IG Group (LSEG:IGG) is an innovative, global fintech company that delivers dynamic online trading platforms and a robust educational ecosystem to power the pursuit of financial freedom for the ambitious. For nearly five decades, the Company has evolved its technology, risk management, financial products, content, and platforms to meet the needs of its retail and institutional clients. IG continues to innovate its offering for the new generation of tomorrow’s investors through its IG, IG Invest, IG Crypto, tastytrade, IG Prime and Freetrade brands.

Established in 1974, IG Group is a London-headquartered FTSE 250 company offering its clients access to ~19,000 financial markets through its offices spread across Europe, North America, Africa, Asia-Pacific and the Middle East.

Over-the-counter (OTC) leveraged derivatives enable traders to take advantage of changes in an asset’s price without owning the asset itself. A trader can take a position on a financial instrument, ‘buying’ if they think the price will go up or ‘selling’ if they believe it will go down, while only putting down a percentage (known as margin) of the value of their trade as security. Trading with leverage can lead to magnified profits but also amplified losses, the size of which depends on the direction and magnitude of price movements. With us, traders get access to a range of risk-mitigation measures, including stops and limits. Plus, retail accounts include negative-balance protection.¹

Leveraged derivatives can be found under the wrapper of CFDs and spread bets, with CFDs being the most popular globally. We’re in the lead of that global demand, being the world’s No.1 CFD provider.² Spread betting is a tax-free³ alternative to CFDs which is only available in the UK and Ireland – and we’re the No.1² provider for that, as well.

Exchange-traded derivatives are financial contracts traded on a regulated exchange. We give ambitious traders these products under our tastytrade brands.

tastytrade is a high-growth, high-margin online brokerage and investor education platform, with a growing share of the US-listed derivatives market, primarily through options and futures. tastytrade combines fun and entertaining content with deep quantitative and probability-based analysis, offering traders something they’ve never seen before.

Our stock-trading and investment offerings give traditional investors a range of non-leveraged products to choose from.

We use the same market-leading technology that powers our OTC leveraged derivatives on our execution-only stock-trading services. Entrepreneurial investors can buy and sell over 12,000 global shares and exchange-traded funds (ETFs) with competitive and transparent transaction fees. Those in the UK can also trade within a tax-efficient ISA or SIPP wrapper.

We launched our stock-trading products in the UK in 2014, giving us another way to power the pursuit of financial freedom for the ambitious. In addition to giving our OTC leveraged-derivative traders the chance to place their non-leveraged portfolio with us, we attracted a completely new audience. Plus, our stock-trading service is also available to investors in Australia.

IG Smart Portfolios is a discretionary managed investment service, launched in partnership with BlackRock in April 2017. All of these portfolios are based on iShares ETFs with a blend of commodities, equities and fixed-income assets, designed to suit different risk appetites and objectives.

¹Negative balance protection is a legal requirement in the UK which means your bank account with us can never fall below zero. Negative balance protection does not apply to professional traders.
²Based on revenue excluding FX (from published financial statements, June 2023).
³Tax laws are subject to change and depend on individual circumstances. Tax law may differ in a jurisdiction other than the UK.

When IG was founded in 1974, we were the world’s first spread betting firm. Now we’re a global leader in our industry, having won multiple trading and technology awards.¹

We provide trading and investment opportunities to people worldwide, and have operations in 19 countries across Europe, Africa, Asia-Pacific, the Middle East and North America. Our head office is located in London.

Products that power

We power the pursuit of financial freedom for the ambitious through our versatile trading and investment products.

We’re widely known for our original and core offering – leveraged trading. Traders in the UK and Ireland use our state-of-the-art tech and platforms for spread betting; go-getters in the UK, Europe and many more places trade contracts for difference (CFDs). In fact, we’re the No.1 CFD provider² in the world.

Our clients can access around 19,000 global financial markets including shares, forex, indices, commodities and other instruments via our market-leading platforms and apps that provide lightning-fast and secure execution.

We also have an ever-growing suite of non-leveraged share dealing and wealth-management products, designed to help the financially ambitious no matter what their risk appetite. These longer-term investments are available in the UK, UAE and Australia.

Finally, we have brand specialising in exchange-traded derivatives: tastyworks in the US.

CFDs

CFDs are derivative contracts that enable traders to take advantage of short-term changes in an asset’s price without owning the asset itself. Traders can take a position in a financial instrument, ‘buying’ if they think the price will rise or ‘selling’ if they believe it will fall, while only putting down a small percentage of the value of their trade as security – known as trading on margin. This can lead to amplified profits but also magnified losses. Our clients can use tools such as stops and limits to reduce their risk, though, while retail clients automatically have negative-balance protection on their accounts in the UK.³

1. Buy/sell

CFDs are quoted in two prices: the buy price and the sell price.

• The sell price (or bid price) is the price at which you can open a short CFD
• The buy price (or offer price) is the price at which you can open a long CFD

Sell prices will always be slightly lower than the current market price, and buy prices will be slightly higher. The difference between the two prices is known as the spread.

