Spread Betting has existed since circa the 1970’s but up until this century, most people’s opinions of them were that they were part of an elitist group of city-dwellers who existed in a league of their own. Ideas driven by films such as ‘Wall Street’ by Oliver Stone and featuring Michael Douglas or ‘The Wolf of Wall Street’ by Martin Scorcese all about Jordan Belfort further encouraged public opinion that Trading and Spread Betting was adrenalie-pumping, high-stakes gambling for the rich and famous and tended to keep well away from it. Whatever enormous rewards may have been available were overshadowed by medias’ coverage of sizeable losses and corporate embezzlements from the scandal at UBS to closer-to-home ‘family-fear’ articles of how peoples’ lives had been changed when a close member of family had spent all their savings to fund a habit they couldn’t control.
This couldn’t be further from the truth as Spread Betting has come on in strides since its’ risky beginnings of no stop points for losses and the snobby brush it was once tarnished with. It is no longer led by an elitist community, but rather one where the average person is now just as likely to succeed thanks to instruction guides and videos. Today’s bets can be protected thanks to Stop Loss strategies which ensure that you never extend yourself beyond your means and courtesy of a huge amount of training materials and market news and trading news coverage that companies offer to help you fully understand what is a low-risk trade against a high-risk one.
And before you disappear to go and try your luck, we thought, in keeping with our media theme, we would share with you a few of our favourite trading movies that we like to watch, some that you might have as well but not yet realised were synonymous with the industry.
Pursuit of Happiness
Starring both Will Smith and his son Jaden, the film is about a down-on-his-luck man who decides to enrol in an internship at a Trading company to provide for his family and create a better future for his son.
Working Girl
Featuring the icons Melanie Griffith and Harrison Ford, as a woman who uses her bosses skiing accident to secretly take over and rise up the ranks of the investment bank where she works and put forward her own ideas of a potential merger.
Trading Places
Starring Dan Aykroyd and Eddie Murphy; a phenomenal comedy about two avaricious brothers who decide to play with the lives of one of their brokers and a lowly street hustler they stumble upon, until the two victims realise what is going on.
Wolf of Wall Street
starring a whole host of stars including Leonardo DiCaprio and Jonah Hill, the film is rife with drugs, prostitution and is ‘loosely’ based around the true story of trader Jordan Belfort who was sentenced with stock market manipulation and has since gone on to become a famous American-author.
Wall Street/Money Never Sleeps
Two different versions of the same script and both amusingly starring Michael Douglas as Gordon Gekko, noted as a fictional character and who was portrayed as the personification of ‘Avarice’ – however since Douglas won an Oscar thanks to it, we doubt he took too much offence to his representation.