A Contract for Difference, or CFD is an two way trading deal between two different parties based on the rise or fall in the trading price of an agreed number of shares in a company over an agreed time – no actual share purchase is necessary. While it may sound slightly complicated it really is not at all. Many investment groups and hedge funds have found a great deal of success with CFD for over ten years now within the UK stock markert as an alternative to traditional sharedealing. CFD trading is similar in many ways to spread trading in that both of these are margined products so you can gear yourself up or actually take a decision that is a multiple of your available funds.
If, for example, the margin on a firm youre interested in was 10%, establishing a position of £100,000 would only require a deposit of £10,000. Any running profits you make can be used as margin to establish new positions but any running losses would have to be made good by reducing your position or providing additional funds.
While stamp duty of 0.5% on all UK share purchases has in the opinion of some traders reduced the cost effectiveness of ‘day-trading’ traditional stocks and shares, both CFDs and spread betting are exempt and this has added to their appeal. CFDs are liable to capital gains tax whereas spread bets are tax free, but losses incurred from spread bets are gone for good while CFD losses can be offset against future profits for tax purposes. When you actually trade in CFDs you purchase those contracts in nearly the same way you buy shares. Let’s say you wished to invest on a thousand shares in a business – with CFD trading you would need to sell 1,000 units at eg 494p per share, whereas with spread betting you would just place a bet of £10 per point to get an equivalent return.
A lot of CFD providers allow you to post orders anywhere within the bid offer spread whereas spread betting firms post their own two-way, take it or leave it price in the same way a bookie would. With CFD you are the cost maker, which is why hedge funds tend to use CFDs rather than spread betting. With CFD you are the price maker, which is why hedge funds tend to use CFDs rather than spread betting. With CFDs the charges and commissions involved in a trade are not part of the spread, which is the case with financial spread betting. Because of this, the CFD spread quote will constantly be very close to the underlying price of the share or commodity that you are following. CFDs also mimic nearly every aspect of owning the underlying share or market, so if you hold a position for a long enough time period you will recieve the benefit from any dividends being paid on the shares.
CFDs and spread betting have particular features that will appeal to different trading styles and there is no one best instrument to use. However they should not be regarded as substitutes for long term investment or saving, as more people seek to take control of their financial destiny, theres been a growing realisation that going short is a legitimate means of trading in market thats become progressively difficult to profit from in a traditional sense.
