When is spread betting not spread betting?
What if you were also able to access professional ex-institutional fund managers with experience in managing hundreds of millions of pounds and with many years of plying their trade in the markets under their belts. How about the same entity offering (via their partners) the opportunity of borrowing rates of a little over 2% (based on current interest rates) to enhance the returns profile? Try walking into your bank and saying that you would like to invest in a fund and that you’re looking to borrow at these type of rates and let us know how long it takes for the bank manager to show you the door!! Finally, if we were to tell you that the fund managers of such an offering are almost predominantly paid on results, have a decent amount of their own capital invested in these funds, and that the offering was fully FCA regulated and comes with the safeguards of the FSCS, would it not make the traditional avenue of largely underperforming unit trusts seem a little dull in comparison? The icing on the cake is that during this fund manager’s first full year of operations they had beaten their peers and benchmarks by a very wide margin.
There is in fact such an offering that has now become available to the UK investing public and that is creating quite a stir in fund management circles... Titan Investment Partners very simply uses the mechanism of a spread betting account to transact trades on behalf of their clients. It is very important to stress however that the way our client accounts are managed is very far removed from a typical spread bettor’s approach though. That is the leverage used here at Titan is dialled back dramatically. There are usually both long and short positions (in certain funds) in place, a good degree of diversification, risk modelling and thorough research. This is not meant to denigrate the typical spread bettor, but anecdotal evidence reveals that the very, very vast majority do not make money. Just take a look at the published accounts of IG Index! Below is a table of returns generated during the first year of operation by Titan Investment Partners within their Global Macro fund and also their respective peers and benchmark returns over the same period.
“This is not meant to denigrate the typical spread bettor, but anecdotal evidence reveals that the very, very vast majority do not make money. Just take a look at the published accounts of IG Index!” Returns are gross before application of Titan’s fees
August 2014
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