Spread betting on economic indicators - is it available?

[johnfm]

Anyone know if you can spread bet on things like redundancy figures, unemploymnet levels, new car production figures etc?

[Somewhatfoolish]

If you're a big enough client then the spread betting comapnies will allow you to spread bet anything that trades on exchange, and there are futures available on non farm payroll, inflation etc.

Just phone em up and ask them if they'd be willing to make you a price

[johnfm]

Thanks

I'm just looking into it as a hedging strategy.

It is relatively simple for manufacturing companies to hedge agaisnt the price of raw materials (oil, steel etc).

Our company deals business to business with medium to lare limited companies.

We could hedge if we could spread on economic indicators which feed through to our clients demand for our services.

We could hedge with some of our bigger clients by just shorting their stock prices I suppose - but that is not a great strategy if, for instance they announce a merger and their stock price rises, but as part of the merger they cut expenditure and we lose business. I expect the derivative nature of this sort of hedge would create more risk than it mitigates!

[Somewhatfoolish]

Basically you need to speak to a bank but if you're big enough there is an OTC derivative for any occasion - let them worry about hedging it