Change in the Code of Practice in Spread Betting and Gambling

Binary options allow the spectators to bet on the shift of financial indices, share index, currency and other global events, where the ESMA is preparing to introduce restrictions on marketing distribution and sale of contracts to retail buyers. The measures include imposing leverage restrictions, limitations on trading incentives such as bonus, and a guaranteed limit on losses, where standardized risk warnings should be issued by the company. 

The FCA claims the number of CFD trading hubs increased two times in years from 2010 to 2016,  where over 100 authorized companies were offering these products having more than half a million active clients.  

Some British companies were under fire for promoting gambling and betting to children, where a number of sports teams have companies as sponsors, and some of the sponsored teams are youth teams.  The UK Gambling Commission called for an investigation to promote a better code of conduct and protect vulnerable gamblers.  

Betting Scams 

In 2017, over 2500 victims, who lost over £59.4m on binary options scams since 2012, filed complaints against such scams. In February, the FCA handed a sentence to Manraj Virdee for defrauding investors.  

In this case, Mr. Virdee was not authorized to carry out the trade, where he took money from friends, relatives, and others between October 2015 and November 2017 and tried to act as their investor. He had promised the investors a 100 per cent return and raised £600,000 in cash, where he attempted to trade £457,119 but lost all the money. 

In the case of betting on sports, one can lose but may enjoy the game, but the financial trades are boring and tiresome, and there are many customers who quit early, as it may nevermore provide the expected returns.  Alternatively, if the markets are against their bets, it can lead to loss of huge money that was witnessed when the Swiss national bank changed the ceiling for the Swiss franc in January 2015, leading to heavy losses to some of the amateur traders. Those into larger bets face higher risks and may lose many times their investment. The FCA found people were, sometimes, leveraging 200 times and could lose that much times money instead of the initial investment. 

Why Spread Betting is risky?

Actually, the way the bets are structured mostly increase the risk of a gambler, and there are no fees on trade; hence, no regulated calculations can be achieved beforehand. In the case of other investment options, such as shares, it holds value and even provides dividends to the buyers, but with spread betting, there are no dividends, and the industry advertises heavily on it.  Some tutorials are made with an attempt to increase inclination into betting for a longer duration. 

In December 2016, the UK market regulators proposed regulations for high-risk products that led to wiping out of one–third of the London listed providers that included IG and CMC. A year later, the regulators are offering similar proposals where the stock movement is less dramatic. 

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