Rogue trader Leeson rides to the aid of spread betters in over their heads

Trading platforms such as IG entice non-professionals to gamble more than they can afford. Now, writes Chloe Hadjimatheou, the man who broke Barings in the 90s is helping them get some of their money back

- Chloe Hadjimatheou

Grant has never set foot in a betting shop and has no interest in casinos. And yet his marriage is on the ropes and his life has been completely derailed after he lost almost £180,000 gambling. Now one of the world’s most infamous rogue traders is helping him get it back.

Back in 2009, when a friend first told Grant how easy it was to trade on the currency markets, it sounded less like gambling and more like an intellectual pursuit.

His first few trades went well. "I put £100 in and I made £600. And I was like: 'Whoa, that’s ridiculous,'" he recalls. "I thought: 'If I can just get this right, I can turn this into a job:'"

After eight years, he had lost about £50,000, including his savings, maxed-out credit cards and payday loans. After the birth of his first child in 2017, he was close to giving up entirely. It was at that moment, as his trades were dwindling, that IG, the spread-betting site he was using, contacted him and offered to upgrade his account. Moving from a retail account to a professional account would allow him far more leverage - a key difference between ordinary gambling and trading on spread-betting sites.

In a casino or betting shop, you can only lose what you came in with. With trading platforms such as IG, clients only need to put down 20% of a trade’s value as margin, but gains or losses are calculated on the full position size. Each time he made a trade, Grant risked losing up to £50 for every £1 he put in.

IG makes it clear to customers that 71% of retail clients lose money but that did not put Grant off. Privately educated and a graduate of a top university, he was confident he would be in the minority. He assumed that if he scoured the latest financial news, he would be able to see the patterns and predict fluctuations, allowing him to buy and sell at just the right moments.