Most of the time, the cost to open a CFD position is covered in the spread, meaning that buy and sell prices will be adjusted to reflect the cost of making the trade. The exceptions to this are our share CFDs, which aren’t charged via the spread. Instead, our buy and sell prices match the price of the underlying market and we charge a commission to open a position, making the experience more like trading in the underlying market.

2. Deal size

CFDs are traded in standardised contracts (lots). The size of an individual contract varies depending on the underlying asset being traded, often mimicking how that asset is traded on the market.

Silver, for example, is traded on commodity exchanges in lots of 5000 troy ounces, and its equivalent CFD also has a value of 5000 troy ounces. For share CFDs, the contract size usually represents one share in the company you’re trading. So to open a position that mimics buying 500 shares of HSBC, you’d buy 500 HSBC CFD contracts.

This is one way in which CFD trading is more similar to traditional trading than other derivatives like spread bets or options.

3. Duration

Most CFD trades have no fixed expiry – unlike spread bets and options. Instead, traders close a position by placing a trade opposite to the one they opened with. You would close a ‘buy’ position of 500 gold contracts, for instance, by ‘selling’ 500 gold contracts.

If you keep a daily CFD position open past the daily cut-off time (typically 10pm UK time, although this may vary for international markets), you’ll be charged an overnight funding fee. This amount reflects the cost of the capital your provider has, in effect, lent you to open a leveraged trade.

4. Profit and loss

To calculate the profit or loss earned from a CFD trade, you multiply the deal size of the position (total number of contracts) by the value of each contract (expressed per point of movement). You then multiply that figure by the difference in points between the price when you opened the contract and when you closed it.

Profit or loss
=
(no. of contracts x value of each contract)
x (closing price - opening price)

For the full profit or loss calculation of a trade, you’d also subtract any charges or fees you paid. These could be overnight funding charges, commission or guaranteed stop fees.

Say, for instance, you buy 50 FTSE 100 contracts when the buy price is 7500. A single FTSE 100 contract is equal to £10 per point, so for each point of upward movement, you’d make £500, and for each point of downward movement, you’d lose £500 (50 contracts multiplied by £10).

If you sell when the FTSE 100 is trading at 7505, your profit would be £2500
2500 = (50 x 10) x (7505 - 7500)
If you sell when the FTSE 100 is trading at 7497, your loss would be £1500
-1500 = (50 x 10) x (7497 - 7500)

Spread betting

Financial spread betting mirrors many aspects of a CFD; it enables traders to take advantage of changes in an asset’s price without owning the asset itself, and to use the same range of risk-mitigation measures. Available only in the UK and Ireland, it’s a tax-free⁴ alternative to trading, allowing traders to bet on an asset’s price movements. The size of the win or loss depends on the magnitude and direction of the price movement.

How does spread betting work?

Financial spread betting works using three different components. The spread, which is the charge you pay to open your position, the bet size, which determines the amount of capital you put up, and the bet duration, which dictates how long your position will remain open before it expires. Here’s an introduction to all three:

What is the spread?

The spread is the difference between the buy and sell prices that are wrapped around the underlying market price. The costs of any given trade are factored into these two prices (known as the offer and the bid), so you’ll always buy slightly higher than the market price and sell slightly below it.

If the FTSE 100 is trading at 6545.5 and has a one-point spread, for example, it would have an offer price of 6546 and a bid price of 6545.

The spread in spread betting is the difference between the buy and sell prices.

What is the bet size?

The bet size is the amount you bet per unit of movement of the underlying market. You can choose your bet size, as long as it meets the minimum we accept for that market. Your profit or loss is calculated as the difference between the opening price and the closing price of the market, multiplied by the value of your bet.

We measure the price movements of the underlying market in points. Depending on the liquidity and volatility of your chosen market, a point of movement can represent a pound, a penny or even one-hundredth of a penny. You can find out what a point means for your chosen market on the deal ticket in the IG platform.

If you open a £2-per-point bet on the FTSE 100 and it moves 60 points in your favour, your profit would be £2 x 60 points = £120. If it moved 60 points against you, you would lose £120.

What is the bet duration?

The bet duration is the length of time before your position expires. All spread bets have a fixed timescale, ranging from a day to several years away. You are, however, free to close them at any point before their expiry time, assuming the spread bet is open for trading.

Share dealing, ISAs and SIPPs

We use the same market-leading technology in our online execution-only stock-trading service that powers our leveraged OTC offering. Launched in the UK in 2014 and now available to Australian and UAE investors too, it enables self-directed investors to buy and sell over 12,000 global shares and exchange-traded funds (ETFs) with extremely competitive and transparent transaction fees. UK clients can even choose to trade within a tax-efficient ISA or SIPP wrapper.

