Brokerage firm Trading 212 announced on Friday that it has launched a new method of CFD trading for clients.
Rather than trading based on units or contract size, clients can now trade based on whatever cash value they want.
The product makes trading in CFDs much simpler for the end client to understand.
To given an example, a UK-based client on the Trading 212 app trading a CFD on gold has the option of trading in ‘units’.
In this instance, one unit of gold is equal to one troy ounce. The price is quoted in dollars, even though the client will almost certainly have an account denominated in pounds.
For someone who understands what they are doing, this is not terrible, but it’s also not particularly intuitive.
As one simple example of that, the currency mismatch means that putting in a trade for one unit shows an order size that is different to the listed bid-offer prices on the app.
The new product makes this process much simpler. You put in the order value and that is what you are trading.
Much of what Trading 212 has done over the last eight years or so has been aimed at making its app extremely simple to use. It is hard not to think this is a part of that process.