CFD trading, also known as “CFD trading” or “futures trading”, is a relatively new industry and not many individuals know what it involves. Essentially, CFD trading functions by assuming the risk of speculating on market movements, taking a profit if the underlying price moves in your favor.
The CFD trader will usually be betting against another individual or CFD trader who is speculating on that asset. The risk-return relationship is attractive to CFD traders and makes for exciting and worthwhile trading.
One of the more obvious advantages of CFD trading south africa is the absence of margin requirements. This means CFD traders don’t need to provide upfront funding for trades, as their profits and losses are kept within the margin account, which is often just one to three hundred pounds.
This allows traders to test their skills without worrying about large sums of money at stake. CFD traders also do not worry about waiting for a broker to agree on a deal that they can’t accomplish personally. These factors have contributed to the rapid growth of CFD trading in the UK.
There are other advantages to CFD trading as well. If you can step back from day-to-day operations, you can benefit from low commission rates and, in many cases, no stamp duty or income tax at all. This means that the earnings and losses generated from your trades can be exempt from tax. This is particularly appealing to individuals who may be self-employed and have little or no involvement in an office environment.
CFD trading is also a particularly good way to hedge against trends in the traditional trading markets. In traditional trading, traders will generally enter and exit a trade at the same time. With CFDs, this is not feasible. You can open a CFD on a particular stock or index and wait until it rises before you decide to sell it. When the time comes, you can then take advantage of a sharp rise by selling it before it reverses and drops.
However, CFD traders need to remember that they are still speculators in the traditional sense. Their investment portfolio will not provide them with any cash flow. Instead, they will receive returns from the sale of CFDs. So, CFD traders need to keep their portfolios well diversified between stocks and the underlying market.
Otherwise, any rise in one area can send a CFD portfolio into negative territory. This can lead to significant losses for those CFD traders who have not managed their investments properly.
Of course, there is also one other major benefit of CFD trading which few people even think about. There is a stamp duty fee that is paid to the trader on any CFD purchase or sale. While this is typically charged when trading foreign currencies, CFD futures trading also requires dealing with stamp duty.
The distinction is that stamp duty is only paid when dealing with CFDs and not when trading in the underlying market. This means that any profits that are generated from CFD transactions can be reinvested in the underlying markets without paying any additional tax.