Phil Seaton, the developer of the LS Trader system originally began trading back in the late 90s. At that point he had yet to discover the secrets to trading success and was apt to try virtually anything out on the markets. This became an expensive experience that was quickly self-correcting! One of the advantages of using a service such as ours and following a proven system is that we have already made all of the expensive mistakes so that you don't have to!

At this stage he decided to read up on the markets and study the world's most successful traders. In doing this he found that there was literally a minefield of information out on the markets and much of it contradicted what others had said or written. At this point he decided to start with a clean slate and decide that he knew nothing at all about the markets but would actually test each approach to the markets out and see what actually worked and what did not.

This was an enlightening exercise, because from here it was clear to see that most information available on the markets is not only incorrect and not statistically valid, but for the most part is extremely damaging to profitable trading and in many cases the exact opposite of what actually works and is profitable in the markets!

He then worked on this approach over the next few years, testing every idea or concept that he could come up with or that others had used previously and ended up with a few core principles, a trading philosophy and a complete set of trading rules which were very robust and very profitable over the long term.

The best part of doing extensive and vigorous trading research is that you can actually test ideas, systems and theories out against real market data and see how each system and indicator would have fared had it been traded with real money.

Once he had completed his research and finalised his system he then began trading these rules and this trading system on his own account and the results were highly impressive. It was not long before family and friends were asking him what he was doing to produce such amazing returns and asking if they could get in on the action. That was when he decided to offer this service to others so that they could benefit from his system and experience and literally copy his exact trades.

Phil still does system research to this day partly because he is a perfectionist and also because he loves doing system research and testing new ideas and theories. At a certain point, once you have a good trading system and a good set of trading rules, it is easy to go beyond the point of diminishing returns in systems testing. Phil continues to do this research though to ensure that he is not missing anything and to confirm that the system still works and that the markets have not changed.

There are a number of reasons why LS Trader is unique and below we list the most important reason why we are one of the most successful spread betting systems around.

Quite simply the LS Trader system is based on very sound trading principles that have stood the test of time. It draws on the trading philosophies and trading rules that the world's most successful traders use and all of these principles and trading rules have been vigorously tested against real market data so that we know exactly what works and what we can expect performance wise in the future.

In creating the LS Trader system we have literally tested everything that you can think of, including every indicator and approach to beating the markets across all timeframes. From there we have fine-tuned the things that work and have rejected the things that do not work. In addition, we have used very rigorous testing procedures to ensure that the system is robust and not curve fitted to past data.

Curve fitting is when a system has been created in hindsight and the entry and exits "fitted" to past market data. It is easy to show good results by looking at a chart and saying that we bought here and sold here, but that is of no use in actual trading as curve fitted systems have little if any predictive power. Curve fitting is the plague of technical trading systems and systems that have been curve fitted will not be of any use when applied to real live trading.

We believe that this is the best financial spread betting system in the market for a number of reasons. As we mentioned above, it has been created on very sound trading principles that have stood the test of time, has been vigorously researched and tested and actual trading results have been in line with the back tested results. It also has the following benefits:

1. Because it is a low frequency trading system (it only makes around 3-5 trades per week) it does not generate much in the way of commissions (or spreads in the case of spread betting) meaning that the profits are not eroded by high frequency trading and therefore high transaction costs
   
   
2. It is easy to follow and can be followed in less than 1 hour per week, and in many cases as little as 15 minutes. It is also not necessary or beneficial to sit in front of the trading screen all day or read all the latest news reports etc. or spend time studying charts as the system generates trades based on the rules of the system.
   
   
3. As it is a weekly system it is largely unaffected by "noise" in the markets. A lot of what goes on in the markets intra-day is just "noise" and is not based on the underlying trends and this is what trips up many short term traders. By using a longer-term approach each trade has more going for it and a much higher expectation of resulting in a profitable trade.
   
   
4. It has very sound money management rules incorporated in to the system and only risks a relatively small percentage of trading equity per trade as well as position limits to ensure that there is not too much exposure to highly correlated markets.
   
   
5. Because it is medium to long term and trades are taken only in the direction of the long term trend there is a higher expectation of profit on each trade and the potential for some very large moves. As a rule we get several very large winning trades per trading year and these more than pay for all the small losses and leaves plenty left over for profit.
   
   
6. In summary the system is easy to follow, generates high profits, is fairly low risk and has low transaction costs. This makes it a very good system to follow with fairly predictable long term results.