Share trading

There’s no cost when opening a live account. You can also view prices and use tools such as charts, Reuters news or Morningstar quantitative equity reports free of charge. You will need to deposit funds in your account to place a trade.

View the full list of shares on the platform

When you spread bet or trade CFDs on shares on our platform, you don’t buy or sell the underlying share. Instead, you’re taking a position on whether you think the company’s share price will go up or down.

With spread betting, you buy or sell an amount per point movement for the share instrument you are trading, such as £5 per point. This is known as your stake. With CFD trading, you buy or sell a number of units for a particular instrument. For every point or unit that the price moves in your favour, you gain multiples of your stake, and vice versa.

As an example, say you wanted to buy £1,300 worth of Lloyds shares at £65 per share. For the spread betting equivalent of this trade, you would specify a stake size of £20 per point to get the same exposure as you would if you bought 20 Lloyds shares at £65 through traditional share dealing. Due to the leverage available with spread betting (5:1 in this case), you would be able to enter this position with an initial outlay of £260, instead of £1,300. However, remember that your profits and losses are based on the full value of the trade (£1,300). You will never lose more than the amount in your account.

When a stock goes ex-dividend, the value of that stock effectively falls by the dividend amount. This means if you hold a spread bet or CFD position on a company which announces a dividend, your account will be credited or debited on the day the stock goes ex-dividend.

If you were long (holding a buy position), you would have been disadvantaged by the drop in the market caused by the pay out of the dividend, so we would credit your account with the dividend amount, less any applicable dividend withholding taxes. If you were short, you would benefit from the drop in the price, so the equivalent amount would be deducted. So, overall, you don't lose or gain anything from the adjustment. There are no withholding taxes on short positions. The dividend will appear as a 'Price Adjustment' in your account history within the platform.

We never aim to profit from our clients’ losses – this is simply not the way we want to do business. Our aim is to build long-term relationships with our clients by providing them with the best possible trading experience, through our technology and customer service.

Our clients usually offset each other’s trades, with some going long on a particular instrument while others are short. In this way, CMC Markets isn’t exposed to the profits or losses of clients trading that instrument. Occasionally, if a large number of our clients all trade in the same direction, we hedge in the underlying market to protect our exposure to risk.

There are a number of costs to consider when spread betting, including spread costs, holding costs (for trades held overnight – this is essentially a fee for the funds we ‘lend you’ to cover the leveraged portion of the trade) and guaranteed stop-loss order charges (if you use this risk-management tool).

The spread is the key cost involved in spread betting, and is the difference between the buy and sell price of an instrument. The narrower the spread, the better value you receive, because the market only has to move slightly in your favour to offer the possibility of a profit on your spread bet.

Share trades held open past the end of the trading day (5pm, New York time) are subject to holding costs, which can be positive or negative depending on your trade direction and the applicable holding rate. Holding costs for shares are based on the the underlying interbank rate for the instrument, plus 0.0082% on buy positions or minus 0.0082% on sell positions.

You can add a guaranteed stop-loss order (GSLO) to your trade, which guarantees to close you out at your specified level, regardless of market volatility or gapping. A cost is applied for using a GSLO, but if it's not triggered we'll refund 100% of the original GSLO charge. The charge, or ‘premium’, is calculated by multiplying the premium rate by the bet size.

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Our income comes mainly from our spreads, while other fees – such as overnight holding costs – make a minor contribution to our overall revenue.

We never aim to profit from our clients’ losses – this is simply not the way we want to do business. Our aim is to build long-term relationships with our clients by providing them with the best possible trading experience, through our technology and customer service.

Our clients usually offset each other’s trades, with some going long on a particular instrument while others are short. In this way, CMC Markets isn’t exposed to the profits or losses of clients trading that instrument. Occasionally, if a large number of our clients all trade in the same direction, we hedge in the underlying market to protect our exposure to risk.