By the way, I find it extremely hard to make any money with CFDs. It's the fact that the market maker is making a gain when my CFDs go negative, so I close the trade only to find they would eventually have gone positive. But with shares I'm more wiling to let them go negative, hence I'm more successful with shares. I'm just not focused enough to deal with CFD trading.
But where the CFDs really helped me was on Monday of last week when RIO was down at 46.2. I didn't want to sell my shares, so I hedged them by short selling RIO CFDs. Had the stock continued to dive I would have made money on the CFDs. But what happened was the next day the opened up around 47 and closed over 48. I closed the trade at 47.2 and made a loss. What do I think? I think the whole deal was excellent. Why? Because it was better than had I had sold my Rio shares, because if I did then right now I'd be real angry knowing they're at 58 without me holding them. So the CFD hedge was insurance that I took and simply had to pay the fee on. I fully accept that and am very glad I went that route rather than selling the shares. Had I sold the shares then I would have had to transfer funds into my trading account to buy back the shares at the higher price. There's absolutely nothing worse than having to buy back shares at a higher price - nothing!