IG Smart Portfolios

Launched in 2017 in partnership with BlackRock, the world’s largest asset manager, IG Smart Portfolios is a discretionary managed investment service. We manage and rebalance our investors’ portfolios for the entire lifetime of the investment.⁵

We set ourselves apart by offering low fees and full transparency on the total cost of ownership. By using our fully online platform – with support from our customer services team when it’s needed – investors get an intuitive interface that helps to power their pursuit of financial freedom.

Our portfolios are constructed from iShares exchange-traded funds (ETFs). These include a blend of commodities, equities and fixed-income assets designed to match the ambitions of any investor. You can take control of your financial goals and build a sophisticated basket of investments online, rather than only choosing specific stocks.

Exchange-traded derivatives

Exchange-traded derivatives are financial contracts traded on a regulated exchange. We give ambitious traders these products under our tastytrade brand.

tastytrade is a high-growth, high-margin online brokerage and investor education platform, with a growing share of the US-listed derivatives market, primarily through options and futures. tastytrade combines fun and entertaining content with deep quantitative and probability-based analysis, offering traders something they’ve never seen before.

¹Awarded ‘best finance app’ and ‘best multi-platform provider’ at the ADVFN International Financial Awards 2020.
​ ²Based on revenue excluding FX (published financial statements, June 2021).
³Negative balance protection applies to retail traders only. Should your account fall below zero, we’ll bring it back to this level as soon as possible at no cost to you. Please note that this protection does not apply to professional traders who can still lose more than the balance on their account.
⁴Tax laws are subject to change and depend on individual circumstances.
⁵iShares® and BlackRock® are registered trademarks of BlackRock, Inc. and its affiliates (“BlackRock”) and are used under license. Further, BlackRock, Inc. and its affiliates including, but not limited to, BlackRock Investment Management (UK) Limited, are not affiliated with IG Markets Limited and its affiliates. Accordingly, BlackRock makes no representations or warranties regarding the advisability of investing in any product or service offered by IG Markets Limited or any of its affiliates. BlackRock has no obligation or liability in connection with the operation, marketing, trading or sale of any product or service offered by IG Markets Limited or any of its affiliates.

Our UK head office is located in London, and we have operations in another 18 countries. No matter where in the world we are, we’re always on the lookout for a good challenge. And we love finding like-minded people to join us as we conquer these challenges. Our offices are full of people with open minds, diverse perspectives and positive attitudes.

We want to hear from you. Chat to us about trading and investing, call us about our services or visit one of our offices – however you’d like to get in touch, find the details you need on our contact us page.

IG Group Holdings plc is an established member of the FTSE 250 and is our corporate brand – representing a business that has been at the forefront of trading innovation since 1974.

Our award-winning products and platforms empower ambitious people the world over to unlock opportunities around the clock, giving them access to around 19,000 financial markets.

IG is our original brand, and has always been about making markets more accessible to retail and professional traders. In 1974, we invented a whole new category of trading – financial spread betting, giving people an accessible way to trade gold by defining it as an index.

• Spread betting - open to traders in the UK and Ireland
• CFDs - available wherever we have sales offices, such as the UK, Australia, Singapore, South Africa and Europe
• Barriers and vanilla options – designed for traders in the UK, Ireland and Europe
• Investment products - for a more traditional, longer-term market in the UK, Ireland, Australia and the UAE

Find out more about our products on our what we do page.

tastytrade – previously known as tastyworks, Inc - is an award-winning US retail broker for active stock, options, futures or crypto traders, with high growth and high margin. With a laser focus on personal independence over passive investment, it gives ambitious traders the tools they need to take charge of their financial goals.

tastytrade offers fast and reliable trading software, low rates, in-app content and world-class support to make it easier for people to control their own money. Various account types are available, each specifically designed to match the risk appetite and financial goals of a diverse range of retail traders, corporates and trusts.

tastylive and its affiliates – formerly tastytrade, Inc. – are the newest members of our IG Group family.

The flagship brand tastylive is an authentic, original and free online financial network, currently focused on options and futures, and is unlike anything traders have seen before. Producing over 40 hours of live programming every week, it delivers live trading, education and deep quantitative and probability-based analysis in a fun and entertaining way for people of all skill levels.

tastylive is one of the fastest-growing online financial networks in the world, exponentially expanding its viewer and listenership since its launch in 2011. It has over 100 original shows and 27 million YouTube views, with followers tuning in for inspiration, education, live trades and more. It’s quirky and real and aligns with our purpose to power the pursuit of financial freedom for the ambitious.

IG Prime is our institutional-client offering, leveraging IG’s strong heritage of pioneering and expertise. Since its launch in 2006, IG Prime has offered new and innovative trading products to hedge funds, family offices, private investment vehicles, banks, brokers, and asset managers. With global reach backed by Tier1 banks, institutional and professional investors can find opportunities across more than 17,000 equities and 24/5 pricing on major indices, FX pairs, commodities and more.

IG Prime also offers direct market access (DMA) on equities and forex through the Synthetic Prime offering, as well as custody and execution services on equities and exchange-traded funds (ETFs).