Digital 100 options trading offers the opportunity to take a yes/no view on popular financial markets with limited risk.
You choose your position based on whether you believe an event will occur within a set timeframe. You can also trade once the timeframe has started, as long as it’s during trading hours and before the pre-close period. For example, you could start trading on a one-hour digital 100 with 20 minutes left until expiry. (The pre-closed period for digital 100 options falls between 30 seconds and two minutes prior to the expiry, depending on the timeframe and instrument.)
When trading digital 100 options, you buy the digital 100 if in your view the event will occur at the end of the timeframe. Conversely, you would sell the digital 100 if you don’t think the event will occur.
Online digital 100 trading
You can trade digital 100 options with us via our web-based desktop platform or mobile apps. Once you’ve logged in, choose the ‘Digital 100s’ module from the toolbar or from the product library. There are six main areas that you will use on both the web platform and mobile apps – product grid, order ticket, open positions, history, overview and settings.
We’ve produced a step by step digital 100 options trading desktop guide which explains each aspect of our digital 100 options module in detail. If you tend to also trade on a mobile or tablet device, take a look at our mobile app guide for Apple devices. If you’re an existing client, please ensure that you have the most up-to-date version of our app. Unfortunately, we no longer offer digital 100s vis our Android app.
Which markets can I trade?
Trading digital 100 options means you can take a short-term view across our most popular indices, forex pairs and commodities. Commonly-traded instruments include UK 100, US 30 and Germany 40; EUR/USD, GBP/USD and USD/JPY; and Crude Oil West Texas, Gold and Silver. We don’t currently offer digital 100 shares or digital 100 stocks, but you can trade CFDs on shares.
Digital 100 options types
There are four distinct digital 100s trade types – Ladder, One Touch, Up/Down and Range. Digital 100s either settle at zero (if the event does not happen) or 100 (if the event does happen).
With Ladders, you decide whether or not the settlement price (the reference price which determines whether or not you have won or lost the digital 100) will be at or above your selected strike price (the target price against which the digital 100 outcome is determined) when the digital 100 expires. So you buy if you believe the settlement price will finish higher than your strike price, and sell if you believe the settlement price will finish below your strike price.
In One Touch digital 100 options, you trade based on whether or not you believe the settlement price will reach your chosen strike price before the digital 100 expires. Similarly to Ladders, you select ‘Buy’ if you think it will happen, or ‘Sell’ if you don’t.
In Up/Down digital 100 options trading, there is normally just one strike price, which is the previous period’s close. You then choose whether to buy or sell based on whether you believe the settlement price will finish at or above the previous period’s close at the end of the digital 100 expiry.
Range digital 100s are slightly different. Here you decide whether the settlement price will close within a specified range at the end of the digital 100 expiry. For more details and to see which instruments you can trade, take a look at our digital 100 trade types page. Alternatively, learn more about how to trade digital 100 options or view digital 100 options strategies.
