Spread Betting G4S | Trade G4S Shares
G4S is a relatively new company, but has celebrated more than 75 years since its beginnings in the UK. It is the world’s largest security company, and is ranked as the world’s second-largest private company employer, behind only Walmart stores. It is listed on the London Stock Exchange, and has a secondary listing on the Copenhagen Stock Exchange.
Outside of the UK, the company was originally founded in 1901 in Copenhagen, and became known as Falck. The security firm Group 4, founded in the 1960s in Belgium, merged with Falck in 2000. But the UK connection was Securicor, founded in 1935 in London, which merged with Group 4 Falck subsequently in 2004, when the company was renamed G4S.
On this monthly price chart you can see there has been a steady growth in the 2000’s, except for the dip which most shares suffered at the time of the global economic crisis. There have been various crises during the last few years, including security lapses from a G4S subsidiary Wackenhut involving the US federal government, and several people dying while held in detention by G4S personnel. Therefore there is the possibility that you need to watch the news to avoid untoward reactions in the price.
G4S has been undertaking expansion by acquisition, including Ronco Consulting Corporation, Armor Group International, Global Solutions Limited, and Touchcom Inc. in 2008. It bought the UK’s Chubb Emergency Response in 2011.
There is little doubt that G4S is a large and diversified company which would help it ride out any temporary price fluctuations. It manages six prisons in the UK, and provides security services at many UK airports and ports. It is involved with monitoring over 14,000 offenders who have been electronically tagged, and securing 500 police stations. Other aspects of its business include meter reading for utility companies, rating hotels for VisitBritain, destroying discovered explosives, and providing security for major sporting and cultural events.
How to Spread Bet on G4S Shares: Rolling Daily
With a diverse range of business, centred around security but including rating hotels and disposing of unexploded ordnance, G4S has been making reasonable progress in share price growth. The current quote for a daily rolling bet is 279.32 – 279.88. Say after looking at the technical analysis you believe that the share price is going to fall, then you could place a short or sell bet on G4S for perhaps £15 per point.
The short bet is placed at the selling price of 279.32. Perhaps the price drops to 262.13 – 262.69, and you decide to close your spread trade and collect your profit. First you must work out how many points you gained. 279.32 less 262.69 is 16.63 points. As you staked £15 per point, this spread bet has won you £249.45.
Whenever you place a spread bet or trade on the financial markets, you are open to the possibility of losing money. Perhaps in this case the price went up and not down, and when it reached 292.63 – 293.19 you decided that you had to close the spread trade and accept your loss. Working it out, 293.19 less 279.32 is 13.87 points, which at £15 per point is a loss of £208.05.
While talking about losing, you will find that many traders are careful to set up a stop loss orders on any trading that they do. The stoploss order tells your broker to close the trade if a certain amount of loss is reached, and it saves you having to watch the markets all the time. If you had set up a stoploss order on this spread trade you might find that your spread betting company would close the spread bet for you when the price was 285.76 – 286.34. In this case you would have lost 286.34-279.32, which is 7.02 points, and that would have cost you £105.30.
G4S Futures Based Spread Bet
A rolling daily bet probably works out cheaper if the position is only open for a few days or weeks, but if you are looking to spread bet for a longer period you may consider using a futures based spread bet. The current quote for the far quarter on G4S is 280.02 – 283.40. If you think that G4S is on a general growth trend, you could place a long bet at 283.40 for say £20 per point.
If you are correct, the price might go up to 337.26 – 340.39, and you could close your spread trade and take your profit. The spread bet would close at 337.26 which means you have gained 53.86 points from your entry price. Multiplying this by your stake, you find you have won £1077.20.
Now if it works out like that, it’s great, but a lot of the time you will find that your bet does not win, and you have to close it when it is losing to avoid further losses. Say the price drops to 241.07 – 244.02. If you end your spread bet now, you will have lost 283.40 minus 241.07 points, which is 42.33 points. At a stake of £20 per point this cost you £846.60.
One of the secrets to successfully profiting from spread betting, or any other type of trading, is to keep your inevitable losses small. Many spread betters will set a stoploss order when they open a bet, and this will make sure that the trade is closed before the loss becomes unreasonable. If you had done this on the spread bet above, you might find that the spread betting company closed your bet when the price dropped to 255.60 – 258.73. Now working out your loss, 283.40 less 255.60 is 27.8 points. For your stake, that amounts to £556 lost.
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