{"id":13829,"date":"2010-10-11T16:37:24","date_gmt":"2010-10-11T20:37:24","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/countingpips.com\/fx\/?p=13829"},"modified":"2010-10-11T16:37:24","modified_gmt":"2010-10-11T20:37:24","slug":"contracts-for-difference-cfds-explained","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.investmacro.com\/fx\/2010\/10\/11\/contracts-for-difference-cfds-explained\/","title":{"rendered":"Contracts for Difference (CFDs) Explained"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong>By Vincent Parker <\/strong>&#8211; Contracts for Difference (CFDs) can be quite confusing. Here is a quick  article explaining CFDs, leaving Contracts for Difference explained once  and for all.<\/p>\n<p>Contracts for difference are a contract created between two different  parties, stating that one party will pay the other party the difference  in the value of that contract at a point in time in the future. One  party will expect to receive money if the value of the contract is  higher, while the other will expect to receive money if the value is  lower.<\/p>\n<p>In the real world, the contract is created between a trader and a CFD  broker. The contracts are open ended, unlike a future contract meaning  that its up to the trader to decide when to close the trade and collect  (or pay) his money. From this sense, CFDs work much like a share trade.<\/p>\n<p>Contracts for difference are usually traded on leverage, meaning you  only need a small portion of the trade funds to execute the trade. For  instance, if you were to open a position of $10,000 and the margin was  10% you would only need $1000 to open the position. This means that much  larger profits can be achieved with smaller amounts of money.<\/p>\n<p>The fact that you take a position out on leverage, means that there is  an interest element associated with your purchase. And you will find  yourself paying and an annual interest rate a few percentage points  higher than the official cash rate.<\/p>\n<p>Another great thing about CFDs is that it&#8217;s very easy to open a short  position. What this means is that you can actually trade on the value of  a CFD going down instead of up. Something that was very difficult until  this tool was created.<\/p>\n<p>A CFD is priced based on the value of the underlying asset. The  underlying asset could be a share, currency, commodity or indices in  many markets. The flexibility of the different types of assets you can  trade with CFDs is unparalleled by anything else. Which is why if you  are looking to get into short term trading, anything from spread  betting, FOREX trading or day trading, CFDs are your best option.<\/p>\n<h3>About the Author<\/h3>\n<p>123CFD is a resource for <span style=\"text-decoration: underline;\"><a href=\"http:\/\/123cfd.com\/trading_plans\/\">CFD Trading Plans<\/a><\/span> where we cover topics like <span style=\"text-decoration: underline;\"><a href=\"http:\/\/123cfd.com\/cfd_explained\/\">CFD Trading<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Contracts for Difference (CFDs) can be quite confusing. Here is a quick article explaining CFDs, leaving Contracts for Difference explained once and for all.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-13829","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.investmacro.com\/fx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13829","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.investmacro.com\/fx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.investmacro.com\/fx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.investmacro.com\/fx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.investmacro.com\/fx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=13829"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.investmacro.com\/fx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13829\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.investmacro.com\/fx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13829"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.investmacro.com\/fx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13829"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.investmacro.com\/fx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13829"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}