Costs and charges

Our offices are normally open 24 hours a day between Mondays and Fridays, and on Saturdays and Sundays, from 10am to 6pm (Swiss time).

Dealing hours vary between markets, but standard UK market hours are 09.00-17.30 (Swiss time).

When you trade CFDs with us, you trade on margin. This means you only pay 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, you won’t pay a funding fee. If you keep it open overnight, you’ll pay small fee to cover the cost of the money you’ve effectively borrowed.

For share and index trades, our funding fee is comprised of our admin fee, plus or minus the interest rate benchmark for the currency in which your trade’s underlying market is denominated (depending on whether your position is long or short).

For forex trades, the funding fee is the tom-next rate plus a small admin fee.

For spot commodity trades, and trades on the Volatility Index and EU Volatility Index, we make an adjustment based on a range of factors like the price of the two nearest futures, and our fee. Take a look at how we price our undated commodities to find out more.

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

Spreads

Share CFDs directly reflect the underlying market price, and so you’ll pay a commission on these trades.

Trade CFDs, and you’ll find 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). See our product details for all our share CFD commissions.

Overnight funding

For share and index trades we calculate our overnight funding fee using the relevant interbank rate, and our fee for forex trades using the tom-next rate. These rates change daily, varying the funding fee each day.

For commodities and the volatility indices, we use the price of the two nearest futures as part of our overnight funding calculation. Since these will vary, the charge can too. You can find out more in the overnight funding section above.

Mini and micro CFD contracts are subject to a higher funding rate.

You won’t pay an overnight funding fee for forward trades, as the funding cost is built into a wider spread. So you may find them more cost effective and transparent for long-term trades, because you know your real cost from the outset.

For fixed-expiry deals on stock indices and commodities we offer futures for CFDs.

If you trade CFDs in a currency other than your account’s base currency, you may need to pay a currency conversion charge. Your account is set to ‘instant conversion’ by default. This means that foreign-currency profit is converted to your base currency automatically, and funding, commission and dividend charges are taken into account before your account is credited. You can choose to have your account convert daily, weekly or monthly. Our standard conversion charge is 0.8.

Yes, we offer guaranteed stops so that you can put an absolute cap on your risk. You’ll pay 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 some currencies to calculate our overnight funding fees for your share and stock index trades.

On other currencies we use ARR’s to calculate the funding fee on your shares and stock index trades. ARRs are based on actual overnight interest rates in liquid wholesale cash and derivative markets – making them more robust and less volatile than IBORs.

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.

The spread is the difference between our sell and buy prices. We derive these prices based on the underlying market's value.

Learn more about the spread

Only if you haven’t placed any deals on CFD account for two years or more, and there is still a balance on your account. You’ll be charged a CHF 18 fee on the first day of every month if this is the case.