Two things called spread betting, and only one is a point spread

In American sports, a spread is a fixed-odds handicap: you win or lose a stated amount. In British financial and sports spread betting, you buy or sell an index at a quoted range and win or lose a multiple of how far the result lands from it. The names collide and the products are unrelated.

The confusion is entirely historical — two markets developed the word independently — but the consequence is not. A fixed-odds bet has a maximum loss printed on the slip. A financial-style spread bet does not: it is a position whose loss scales with the outcome and can exceed the money that funded it unless a stop is attached.

It does not mean one is a bet and the other an investment. Both are bets. Only one has a bounded loss written on it before it is placed.

Here is the catch. A reader who has learned American spreads and then meets a British spread firm assumes the same maximum-loss property carries over. It does not, and the discovery arrives with a number attached.

What to do with it. Establish which product you are looking at before staking anything. If the interface asks for an amount 'per point', it is the unbounded kind, and it needs a stop rather than a stake.