Trade on over 12,000 financial instruments

There's no cost when opening a live spread betting or CFD account, where you can view prices and access a huge range of charting tools. With a live account, you can also use Reuters news and Morningstar quantitative equity reports, free of charge. However, you will need to deposit funds in your account to place a trade. Get started

Spread betting (UK and Ireland only) and CFD trading are two key ways to trade on the financial markets. They are both margined products, which facilitate trading across a huge range of financial markets, including forex, indices, shares, ETFs and commodities. Discover the difference between spread betting vs CFDs.

There are a number of costs to consider when spread betting and trading CFDs, including spread costs, holding costs (for trades held overnight, which is essentially a fee for the funds you borrow to cover the leveraged portion of the trade), rollover costs on expiring forward trades, and guaranteed stop-loss order charges (if you use this risk-management tool). Learn more about our costs.

All CMC Markets’ clients can expect to receive an excellent level of customer service from our UK-based team, from Sunday evenings through to Friday evenings. Our personal approach was recognised with the Best Phone Customer Service and Best Email Customer Service awards from the Investment Trends UK Leverage Trading Report (2020), based on highest satisfaction among spread betters, CFD and FX traders. Contact us.

Trading on the financial markets will inevitably involve losing trades, as no trader can achieve winning trades 100% of the time. Risk management is therefore very important to your trading strategy, and there are many tools you can use to help minimise losses and protect profits, including a range of order types and execution. Learn more about managing your risk.

Under the FCA’s Client Money rules, we’re required to segregate client money (unless you agree with us otherwise) from CMC’s own funds. The funds held in segregated bank accounts do not belong to CMC and will be held in a way that enables it to be identified as client money. Learn more about client money regulations.

Yes you can. Open a demo account for free and trade with £10,000 of virtual funds. Practising gives you the opportunity to hone your trading strategy and familiarise yourself with our award-winning platform and app*. Before you get started, consult our article on 'spread betting explained'.

Financial markets is a very broad term and can vary from world to virtual currencies, commodities to stock indices, shares to ETFs plus rates and bonds, where traders can invest in or trade on a huge range of securities and derivatives.

One of the advantages of spread betting and trading CFDs is that you only need to deposit a percentage of the full value of your position to open a trade, known as trading on leverage. Remember, trading on leverage can also amplify losses, so it's important to manage your risk.

Indices are a measure of a section of shares in the stock market, created by combining the value of several stocks to create one aggregate value. Major financial indices include the Dow Jones Industrial Average, FTSE 100, CAC 40, and Dax 40. The Dow Jones index, for example, represents 30 large publicly-listed companies traded on the New York Stock Exchange. More on indices trading

FX trading, also known as foreign exchange trading, or forex trading, is the exchange of different currencies on a decentralised global market. It's one of the largest and most liquid financial markets in the world. Forex trading involves the simultaneous buying and selling of the world's currencies on this market. More on forex trading

A commodity is a physical good that can be bought or sold on the commodity market. Commodities can be categorised into either hard or soft varieties. Hard commodities are natural resources like oil, gold and rubber and are often mined or extracted. Soft commodities are agricultural products such as coffee, wheat or corn. More on commodities

Share trading in the underlying market is the buying and selling of company shares with the aim of making a profit. Shares represent a portion of ownership of a public company. More on shares trading

A bond is a fixed-income instrument, or debt security, and represents a long-term lending agreement between a borrower and lender – effectively an 'IOU'. The bond issuer is often a corporation or a government, and the funds are used to finance a project or operation. More on rates & bonds trading