CFD/Share Trading

CFD Trading with GCI is an efficient, commission-free way to trade shares, global equity indices, currencies and commodities. Benefits include lower costs, low margin requirements, and state-of-the-art online software. Download a Free Practice Account!

Available products include:

CFD Products
(Partial List)
Stock Market Indices
S&P500
NASDAQ 100
Dow Jones Industrials
DAX 30
CAC 40
FTSE100
Nikkei 225
SPI 200
Hang Seng
DJ EuroStoxx
Commodities
Crude Oil
U.S. 10 Year Note
Gold
Silver
Soy Beans
Individual Shares
Microsoft
Vodafone
Barclays
I.B.M.
Nokia
Pfizer
eBay
...and many other European and North American Shares

Foreign Exchange

EUR/USD
USD/JPY
GBP/USD
USD/CHF
USD/CAD
AUD/USD
EUR/JPY

CFD Trading Details:

Account Opening Minimum: $2,000, or € 2,000

Lot Size: 100 shares. Click here for details on other CFD products

Margin Requirement: 5% on individual shares, 1% or less on other products

Spreads: Click here for spreads in all products.

Commissions: Zero (commission-free)


CFDs Explained

The "CFD", or "Contract for Difference", was developed to allow clients to receive all the benefits of owning a stock without having to physically own the stock itself. For example, instead of purchasing 1,000 shares of Microsoft from a stock broker, a client could instead buy a 10 lots of Microsoft on the GCI CFD trading platform. A $5 per share rise in the price of Microsoft would confer to the client a $5,000 profit, just as if he had purchased the actual shares that are traded on the exchange. A major difference is that there are no exchange fees and many of the inefficiencies of trading the underlying shares on the exchange are eliminated. GCI can therefore offer CFDs with zero commissions and very attractive margin requirements. CFDs have grown in popularity dramatically over the past few years, and we believe that this will increasingly be the preferred way to trade the financial markets.

The other major benefit of trading a CFD is the fact that the client can trade on margin. CFD trading means clients can trade a full portfolio of Shares, indices, or commodities without having to tie up large amounts of capital. Using the example above, a client purchasing $50,000 worth of CFD Shares will only be asked for $2,500 margin.

CFD Performance

As with Shares, CFD investors benefit from normal market movements. Clients' open positions are valued in real time, with every tick of the market. Profits or losses similarly are credited to or debited from the clients account equity in real time.

Margin

Unlike physically purchasing stocks, clients only have to deposit approximately 5% of the value of the Shares. So if you want to buy $50,000 worth of Shares, you only need to have $2,500 on deposit with GCI.