Spread Betting Simulator

Spread Betting and CFDs are leveraged products. They carry a high level of risk to your capital and may not be suitable for all investors. These products can result in losses that exceed your initial stake. You should only speculate with funds that you can afford to lose. Please make sure that you understand the risks involved and seek professional advice, if necessary.

Use our Spread Betting Simulator to see how you can trade on financial markets.

Please note that this is a simulator only and there is no guarantee that results achieved using this service will be replicated when spread betting in the live Spread Betting environment. The amount of margin shown is for illustrative purposes only and differing levels of margin may be required depending on instrument type and other factors.

How does it work?
When you open a spread bet, simply choose whether the price of that instrument is likely to go up or down, and nominate in pounds what size your stake is (minimum bet size of £1). Your profit or loss is the difference between the price at which you buy and the price at which you sell multiplied by your stake.

Example: if you buy £5 a point on a share like Vodafone and the price of the share rises 20 points, you would make £100 (£5 x 20).
However, if it falls 20 points you would lose £100.

As you do not physically own the product, but bet solely on price movements, you can make potential profits from falling markets as well as rising markets.

Going long or short
If you think that a certain financial instrument will rise in value, then you ‘buy’ the product, this is known as ‘going long’, with the aim of selling it at a higher price. However, if you think that a financial instrument will fall in value, then you ‘sell’ it first, known as ‘going short’, with the aim of buying it back at a cheaper price.

Margin trading
With spread betting you are only required to deposit a fraction of the overall value of the trade. Typically margins with NatWest Index vary between 1% and 10%. Margin enables you to magnify your return on investment. However, losses will also be magnified so it is advisable to use one of the free risk management tools such as a stop loss or limit order that we provide to help take control of your risk.

The spread
Prices of financial instruments are quoted in pairs known as the bid and the offer. The bid or ‘sell’ price is quoted first and the offer or ‘buy’ price is quoted second. The spread is the difference between the bid and the offer.
When opening or closing a bet, you buy at the upper end and sell at the lower price.

If you were viewing the price of share like Vodafone for example, it might look like this:
Vodafone spread betting example The price to the left is the sell price and the price to the right is the buy price.

If our Vodafone spread is priced at 123.00/123.35, that means you could either:

Buy at 123.35 if you think Vodafone will rise in value or

Sell at 123.00 if you think Vodafone will fall in value.


Financial Spread Betting services are provided by CMC Spreadbet Plc (trading as NatWest Index), to whom you have been introduced by NatWest Stockbrokers Limited. All dealing, administration and settlement in relation to these services are undertaken by CMC Spreadbet Plc who are authorised and regulated by the Financial Services Authority.