Advantages of spread betting

Spread betting is tax-exempt in the UK and Ireland, so no stamp duty or capital gains tax is required to be paid or reported to the HMRC on profits made. Spread betting is considered a speculative bet instead of an investment, and so it is treated in the same regard as a gambling activity.

Learn more about how spread bets and CFDs are taxed​.

When you spread bet, you don't physically buy the instrument on which you are taking a position. You instead speculate on whether you expect prices to rise or fall. If you think the price of a particular instrument is going to fall, you can go short (sell) and if you think prices are going to rise, you can go long (buy).

Spread betting enables the use of margin or leverage. Margin trading​ allows you to do more with your capital – you can open a bigger position than you would be able to if you had to fund the full value of the position.

For example, if the margin rate for a product is 5% and you wanted to place a bet worth £2000, you could open a position using just £100 from your available account balance. Remember, however, that spread betting using margin can increase your losses as well as profits, as they are relative to the full value of the position.

When spread betting, you can choose between a range of order types, including the following:

You can spread bet anywhere in the UK or Ireland via our desktop platform, mobile or tablet device. With cross-device functionality, you could open a trade on your desktop and close the trade hours later on your mobile device. Our spread betting app also features fully interactive charts, with over 40 technical indicators and mobile-optimised layouts.

We offer a number of risk-management controls, including stop-loss orders​. A stop-loss may help you manage your exposure by setting a price level beyond which you are not prepared to risk any more of your capital on a position. When used effectively, a stop-loss order should automatically close your position if the price of the relevant instrument moves against you and reaches the price level where you wish to exit that position.

It's important to remember that regular and trailing stop-losses may not protect you from market gapping or slippage, so for 100% certainty that your stop-loss will be executed at the exact price you want, you can also explore guaranteed stop-loss orders​, which come with a small premium charge. Other risk-management features include trailing stop-loss orders and take-profit orders.

Spread betting can be a cost-efficient way to speculate on new markets. We offer prices on over 12,000 financial instruments, including shares, currencies, indices, commodities, treasuries and ETFs from across the globe.

You can spread bet on a huge number of forex pairs 24 hours a day, from Sunday evening through to Friday night. We also offer many indices, commodities and treasuries which are almost tradable around the clock, bar a short break. For example, the UK 100 is available to trade between 1am on Mondays and 9pm on Fridays, apart from two breaks between 9.15pm and 9.30pm, and 10pm to 11pm.

We also offer spread betting on unique markets that are exclusive to CMC Markets, such as commodity indices, forex indices and share baskets, which provide efficient and cost-effective exposure to several instruments within an asset class using a single position.