A contract for difference (CFD) is a derivative product which enables you to trade on the price movements of underlying financial assets (such as forex, indices, commodities, shares and treasuries). It's an agreement to exchange the difference in the value of an asset from the time the contract is opened until the time it's closed.

With a CFD, you never actually own the asset or instrument you're trading, but you can still benefit if the market moves in your favour, or make a loss should the market move against you.

Trading CFDs involves trading on leverage, which means that you can enter a position with a set initial deposit, known as the margin requirement. It's important to remember that leverage amplifies your gains and losses in equal measure, based on the full value of the trade, and not just the initial margin amount. Learn more about CFD trading

The main difference between CFD trading and share trading is that you don't own the underlying share when you trade on a share CFD. With CFDs, you never actually buy or sell the underlying asset that you've chosen to trade, but you can still benefit if the market moves in your favour, or make a loss if it moves against you. However, with traditional share trading, you enter a contract to exchange the legal ownership of the shares for money, and you own this equity.

The main risks associated with trading CFDs are leverage , which means your profits and losses are amplified based on the full value of your trade, and slippage, or market gapping, which can occur in volatile markets. For these reasons, it's important to manage your risk carefully as part of your trading strategy. Learn more about the risk of trading CFDs

CMC Markets has 15 global offices, including in the UK, Australia, Germany, Canada, New Zealand, Singapore and Bermuda. CMC Markets' entities are licensed and regulated by the local authorities, for example, CMC Markets Bermuda is licensed to conduct investment business and digital asset business by the Bermuda Monetary Authority (‘BMA’).

As a CMC Markets' client, your money is held separately from CMC Markets' own funds. It is held in segregated client bank accounts distributed across a range of major banks, which are regularly assessed against our risk criteria. Under the BMA rules, retail clients must be provided with negative balance protection. This means that your maximum loss is the amount you have deposited with us.

If you're trading on MT4 or MT5, select the instrument you wish to trade ('double-click' on your PC), and a new order window will appear. Enter your desired volume (in lots), add any risk-management orders such as a stop-loss or take-profit order. Then place a market order in the direction you wish to trade; buy to go long, or sell to go short. There are several ways to place trades or orders using MT4 or MT5 – you can learn more about MT4 or MT5 functionality by navigating to Help > Help topics or Help > Video guides.

If you’re trading on our Next Generation platform, search for your desired instrument from the 'Product Library'. Select your chosen instrument ('right-click' on your PC), and select ‘Order Ticket’. In the order ticket box, choose your order type (from Market, Limit, and Stop-Entry Order), and then enter your desired volume in units or amount (this can be configured from the ‘Settings’ menu in the main navigation). Add stop-loss and take-profit levels to minimise your risk, and choose to ‘BUY’ or ‘SELL’, depending on whether you want to go long or short. When you’re ready, select ‘Place Buy Market Order’, or ‘Place Sell Market Order’.

For retail clients, the maximum leverage you can currently trade with is 200:1 (or 0.5% margin) with our CFD trading and FX Active accounts.

TradingView is a trading research platform where you can view charts, analyse trends and interact with an online community. You can connect your TradingView account to your CMC Markets account, enabling you to open, manage and close trades within TradingView. Learn more about TradingView here.

MetaQuotes' MetaTrader 4 and MetaTrader 5 are globally popular forex and CFD trading platforms. TradingView is a trading and charting platform which you can link to your broker account to place trades. Our proprietary web-based platform is feature-rich and enables access to trade CFDs on 12,000 instruments.

With each platform you can choose from our CFD trading or FX Active accounts. Our FX Active account offers spreads from 0.0 pips on six major FX pairs, with a 25% spread discount on all other pairs. There is a fixed, low commission at $2.50 per $100,000 notional value traded.  

Our trading platform doesn’t require any downloads, while MT4 and MT5 requires downloading to fully utilise its features, such as algorithmic trading (through Expert Advisors) and social trading available via the MQL4 and MQL5 communities. 

The MetaTrader platforms offer hedging positions by default, while CMC’s trading platform offers netted positions by default. 

Yes, you can open an opposite, related, or alternative trade, with no interruption for traders using Expert Advisors.

Log in to your MT4 or MT5 client portal or our trading platform and follow the instructions in the funding section.

You can reset your password by selecting 'Forgot password?' on the login page. We'll then send instructions for changing your password to the email address you use to log in to your account.

Our aim is to provide a high level of service to all our clients, all of the time. We value all feedback and use it to enhance our products and services. We appreciate that from time to time things can go wrong, or there can be misunderstandings. We are committed to dealing with queries and complaints positively and sympathetically. Where we are at fault, we aim to put things right at the earliest opportunity. You can find our complaint handling procedure here or contact us at global@cmcmarkets.com to begin your account query. Please note that all queries and complaints will be handled in English.