When you spread bet or trade CFDs on shares on our platform, you don’t buy or sell the underlying share. Instead, you’re taking a position on whether you think the company’s share price will go up or down.
With spread betting, you buy or sell an amount per point movement for the share instrument you are trading, such as £5 per point. This is known as your stake. With CFD trading, you buy or sell a number of units for a particular instrument. For every point or unit that the price moves in your favour, you gain multiples of your stake, and vice versa.
As an example, say you wanted to buy £1,300 worth of Lloyds penny shares at £65 per share. For the spread betting equivalent of this trade, you would specify a stake size of £20 per point to get the same exposure as you would if you bought 20 Lloyds shares at £65 through traditional share dealing. Due to the leverage available with spread betting (5:1 in this case), you would be able to enter this position with an initial outlay of £260, instead of £1,300. However, remember that your profits and losses are based on the full value of the trade (£1,300). As a retail client, you will never lose more than the amount in your account.
Read our debate on spread betting vs CFDs and see our list of penny stocks in the UK for more information.