Hello everyone. May I ask other UK members: are there any reasons not to use spreadbetting as my way of trading, right from the outset?
Do speadbetting companies have practice accounts?
I’ve read the whole Babypips school (forex, not crypto), some other websites and a couple of books, and I have no trading experience at all. Is there anything I particularly need to know, before trying spreadbetting?
The only significant issue with spreadbetting is that their spreads are wider than ideal if you’re trading on very short time-frames with very tight stops and their costs are higher if you’re planning to hold positions for multiple weeks. But otherwise you’re no more likely to be a loser with SB firms than any other market access type.
Of course, it’s no easier to be a winner either… but if you do get into that bracket, the freedom from tax or even tax returns is very nice.
They do have demo accounts. They’d lose a lot of potential customers by not offering those, so they have to.
They’re are all FCA-regulated and have to be, by law, so unlike most people beginning to trade you won’t need to worry about regulation at all, which is actually a huge and really unusual advantage.
The following are just examples, not recommendations -
I suggest, if you possibly can, using a practice account in the same place you’re going to use a real one later, so that when actual money is suddenly on the line, you’re already familiar with everything about the broker’s rules, platform, support staff, policies and procedures, mechanisms and practicalities.
It’s quite important!
Since they’re all equally well and reliably regulated, you might perhaps want to look at their range of trading platforms (apart from Metatrader 4, if it’s still available anywhere: don’t even look at that one! 
).