Trading apps have made the markets as easy to reach as online shopping – and around 1.6 million people in the UK now trade from their phones. Before joining them, it pays to know what the adverts leave out.

Talk to people around Gedling borough about money at the moment and a theme comes up: everything costs more, wages have not kept pace, and the adverts promising a second income from trading have never been more visible. Trading apps sit on the same phones as the supermarket app, sign-up takes minutes, and some platforms now offer products – options, leveraged trades – that used to be the preserve of City professionals.

None of this is automatically bad. Investing sensibly over years is one of the better financial habits a household can build. But there is a real difference between patient investing and the high-speed trading the adverts glamorise, and the gap between the two is where people get hurt.

The number the adverts must show you – and why it matters

By law, UK providers of the riskier trading products must publish what percentage of their retail customers lose money. Look at the small print at the bottom of those adverts and you will see it: across the industry, well over half of retail customers lose, year after year. That is not a scandal being hidden – it is printed right there – but it is the single most useful fact in the entire subject, and almost nobody reads it.

Options and leverage: know what you’re holding

The products deserving most caution are the leveraged ones – options, CFDs and spread bets – where a small stake controls a much larger position. Losses arrive faster and larger than beginners expect, and with some products can exceed the money put in. Options in particular have genuine, sensible uses for experienced investors, but they are a professional’s tool being marketed with a consumer’s interface.

Anyone determined to explore them should do two things first: understand exactly how the product loses money before thinking about how it makes it, and choose a provider on independent evidence rather than advertising. Comparisons of UK options trading platforms published by The Investors Centre are compiled from real funded accounts rather than providers’ marketing, which is the difference between a road test and a brochure.

Sensible rules for a first-timer

Use only money whose loss would change nothing – never the bill money, never the emergency fund. Check any provider on the FCA register before depositing a pound, because clone-firm scams specifically target new traders. Treat anyone on social media promising returns as a red flag, since promising returns is precisely what regulated firms are not allowed to do. And start with boring: for most households, a simple diversified investment held for years beats every exciting alternative on the app store.

The markets are not a scam and they are not a lottery ticket. They are a tool – and like any tool, the outcomes depend less on the tool than on whether the person holding it read the instructions.