"Sally Nicoll - at the top of the spread betting tree."
The Financial Times

"Sally takes the lead on spread bets."
The Mail on Sunday

"Reads like a novel. Destined to become this year's surprise best-seller. Buy, buy, BUY!"
Sally's Mum

That's right, Finspreads will give you £50 if you sign up with them through this site. Read more about it here.

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“Hi, I’m Dow Jones, Sally’s spread betting accomplice.”

“When Sally was writing Bets and the City, I told her, ‘Your readers need a break from all that financial stuff! So tell them about ME, and all the fun we have hanging out with celebrities in Primrose Hill.’

Fortunately, she took my advice, so even if you’re not really interested in spread betting, the book’s a great read in a Bridget Jones meets Wall Street kind of way.

I'm in Sally's very best books right now. Click here and see the blog post dated April 23rd to find out why!

Sally Nicoll still considers herself a novice spread better. “I came to it by accident,” says the former advertising copywriter and journalist. “I heard about financial spread betting and said: ‘Oh, that sounds like a good hobby.’” What appealed to her was being able to trade small amounts and not having to invest significant sums. She described her initial style as ‘random’, but has now honed her skills. “At first, it was as if I had entered a souk in Istanbul, and I didn’t quite know what to buy,” she says. “I tried a bit of everything – and lost most of it.”

She credits ShareScope, the trading software program, for helping her to refine her techniques. Now she tends to trade £/$ and FTSE 350 stocks, and her profits have improved considerably. She recommends FTSE binary bets as a starting point for neophytes. “Is the FTSE going to go up today or down? It’s an easy concept to grapple with,” she says. In the spread betting world. Ms Nicoll is now regarded as something of an expert, as she writes a blog for the group Finspreads and has written a book called Bets and the City.”


Kind though it is of the Financial Times to say I’m regarded as some kind of expert, that’s definitely not how I see myself – I’m more of an advanced beginner!
It’s definitely true that I think binary bets are great for novices – and in Bets and the City you’ll find out exactly how they work, and how I had BIG success with them.


As for ShareScope software, I reckon it’s the best charting package of them all. And I’ve organised a decent free offer for my readers so you can try it out for yourself.

Novelist Sally Nicoll has a Parson Jack Russell called Dow Jones – after the American index. But despite his name, and being a bright dog, he leaves the financial affairs of the household to his owner.

Sally began making spread bets on the performance of shares as a way of funding a break from her job as an advertising copywriter while she wrote a novel.
"I was a beginner three years ago and really did not know what I was doing, so I learned through a process of trial and error," she says. "What appealed to me about spread betting was that you could both buy and sell shares and the gains were tax-free because it was a bet. "When I started I was betting only pennies -- I'm rash, but not stupid. And for every winner there were two losses."

The turning point came for Sally when she took a one-day beginners' course in spread betting where she was taught to be more painstaking in her approach. The spread betting firm she used, Finspreads, asked her to contribute an online diary charting her experiences.
She has now turned those experiences into a book, Bets And The City.
"I thought, if people are going to read about what I am doing, I should get my act together," says the thirtysomething, who lives in Primrose Hill, North-West London.

Sally devised a series of rules including never staking more than she can afford to lose, not taking profits too soon, using charts to try to predict share price movements and using stop-losses to limit the downside.
"If you have open positions you must keep on top of them, as things can change very quickly," says Sally, who bets on indices such as the FTSE 100 and Dow Jones as well as individual FTSE 350 companies.

Photograph by MarkWhitfieldPhotography.com

This is a great book for Christmas. Well written, highly enjoyable and, hidden beneath frivolity and Bridget Jones-esque wit, full of wisdom. The book is a diary that describes the journey author Sally Nicoll takes from her introduction to trading, in the form of spread betting, through the losing phases (which we are all familiar with), until she starts to make consistent profits.

Experienced traders will smile when they relive – through Nicholl's breezy account of hers - their early days in the markets. Those starting out will enjoy and benefit from the experiences of one of their peers.

On her journey Sally encounters five “gurus” (her words not mine); one of whom she says has good legs – although modesty forbids me to reveal the identity of this fine figure of masculinity. Each guru completes a piece in the trading puzzle and, from her initial random and chaotic spread betting forays, Sally Nicoll slowly develops a methodology and – crucially - the discipline to operate it.

The book is unique in its style and is certainly the most enjoyable “trading” book I have read. It may well make the jump to the mainstream and I could even see a film coming out of it at some point. It's also nicely designed, with the inner edges of the internal pages given a trompe l'oeil effect, which makes it look like a spiral bound notebook and further enhances the “diary” element. Very clever.

