Costs and charges

Our offices are normally open 24 hours a day between 9pm on Sunday 11pm on Friday night (SAST)

When you trade CFDs with us, you trade on margin. This means you provide only a deposit to open a position, and we in effect lend you the rest of the money required. If you close your position on the same day, there is no funding fee. If you keep it open overnight, we charge a small fee to cover the cost of the money you’ve effectively borrowed.

For share and stock index trades, our funding fee is comprised of our admin fee plus or minus the relevant interbank rate for the currency in which the underlying instrument of your trade is denominated (depending on whether your position is long or short).

We price our Volatility Index (VIX) and EU Volatility Index contracts in a different way to the rest of our cash index markets. Rather than aiming to replicate the underlying index price, we follow the method used to derive our undated commodity prices. This means that there is a difference between our undated price and the underlying index price on these markets. Funding is also calculated in line with the undated commodity method. Please see our overnight funding page for more details.

For forex and spot metals trades, it is the tom-next rate plus a small admin fee.

For futures markets there is no overnight funding fee because the cost of funding is built into the spread.

Spreads

Our spreads are the same for CFDs, apart from shares. Share CFDs directly reflect the underlying market price, and are subject to commission. CFD traders should remember we offer our tightest spreads on our standard contracts, with wider spreads on some mini and micro contracts.

Our forex spreads vary depending on underlying market liquidity. The more liquid the market, the narrower our spread – as low as 0.8 points. As the underlying market spread widens, so does ours – but only to our maximum cap.

Our stock index spreads vary by the time of day. During the underlying market hours we offer our standard and tightest spreads eg 1 point on the FTSE 100. When we offer an out-of-hours market, so you can benefit from 24-hour dealing, we offer a wider spread.

Commission

Our commission varies depending on the host country for your stock, and the account you are using

CFDs

You'll pay between 0.1% and 0.35% commission on all UK share trades (0.1% on large caps, 0.25% on midcaps and 0.35% on small caps), while all US stocks are subject to a CFD commission of 2 cents per share, for example. See our product details for all our share CFD commissions.

Overnight funding

The overnight funding fee is calculated using the relevant interbank rate for stock index and share trades. The fee for forex trades is calculated using the tom-next rate. These rates change daily, varying the funding fee each day. Mini and micro CFD contracts are subject to a higher funding rate.

CFDs traded in a currency other than your account’s base currency may incur a currency conversion charge. Our default setting is instant conversion, where foreign-currency profit is converted to your base currency and funding, commission and dividend charges are taken into account before your account is credited. We also offer daily, weekly and monthly conversion settings. Our standard charge is 0.5%.

When you have a guaranteed stop attached to your position, we apply a small fee if it's triggered. For shares, for example, this is 0.3% of the underlying transaction value.

The interbank rate is the interest rate charged between banks for short-term loans. It is a key indicator for other interest rate charges, which is why we use it as a basis for calculating our overnight funding fees for your share and stock index trades.

Tom-next is the rate used to calculate the funding adjustment when a forex position is held overnight. It is an industry-standard rate, derived from the interest rate differentials of the pair’s currencies and market expectations of interest rate change.

For CFDs, the spread is the difference between our Sell and Buy prices. We derive these prices based on the underlying market's value.