Now here comes the rant…so why did The Observer yesterday decide to include spread betting as part of a special report into Wealth Management.
Admittedly the full supplement is called Wealth Management & Smart Investing but the only comments that are under the ‘smart investing’ heading are about spread betting. Shorely shome mishtake!
“Spread betting is a form of gambling,” it says. The alarm bells should be ringing here as gambling and smart investing are hardly good bedfellows.
Admittedly, as it says, there is the chance of winning more than losing, but how do you think bookmakers make money – because their punters win more than they lose?
“The more wrong you are, the more you can lose,” the guide to smart investing goes on, adding by way of explanation: “If you guessed it [the FTSE 100] would rise…”. Again, the word ‘guess’ is hardly one to run alongside wealth management or smart investing.
The audience for the supplement is a broad range of readers with different levels of wealth and different outlooks for their wealth. But it beggars belief that any other than a tiny minority would gain any value as investors from spread betting.
If there were two separate publications, one on wealth management and another on spread betting, then I would have less of a problem but putting them together under one single message – spread betting can be part of your wealth management strategy – verges on the irresponsible.
And finally…A press release received this morning is from an online training forum designed to teach investors how to trade on its predictions. It is run by an organisation called Fat Prophets. Aherm…