It is also interesting to read how Sally progresses down the road of fear and greed.

Here are a few quick samples to set the tone:

Sally discovers chart patterns (page 49)
“… I know I should be reporting that I have achieved this after careful study of the chart patterns. I'm meant to be able to identify:

• Double Tops – This doesn't mean you have scored 40 playing darts. It's when you look at the chart and see what looks like two mountain peaks. Or the price moving in a pattern like the letter M. This means the price is likely to fall. Apparently.
• Double Bottoms – Nothing to do with our obesity epidemic. They're the opposite of double tops. So either you spot them by standing on your head or you're looking for the letter W. This signals that the price is about to go up. Allegedly.
• Head and shoulders - Not the shampoo to banish dandruff. If you peer carefully at the chart…”

Sally discovers what trading is all about (page 85)
“… A couple of hours later I'm 67 points up.

• I adjust my stop-loss to lock in some profit, and ensure that the worst that can happen is I end up with a tenner. (FEAR)
• But, then again, why take the risk. I sell the trade with a profit of 33.50 pounds. (GREED)
• Next time I check, the price is still rising. (P ISSED OFF)

I place a new buy trade…”

However Sally remains in “greed” mode until she hits her “wipe out” trade.
“… Back in London I am now down a total of 1,700 pounds (34 per cent). I realise I am now locked deep into the Ostrich position: head in the sand; not wanting to know, and starting to experience something very like morning sickness whenever I check the status of my trades.”


We have all been there – we all know that feeling. If you are a trader and you haven't yet, then it is a joy yet to come. One of the great things about this book is that it's written by a trader as she develops her skills. The only other book written in that way that I know of (modesty notwithstanding) is my own.

Most books on trading are written by those who have reached the pinnacle of their career and they tend to skip over embarrassing trades that may have wiped them out. In my opinion, this is a disservice to their readers, as such trades are the building blocks of risk control and money management which become the foundation stones of any successful trading approach.

In “Bets and the City” you get warts and all – you get to see what it is really like when you start out. Now that is worth a lot and many people would pay a premium to read about it, but one of the best things about this book is the price: it is only 9.99 pounds. What's more , if you buy the book, a well known spread betting company will top up a new account with 50 pounds!

Review by John Piper of Johnpiperstrading.com

This month, I am going to exploit my position as the Godfather of Hi-Tech Abuse, by shamelessly plugging a book which promotes computerised gambling. I am acting like this because I was bribed fifty quid to do so by the author of the book. And then I am going to try and bribe you too. I am perfectly happy take a bung, but unlike football managers and party politicians, I admit everything and I will not be accused of humbuggery. Here’s how it happened.

I was in a café in Primrose Hill, tucking in to sausage, bacon and eggs, when Paul McCartney walked in. A friendly woman sitting at an adjacent table murmured to me, “I bet you he’ll be offended if he sees what you’re eating.” So I slowly wiped the dead animal grease from my chops, and replied, “Yeah? How much?” It was the start of a brief but intense business relationship. With the friendly woman, that is, not the ex-Beatle. Sir Paul had a nice chat with her, but he completely ignored me and my meat.

After he had left, I established that the friendly woman was involved in global Internet betting, and I smugly told her I was planning a magazine article about the collapse of online gaming, because the US Federal Government had criminalised the use of the Internet to place and settle bets. I went on to give my opinion that the only winner in a horse race was the bookie. She sighed, leaned towards me, tapped me on the nose with a froth-flecked coffee spoon and said, “You know, I used to bet on the horses. And then I discovered that every afternoon at 2.30 sharp they run a two-horse race in America. You can bet to win, or you can bet to lose. You don’t have to put your money on before the race begins. In fact, you can wait until one side is well ahead and then make up your mind. Oh, and you can claim your winnings any time you happen to be ahead. I can’t remember the last time I backed a horse.”

The name of her fanciful race? She called it the Dow Jones Stakes, and other people call it “spread betting”, which is perfectly legal in the UK, but banned in America. She said she had turned her computer into a cash machine and what’s more, she had written a book about it. Then she offered me the bung.

The deal was, if I bought her book for a tenner, she would arrange for fifty pounds to be deposited into an account with my name on it. I did, and she did. The book is called ‘Bets And The City’ and the friendly woman’s name is Sally Nicoll. And because it is the season of goodwill and gift-giving, I am going to pass on her bung of fifty quid to each and every reader of these words. Google her, go to her website and contact her, mentioning my name. Really, I kid you not. There’s fifty quid waiting for you. Ho! Ho! Ho! Merry Christmas everyone? You can bet on it!