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Spread Betting
Speculate on your favourite asset’s rise or fall in the markets with our new MT5 spread bet account.
Enjoy tax-free profits while trading on MetaTrader 5, the industry-leading trading platform you know and love.
What is Spread Betting?
Unlike other forms or trading, a spread betting trader never owns the underlying product – you speculate on whether the price will go up or down in value. As a leveraged product, spread betters only need a small deposit of the overall value of the trade to open a position.
Choose the instrument you want to trade, and enjoy all the benefits of our spread betting service! Spread betting accounts are only available to clients in the UK.
Free income
Tax-free Profit
Any profit gained is yours to keep, the profit is exempt from capital gains tax and stamp duty.
Leveraged product
Trade on Margin
Due to leverage, you only need to deposit a small fraction of the value of any trade.
Fee-free
No Commission / No FX Risk
The cost of opening your position is covered in the spread and trade everything in your local currency.
Learn more about Spread Betting
If you have questions about Spread Betting, we have the answers! Check out our Frequently Asked Questions. If you don`t find the answer you`re looking for, contact our Customer Support.
Spread betting is a tax-efficient way of speculating on the price movement of financial instruments, including forex, indices, commodities, stocks, shares and treasuries. Spread betting is one of the most common ways to trade on price action over several asset classes. As it is a financial derivative product, spread betters can trade in both directions (‘buy’ or ‘sell’) and can make use of financial leverage to increase their trade exposure.
When spread betting, a client buys or sells a pre-determined amount per point of movement for the instrument he is trading, for example, £3 per point (a spread bet ‘stake` size). This means that for every point that the price of the instrument moves in the client`s favour, the client will gain a value of the stake multiplied by the number of points which the instrument price moved in the client’s favour. On the other hand, the client will lose the value of their stake multiplied by every point the price moves against them.
It is important to note that both profits and losses are calculated based on the full value of the position.
Spread betting is a leveraged product, which means you only need to deposit a small percentage of the full value of the spread bet in order to open a position. While margin (or leveraged) trading allows you to multiply your returns, losses will also be multiplied as they are based on the full value of the position.
To start spread betting, you will need to deposit enough capital into your account to cover the margin for the asset that you have chosen. We don`t have a minimum deposit requirement, so you can pay in as few funds as you would like; however, these funds will likely need to be increased as you expand your trades. Read about our spread betting margin requirements.
Spread bets are tax-free in the UK. This means you don’t need to pay capital gains tax on any profits you make, unlike traditional share dealing. You also won’t have to pay stamp duty.
Spread betting and CFDs are both leveraged products that enable you to speculate on the price movements of financial markets. But they work in different ways. With spread betting, you bet a certain number of pounds per point on the future direction of a market. With CFDs, you trade a contract in which you agree to exchange the difference in asset’s price from when you opened your position to when you close it.