CaptainSamurai

In theory, if you take a potato and repeatedly cut it in half, each time throwing away one piece, you never run out of potato... The point is that you need to adjust your percentage to however much money you have left.

open a spread bet account and don't pay?

Yes. If you cannot explain with mathematical proof why your system is effective, then you are gambling and getting lucky.

Look under "Options for Metals, Energies"

The reason for trading in "points" rather than direct shares is to avoid UK taxes: If you trade in points HMRC classifies it as gambling, and the winnings are not taxed. At the end of the day it works out approximately the same as dealing in direct shares you just have to do a bit of multiplication/division to work out the exact number of shares.

I believe in practice, once the option is opened, people tend to trade the underlying security rather than the option. Options are typically for "holding til expiry" rather than buying and selling later. You may consider having an alert that tells you if your underlying goes above/below a certain point. In any case, trading options is not a "set and forget" sort of operation -- you really need to be hands on and monitor your positions, margin, etc.

You need to upgrade your account to Professional. There is a page somewhere that explains the requirements for a Professional account.

Respectfully, I've been in this game for many years and I can tell you that if you're absolutely terrified of losing you shouldn't play at all -- you will just make bad choices.

This is wrong. In theory, even if you risk 10% of your balance on each of a series of trades, you will never go bankrupt. "a lot less" is not a mathematically accurate measure. This is exactly what I was talking about, people throw around percent numbers and it's fine if it's a rule of thumb but you have to understand that it's just a rule of thumb -- there is nothing scientific or mathematical about it.

I've seen people talk about style -- why does it matter? It seems like people use the word as a hand-wavy way to avoid illogical things they cannot explain. "Why am I losing money" -- > "Oh this method doesn't match my style"

THT, when is your motivational book & seminar coming out... 😜

The 1% rule is often parroted around but the people who propagate it rarely understand risk. If someone is telling you "only risk 1% per trade", I would follow up by asking why 1% and not 1.2% and not 0.7% -- their answer will demonstrate how clueless they are.