As investments go, spread betting and other high-risk gambles are only for the brave. As for buying shares in the listed companies that offer them, that is for the braver still. A regulatory clampdown on spread betting by the European securities watchdog seems to have forced an unwelcome change on the companies that offer such services, turning them from exciting high-growth stocks into more conventional businesses, and ones on the back foot, at that. CMC Markets is a perfect case in point.
CMC Markets was founded as a foreign exchange broker in 1989 by Peter Cruddas, a former co-treasurer of the Conservative Party, who remains its chief executive. Over the years, it expanded the number of products it offered and moved into overseas markets, including