St. James’s Place Capital [LON: STJ], or as it is sometimes known St. James’s Place Wealth Management Group, is a financial management company, headquartered in Cirencester and with offices throughout the UK. The business is involved in life assurance and the company is now a £2 billion market cap with assets under management in excess of £32.8 billion. The weekly chart below shows that this is a suitable stock for spread betting, with good volatility and clearly defined trends.
The group’s founders include Lord Rothschild, after whom the company was initially named, and it was Incorporated in 1991. The company went public in 1997 and was renamed to St James, as Lord Rothschild left his chairmanship. It has been of interest to major banking groups over the years. Halifax, more recently known as HBOS, bought a controlling interest of 60% in 2000, this having passed on to Lloyds Bank when it acquired HBOS Banking in 2009.
Since 2004 St. James’s has been ranked as one of the top financial management firms in the UK. The sales force is self-employed, and the group has an investment committee which appoints independent financial managers, and is thus able to pick and choose who selects the investments depending on their performance, rather than having to stay with the same in-house managers.
The group is geared towards high financial wealth clients, and has about 400,000 customers with many billions of pounds sterling under management.
Looking now at the chart, you can see some clearly defined up and downtrends on this weekly scale, and the picture is the same on the daily chart. This means that St. James’s Place will be eminently tradable most of the time, provided it continues in this pattern. As always, the MACD signals may be a little delayed to catch a trend, but this means that the trend is more clearly established by the time you place your bet based on those signals. Be sure to choose a timeframe for betting that gives you the best chance of profit.
St James’s Place Capital Rolling Daily: How to Spread Bet on St James’s Place Capital Shares?
St James is a wealth management company, looking after high-value accounts of individuals and companies. Its current rolling daily price for a spread bet is sell at 392.02 and buy at 393.98. If you think that the company is going to see an increase in its share value shortly, you may choose to place a long bet at 393.98, betting perhaps £5 per point.
For the sake of example, assume that the price goes up to a quotation of 442.36 – 444.32, at which point you decide to close your bet and collect your winnings. Your bet will close at the selling price of 442.36. With a starting price of 393.98, your total gain is 48.38 points. Multiplying by your stake, you would have won £241.90. Depending on your broker, you may have noticed some account adjustments each evening when the bet was rolled over, but these would not usually be significant.
As an alternative example, you might find that the share price dropped after you placed your bet. Say it went down to 351.69 – 353.65, and you decided that you needed to close the position to avoid any further loss. Your bet would close at 351.69, and taking the difference from the starting price of 393.98, you would find that you had lost 42.29 points. At £5 per point, that’s a loss of £211.45 on top of any minor adjustments that you have been charged for the rollovers.
It can be a good idea to take out a stop loss order when you place a bet. This saves you watching the market all the time, as your spread betting provider will close a losing bet for you when it reaches a level you set. Perhaps in this case, the bet would close at 365.92 – 367.88 with a stop loss. With an opening price of 393.98 and a closing price of 365.92, you would have lost 28.06 points at a cost of £140.30.
St James’s Place Capital Futures Style Spread Bet
With a futures based spread bet, you are generally looking to hold the bet for a few weeks or months as there are no rollover charges. Even though you are prepared to hold the bet open, you can close it at any time if you want or need to because of the price. The current quote for the far quarter expiration on St. James’s is 392.97 – 397.72. With a bullish outlook, you could place a buy bet on this share for £7.50 per point.
Firstly, assume that the price goes up as you had hoped, and you decide to cash in your bet when the quote has risen to 465.26 – 470.09. You opened the bet at a price of 397.72, and closed it at a price of 465.26. 465.26 minus 397.72 is 67.54 points. Multiplying by £7.50, the value of this bet turns out to be £506.55.
But one of the keys to being profitable when spread betting is to know when to close down a losing bet, so that you keep your losses small. Say the price drops to 344.55 – 349.70. Accepting your loss and ending the trade, you can work out how much it has cost you. The starting price was 397.72, and the trade closed at 344.55, a difference of 53.17 points. For your chosen size of bet, this would cost £398.78.
And once again if you do not have time to watch the market, you can use a stop loss order and this will often result in a reduced loss. Say this time a stop loss order would have closed your bet at a price of 357.01 – 361.85. As before, the opening price was 397.72, but this time the bet closed at 357.01, a loss of 40.71 points. At £7.50 per point, this amounts to £305.33.