Spread betting and contracts for differences (CFDs)

How we resolve complaints about your spread betting or CFDs?

• If you were given advice

  Most trading isn't advised. But if you were given advice and want to complain about what the adviser told you to do or how to invest, we can investigate your case.

  We'll consider:

  • what the financial adviser or investments company knew about you before they made their recommendations
  • what they told you about how spread betting and CFDs work

• You weren’t given advice, but the investment isn't right for you

  You may have selected your own trades. Even so, the financial business involved should assess whether the investment is 'appropriate' for you because this is a high-risk activity.

  Did they ask you about your knowledge and experience of the investment product or service they provided? If not, and we decide the investment wasn’t suitable for you, we're likely to decide the business has done something wrong.

• A stop order is issued at a worse price than you chose

  ‘Gapping’ or ‘slippage’ is when a ‘stop’ order is carried out at a worse price than you wanted or chose.

  Often this will happen when the market opens if the price has dropped a lot from the previous day's closing price. It can also happen when the market moves quickly, for example, after the announcement of important news or economic data.

  If your complaint is about gapping or slippage, as well as what’s listed above, we'll look at:

  • what you were told about how a stop order would be executed
  • what was happening in the underlying market at the time

  We're unlikely to uphold the complaint if the business made it clear they couldn't stop gapping or slippage. That is, if they told you they couldn’t guarantee stop orders would be carried out at the exact level you asked for.

  But we'll also look at what the business said it would do in the opposite situation. If the business kept the profits when trades were carried out at a better price – but passed losses on to you when trades happened at a worse price – we'd probably say the business acted unfairly.

• Margin calls

  An unfavourable market move could mean that you owe more than the amount you’ve staked. To protect against this, the business will need you to maintain a minimum 'margin' requirement in your account.

  If your account equity falls below the 'margin' requirement, you’ll need to put more money into the account. This is known as 'adding more margin'. If you don’t, the business may close some of your positions to prevent you owing them money.

  If this has happened to you and you're unhappy about it, you may bring your complaint to us. We'll look at the terms and conditions in your contract with the business to see what they said they'd do if you ran out of margin. This might include whether they would contact you and how, and how they'd select which positions to close.

  If we’re satisfied that the business acted reasonably in closing your positions, it’s unlikely that we would uphold the complaint.