Put simply, share CFDs allow you to trade with leverage, whereas the trading of physical shares requires payment of the full cost of those shares. By trading share CFDs, you are speculating on the price of the underlying asset, you are not taking ownership of it. The leverage you get with share CFDs will amplify both profits and losses. With physical shares you can only lose the amount you spent to acquire them. This is why buying physical shares is more of a long-term strategy, where you are looking to cash in years down the line, not in a week or two, as would be typical of trading share CFDs.

If you’re just starting out as a trader in your spare time, it pays to study and practice trading share CFDs on a demo account before jumping in feet first. As with any asset, there are many ways to trade share CFDs. Some will opt to trade over a few minutes while others prefer to hold positions for a number of weeks. A lot depends on how much time you want to invest in trading and analysing your charts.

If you’re still exploring different ways of trading share CFDs, check out our Learn pages where you’ll find plenty of resources to help get you started with topics such as fundamental analysis, technical analysis and how to use popular indicators.

You can trade share CFDs on the MetaTrader 5 platform and our mobile app.

Once you have downloaded and installed our user-friendly mobile app, you can log into your account(s) using a single login. From there you can trade share CFDs. If you have more than one MT5 account, you can switch from one account to the next without having to log out and log in again.

Corporate actions are events such as dividends and bonus issues of shares carried out by a publicly traded company that impact its shareholders and, similarly, the price of share CFDs.