CFDs have been used by professional investors for over twenty years and emerged first in the over-the-counter (OTC) or equity SWAP market. Equity swaps were used by institutions to cost effectively hedge their equity exposure.
CFDs have become one of the most popular derivative products in the Australian and European financial markets.
The popularity of CFDs has been driven by:
- Leverage: CFDs enable you to obtain full exposure to a share for a fraction of the price of buying the underlying instrument. CFDs require only a small initial margin as a trading deposit.
- The ability to go ‘short’: CFDs allow you to sell shares you don’t own. This enables you to profit from falling share prices.
- Low transaction costs: CFD providers pass on volume discounts allowing you to benefit through lower transaction costs.
- Hedging: CFDs allow you to employ more advanced strategies such as hedging to protect your existing share portfolio.
- Simplicity: CFDs mirror the price of the underlying instrument: Unlike other forms of derivatives (i.e. futures).
- Dividends and Corporate actions: CFDs allow you to benefit from dividends or bonus issues which may occur in the underlying instrument on which the CFD is based.
“CFDs provide all the benefits of share trading combined with the added advantage of being able to utilise your unrealised profit, and only outlay part of the full notional value of your position.”
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