Best CFD Brokers for 2024 ; Here's the list of CFD Platforms (2024)

Contracts for differences (CFDs) let traders take a speculative bet on the future price ups and downs for an underlying asset class. CFD is a derivative in the pure sense, as the owner of the CFD has no ownership of the underlying asset. The contract only covers the price rise and fall from the start to the contract’s end date. As one may have sensed, the game here is risky; hence, a reliable broker is one of the key components in executing a successful CFD trade.

What are Contracts for differences (CFD)?

A contract for differences (CFD) is a financial contract that pays the differences in the settlement price between the open and closing trades.CFDs allow investors to trade the direction of securities or Forex over the concise term and are especially popular in FX and commodities products. CFDs are cash-settled but usually allow ample margin trading so that investors need only put up a small amount of the contract’s notional payoff.

Should the buyer of a CFD see the asset’s price rise, they will offer their holding for sale. The net difference between the purchase and sale prices is netted together. The net difference representing the gain or loss from the trades is settled through the investor’s brokerage account. Conversely, if a trader believes a security’s price will decline, an opening sell position can be placed. To close the position they must purchase an offsetting trade. Again, the net difference of the gain or loss is cash-settled through their accounts

Reasons for trading CFDs

One of the few reasons CFD trading is famous among traders is

• CFDs allow traders to speculate on thousands of financial products and global markets that they may otherwise not be able to access.
• Investors and traders can play the market on both sides, i.e, long or short, which allows them to make a profit (and also lose money) in both rising and falling markets.
• CFDs make hedging possible. Hedging acts as insurance for the rest of the portfolio through CFDs.
• Traders can access free demo accounts, charts, and trading tools through their broker.
• CFD contracts don’t necessarily have a fixed expiry date, meaning traders can close out their position when they want to.

What are the risks of CFDs trading?

CFDs are extremely risky, complex products and ideally only suited to experienced financial traders. You should know about some potential risks before deciding if CFD trading is right for you.

• CFDs are complex. CFDs are very intricate and confusing products. Even if you have a general understanding of a CFD, you still need more time to start trading CFDs.
• You can lose more than your initial capital. If you gamble on the pokies, the most money you can lose is the amount you put into the pokie machine. This is not the case with CFDs. If you lose a CFD trade, you can lose much more money than you started with, meaning you owe the CFD provider money, sometimes hundreds of thousands of dollars.
• You don’t own the underlying asset. When trading CFDs, you only own the contract between you and the CFD provider. Therefore, you can’t benefit from the capital growth of the underlying asset over the long term.
• CFDs depend on how the market performs. Even though you don’t own the underlying asset, market conditions still affect CFDs. This can increase risks even more in a volatile market.

Top CFD Traders/Platforms for 2024

Capital.com is liked by traders that are looking for advanced features when it comes to CFD trading. It provides traders exposure across CFDs on Nasdaq 100 Gold, Oil, and nearly 6500 assets and markets. The broker offers tight spreads, fast order execution, No commissions, and high privacy. It also provides educational tools for novice traders and learners. The firm is registered and regulated by the U.K.’s Financial Conduct Authority (FCA), The Australian Securities and Investments Commission (ASIC), The Cyprus Securities and Exchange Commission (CySEC), and the National Bank of the Republic of Belarus. With an easy-to-use interface and a patented AI-powered bias detection platform, Capital.com has made a niche for itself among CFD traders.

Another of traders’ favorites, eToro offers users crypto,, stocks, and ETFs on one platform. It also has CFD offerings on commodities, indices, and currencies, allowing traders to diversify as much as they want to. With built-in social media interactions between traders and professional copy trading options available, eToro adds another specialty as a social trading platform. Registration on the platform is quick and straightforward. No commission is charged, and the platform earns revenue on the spread instead. The trader pays a percentage on the purchase, and eToro adjusts the spread downward when the sale is at a loss. The only drawback with eToro is that it lacks telephonic support for customer queries and issues.

Again, a very prominent broker when picking up the list of CFDs, Interactive Brokers provide a complete trading experience. Clients can add quotes to the exchange book like they would trading stocks because Interactive Brokers (IBKR) immediately match all CFD orders with a hedge order so that a non-marketable CFD order creates a matching non-marketable order for the underlying share on the exchange. Commission with IBKR starts at 0.05% of all share CFD’s with lower rates available for active traders. Overnight financing charges start at benchmark +/-1.5%, with lower spreads available for larger balances. Apart from this IBKR provides access to 135 global markets with tradable assets, including securities, forex, futures, options, and mutual funds.

The platform has existed for over 11 years now and has been a go-to for most traders looking to trade CFDs on shares, indexes, and commodities. The company is regulated by the International Financial Services Commission of Belize and has offices in China, India, Indonesia, Malaysia, Nigeria, South Korea, and Thailand.FTXM offers a special proprietary web trading platform called the WebTrader and provides an option for MetaTrader 4 and MetaTrader 5 web 3.0 platforms. The other tools with the platform are an economic calendar, market analysis videos, quarterly market outlook, and educational videos. For customers, chat support is available on Live Chat, Viber, Telegram, and Facebook Messenger. There is also a call-back option if the customer doesn’t want to wait. Customer support departments work 24/5 from Monday through Friday. The Micro Account has a minimum deposit of $50, and the electronic communications network (ECN) Advantage and ECN Advantage Plus accounts require a minimum deposit of $500.

Home to many Asian and Canadian Traders to trade CFDs, IFC Markets has emerged as a robust platform. IFC Markets allows CFDs in Continuous index CFD, Stock, Cryptocurrency, Continuous index on commodities, CFD on commodity futures, CFDs on ETFs, and CFDs on crypto futures. With IFC Markets, users can benefit from 15 years of experience on the platform. The platform is accessible to users from over 80 countries who can open an account, trade on several platforms, and diversify their investments as much as possible. Crypto CFDs are available for Bitcoin and Ethereum, with more coming soon. Users can take advantage of 1:8 leverage, low minimums, and low spreads and maximize their profit to the fullest.

Other Articles