Margining

Margin is a term derived from the futures market, and provides for leveraged trading in financial products. In its most simple format, if you offered the trading of an instrument at 5% margin, in effect you need only to deposit 5% of the total purchase cost of that deal to open that position.

Initial margin requirements for CFD positions are a percentage of the total contract value. The majority of share positions are margined at 5% and all index and sector positions are margined at 1%.

Initial margin requirements for Spreadbet positions are calculated by applying either a percentage or Notional Trading Requirement (NTR) to your stake. Most shares are margined at 5%. NTR's are applied to Index, Treasury, Commodity, Forex, Sector and Bullion Bets, and is a simple method of calculating an initial margin for less volatile instruments. Each instrument that uses NTR's has an NTR value attached to it; these can be found in the Dealing Guide within our Document Library section.