This book is a simple, practical guide to how you can use some of the newer investment products like spread betting, binary betting, contracts for difference, covered warrants and exchange-traded funds, as well as older ones like futures and options, to help your investing.

In different ways, each of these products allows you either to:

- boost the returns you get in exchange for taking on greater risk;

- hedge your bets in exchange for slightly lower returns;

- use much less capital to achieve the same market exposure; or

- move money into and out of a range of markets and sectors efficiently.

The author believes they are tools that all investors need to know about and be able to use when the occasion demands it. They should help you successfully confront any lengthy period of trendless or volatile markets.

While the past three years has seen a generally strong upward trend in stock markets, this is not bound to continue. Periodic volatility is the natural order of things. Interestingly enough - despite what appears to have been a bull market - recent years have also seen increased use by private investors of many of the tools described in this book.