
You decide what you want to bet – let’s say £10 for every penny rise (called a point) in a share. If the price rises, your gain is the difference between the two prices, multiplied by £10. If you believe that the price will fall, you do the same thing in reverse by “selling” the shares.
Mr McCrone says that a spread-bet or CFD could help to provide insurance for someone who wanted to protect holdings from a fall in the market without selling the share.
But Mr Cooke gives warning that “people should have in their mind set amounts that they are prepared to lose on spread-betting, and not use money earmarked for an Isa”.
Ultimately, most people would be better off sticking with an Isa. Spread-betting and CFDs are strictly for those with the time and talent to apply to them.
CASE STUDY: Quick learner aims to stay on top of the charts
Martyn Grant, left, reckons that he has had only one down year in the five or six since he started spread-betting and trading contracts for difference.
“I lost money in my first year and learnt a good, hard lesson,” says the 43-year-old property entrepreneur from Wiltshire. “I held on too long with no stop-losses.
“I didn’t know what I was doing, which is true of most people – they merely scour the bulletin boards for recommendations and then buy without looking at anything else.”
Bulletin boards, such as those run by ADVFN, the financial website, can be useful, but Mr Grant tends to ignore rumours and tips from other people. “I have sat in so many brokers’ offices in London and have heard so many stories,” he says. “As soon as they hear a story, brokers pass it on.
“Unless your dad owns the company, or you know someone who works in it, there is always someone else who knows more than you – and that shows in the charts.”
Mr Grant relies on graphs of a company’s share price for direction on how to bet. “The graphs pick up that there is something going on,” he says. “For example, if the chart is bottoming out and there is a lot of trading volume.”
He calculates that his annual profits have ranged from 30 per cent in 2000, when he went short after the technology bubble burst, to about 900 per cent last year.
“Most of my bets are long. I am still a bull,” he says. “I think this is just a correction in a long bull market, but in a couple of days my view could change and I could become the biggest bear ever.”
Mr Grant prefers to use smaller brokers, such as Luke Securities, for his bets. And though he believes that he could devote less time to his activities, he actually spends much of his working day looking at market screens.
As for day trading, he says: “There’s no money in day trading: it’s a mug’s game.”