Shares trading

A share represents a portion of the ownership of a public company. The shares of a publicly listed company will be available on a stock market, such as the FTSE 100 index, whose constituent stocks are listed on the London Stock Exchange.

Trading shares in the underlying market involves the buying and selling of a company's shares, with the aim of profiting through the company's share price rising over time. The aim would be to sell your shares at a higher price than when you bought them.

You can trade CFDs on shares with us, without actually owning the underlying share. Learn more about share trading.

One of the advantages of 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.

When you 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 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.

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 physically 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.

With CFDs, you also trade with leverage, which means your initial deposit is smaller, although any profits or losses you make are based on the trade's full value. With traditional share trading, you enter a contract to exchange the legal ownership of the shares for the full value upfront, and you then own this equity.

You can trade CFDs on 67 US stocks – including the 'magnificent seven' of Alphabet, Amazon, Apple, Meta Platforms, Microsoft, Nvidia, and Tesla – 24 hours a day, five days a week, from 1am Monday through to 10pm Friday (UK time).* We also offer extended trading hours on a further 20 major US shares. This means you can trade CFDs on these 20 stocks in both pre- and post-market trading. These shares are available from 10am through to 2am the following day, Monday to Thursday, and from 10am to 11pm on Friday (all CET).*

*The core or main US session trading hours, when the New York Stock Exchange and NASDAQ are open, is 3.30pm to 10pm (CET). Please note: there is a three-week period during March, and one week in October, between the US and UK clocks changing for daylight saving time (DST), when the underlying US exchanges will open and close one hour earlier than usual. During these periods, 24/5 shares trading will start at midnight instead of 2am on Monday, through to 10pm on Friday instead of 11pm (UK times). Extended trading hours on US shares will run from 9am to midnight (instead of 10am to 2am the following day), Monday to Thursday, and from 9am to 10pm (instead of 10am to 11pm) on Friday.

Yes, there is a higher risk when you trade outside of the core trading session hours (when the underlying exchange is closed). There is likely to be a greater level of price volatility, due to lower trading volumes. This is because there are fewer participants than during normal market hours, resulting in less liquidity, which means that markets are more volatile as a result.

These market conditions mean that prices are likely to fluctuate more rapidly than usual, and some trades could be more difficult to execute, owing to the lower trading volumes. Our spreads may also be wider compared with the main trading session.

Our order types and execution function as normal during extended-hours trading, although we lower trading and position limits compared with the main trading session. This helps us to manage risk during periods of lower liquidity in the market. Account liquidations also function as normal, so it’s important to ensure that your account is properly funded, and that you allow enough time to deposit funds, if required.

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.