When is spread betting not spread betting?

What if there was a way a completely legal way to invest as much as you wanted in the stock market and totally tax free*? You will note that we purposely use the word “invest” here too and specifically not “speculate”.

What if also you were 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.

Returns are gross before the application of Titan’s fees

Real time viewing of accounts & client testimonials

Perhaps also equally interesting to Titan’s clients is the ability to view their account and all the individual positions in real time. In effect, clients can see Titan’s fund managers at work in the markets as it happens and perhaps even learn about trading along the way without having to pay thousands of pounds to a so called “guru” who will purport to explain to you how you can trade your way to millionaire status in a few months from a 2 day seminar… Purlease!

We would argue that we have, here at Titan, one of the most transparent fund management offerings in the marketplace today.

One Titan client makes the following comment in relation to his experience of our fund management offering – “within about 24 hours of a trade being made (long or short) you have the full details of what was bought, when and how much was paid (how many other funds give you that transparency?)” another makes the following comment – “If you’re really keen, you can login to your fund accounts and watch their value go up and down second by second. I’ve been studying spread betting as a trading vehicle and Titan has helped me understand far better the importance of only making sensible use of the leverage available and not to over extend my other trading.”

Other comments made by Titan’s current clients include – “Daily changes in values can be significant relative to the individual size of the Funds due to leverage, but it works both ways (normally) and so a long term view of investing is a must. There’s a ‘true’ Hedge-fund feel about the way the funds are run. I particularly like the use of short-term options as a means of generating a return but which are naturally limited in the size of the risk.”

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