Sally is looking for a source of extra cash to fund a sabbatical, while she
writes a novel, and decides spread betting is the answer. She tries to open
an account with Finspreads - their web site has the best colour scheme -
only to discover she's been credit blacklisted. Instead of being thankful
for divine inter vention, she complains to the marketing department and is
hired to write an online trading diary.

Bets and the City is based on Sally's enormously popular column for
Finspreads. She says, "I soon discovered that most traders and spread
better s go broke within the first year. And I was determined that wasn't
going to happen to me. I come from a gambling family, and it looked pretty
easy. Just BUY or SELL. How hard is that? I reckoned that even if my novel
failed to hit the best-sellers, at least I wouldn't find myself living in a
garret. So I approached the markets with magnificently misplaced optimism.
And made sure not to tell my financial adviser or my big brother what I was
doing, as they'd only have stopped me."

Bets and the City takes you inside the dealing room of the UK's leading
spread betting firm as Sally begins her transformation from naive beginner
to hardened pessimist. Her Spread Betting Diary is frank, factual (these
are all real trades) and fun - especially when she unwittingly finds her
self inadver tently elevated to the status of a trading Agony Aunt. "The
best advice I can give is that you should do exactly the opposite of what I
do. That way, you're much more likely to win," she tells one fellow trader.
"This is an ideal Christmas book for the gambler in your life. In between
the funny bits, there's some really useful information. For example, you
never take a holiday in Cornwall when you're speculating on sterling
against the dollar."

Synopsis
Bridget Jones meets Wall Street - "Bets and the C