通过点差交易进行无风险套利 (Risk Free Arbitrage with Spread Betting)

ok here goes:

I noticed a while ago spread betting companies let you buy and sell currency pairs and many of them allow you to select which currency you want to use for each pip value. For example if you open a long GBP/USD pip values with normal brokers would be in USD. With many spread betting firms you can have pips in GBP.

Assuming I am fully understanding everything, This theoretically creates a "risk free" arbitrage opportunity.

Let me explain:

Say at this point in time, GBP/USD is $2.

If you sold 100k GBP/USD with a normal broker and buy GBP/USD with a spread betting company for £5 per pip, no matter which way the market moved, you would profit.

If price moves to 1.85 in the next few months, The short GBP/USD position with the normal broker would be +$15000. The long spread betting position would be £-7500.

If we look at both position in Pound terms we have this:

GBP/USD long £-7500
GBP/USD short $15000/1.85 (the rate at the time) = +£8108

This would result in a profit of £608.

Now lets see what happens if price moved to 2.15 instead:

The long would be +£7500
The short would be -$15000

Lets convert both positions into Pounds:

We have +£7500 and -$15000/2.15=£6976

This would result in a profit of £524

So as you can see, no matter what price does, you win. These calculations do not factor in the spreads etc. I dont believe any FX strategy is 100% risk free, brokers slip orders especially during the news, brokers can even go bankrupt etc etc.

I have used this strategy for a few months on the GBP/JPY with some great results.

The further price moves from the starting point, the greater the profit. It was excellent in July when GBP/JPY dropped massively.