Thanks for the info re betting on currency values, fascinating stuff, I had a neighbour who seemed to make a lot of money with stocks and shares and I always had a desire to learn more about the world of finance, but it's never happened. I may take the time to research it some more, it sounds like I should educate myself on this as I freely admit it's a black art to me. But they do say a little knowledge is a dangerous thing, so I won't be mortgaging the house to have a dabble
And herein lies one of the issues with crowing over the "SC crowd" not making a fortune off shorting the pound.
If you want to make big money trading (FX or stocks) you need to be willing to risk big money to do so. The adage that you should never trade what you can't afford to lose is a cliché for a reason.
So even if the more financially literate forum members could predict that the pound would tank following the budget announcement, it's a whole other thing to have available capital and be prepared to potentially lose it all.
Because what might not have been quite so obvious was the BoE’s emergency QE announcement, which allowed the £ to recover. If you had open positions when it swung back (depending on your entry point) you big gains could suddenly become big loses.
And while @Dirk Diggler's example makes it sound simple, it's not quite that straightforward for retail "investors". There are other costs associated with spread betting, and wider spreads on FX trading platforms, which means you need the price movements to be bigger than the "real" price movements before you make a profit. There's a reason ~75% of retail spread betters make a loss.
