Five ways to bet on the Scottish Independence Referendum

The campaigning is reaching fever pitch as the ‘Yes’ and ‘Better Together’ camps push their arguments to voters ahead of Thursday’s big Scottish Independence Referendum. Punters too have been quick to get involved in the action, so what are the best ways to bet on the result?

Here we highlight five different ways to bet on the Scottish Independence Referendum with Spreadex.

1.Fixed Odds Winner bet
The most simple bet to place on the Scottish Independence Referendum is a simple fixed odds bet on whether the ‘No’ vote or the ‘Yes’ vote will win.
Despite all the news headlines last week suggesting the ‘Yes’ campaign had closed the gap, the betting odds have always had a ‘No’ result as the most likely outcome.
Back in March the odds were strongly in favour of the ‘Better Together’ campaign with a ‘No’ vote priced at 1/5 and a ‘Yes’ at 10/3. I.e. you would have had to put £50 on a ‘No’ outcome at that time to get £10 back.
By June the odds had changed slightly with ‘No’ in to 2/7 and ‘Yes’ 5/2 so still strongly in favour of a ‘No’ result.
Even last Monday, when a shock poll suggested the ‘Yes’ vote had closed the gap, the Spreadex betting prices were 1/3 on a ‘No’ result and 21/10 on a ‘Yes’ outcome. A week on from that poll, ‘No’ has shortened again to 1/5 and ‘Yes’ drifted back out to 7/2.

2. Spread bet on the % of votes gained by each camp
To place a more specific bet than simply on the final outcome of the Referendum, you can place a spread bet on the percentage of the vote gained by each group.
For each campaign group, Spreadex puts out a spread on the predicted % of the vote they will gain.
Just four days ahead of the vote, Spreadex’s predicted % for ‘No’ is 53% – 55% and the predicted share for ‘Yes’ 45% - 47%.
So if you felt the ‘No’ share would be greater than 55% you could buy at 55. I.e. a £10 buy at 55% for ‘No’ would return £50 if the % ended up being 60% ((60 – 55) x £10) but if the share was just 50% that £10 buy at 55 would end up costing you £50 ((50 – 55) x £10).
If you felt the ‘No’ share was going to be less than 55% you could sell at 55. E.g. a £10 sell at 55% for ‘No’ would return £50 if the % ended up being 50% ((55 – 50) x £10) but if the share was 60%, that £10 sell at 55 would end up again costing you £50 ((55 – 60) x £10).
The same principle applies to bets on the ‘Yes’ share of vote percentage quote.

3. Spread bet on the % turnout of voters
Turnout percentage at the general election has slumped since the turn of the Millennium in Great Britain with the 2010 general election attracting 65.1%, 2005 61.4% and 2001 59.4% according to ukpolitical.info.
When you consider that turnout percentage for all general elections before that never fell below 70%, it’s quite a show of apathy on behalf of UK voters in recent times.
However, the Scottish Independence Referendum is a different kettle of fish as indicated by Spreadex’s predicted turnout percentage of between 82.5% and 84.5%.
It is widely anticipated that such an emotive and significantly important vote is sure to attract a higher turnout percentage than for the general election.
Back in April, Spreadex’s turnout percentage quote was 73% - 75% and even last week was 78.5% - 80.5% but the recent level of interest in the vote has seen the quote move higher still.

4. Financial spread bet on Scottish companies likely to be affected by the result
This isn’t a bet directly on the result of the Scottish Independence Referendum itself, but the vote has had a serious impact on some of the companies that could be affected by the result come Friday.
Royal Bank of Scotland for example is one of a few firms to announce that it could be forced relocate headquarters south of the border into England should the ‘Yes’ vote win.
When it made the announcement, the bank saw its share price fall by more than 4% from 350p to below 335p before recovering later in the week. Financial spread betting allows investors the opportunity to gain leveraged market access to trade on firms’ share prices during periods of volatility such as shown by RBS above.
So if you felt a firm’s share price may drop due to the outcome of the Referendum you could ‘sell’ at the bottom end of the quote (the ‘ask’), or if you felt the firm’s share price would increase based on the result you could buy at the top end of the spread (the ‘bid’).
The theory of the spread bets above is true on this market too, i.e. get the bet right and you can make a number of points multiplied by your stake size but should the market go against you it could mean losses of a number of points multiplied by your stake size.
With financial spread betting, however, you can use ‘stops’ or ‘guaranteed stops’ to limit your losses.

5. Financial spread bet on Sterling being affected by the vote
When last week’s shock poll suggested the ‘Yes’ vote was level pegging with the ‘Better Together’ campaign, sterling plummeted as investors took in the potential repercussions from Scotland going it alone from the rest of the UK.
GBP/USD fell from 1.6330 to around 1.6050 – a drop of about 280 points in spread betting terms – before gradually recovering as the week progressed.
For those into their forex trading this type of volatility is ideal for short-term intra-day trading and the final result come Friday could again have a considerable impact on this FX pairing as well as other sterling pairs.
Again, when spread betting on forex, if you call the trade correctly you can make many multiples of your stake size. But should the trade go against you, you can lose many multiples of your original stake. Stop losses and guaranteed stops can limit your potential losses when financial spread betting.