How to Trade Indices

Trading stock index CFDs enables you to take advantage of broad market movements in one simple trade.

What are stock indices?

Stock indices are used to measure a particular section of the stock market. For instance, the FTSE 100 is an index of the most highly capitalised companies listed on the London Stock Exchange.

The level of a stock index can be affected by a range of factors, including economic data and the performance of other indices.

As the largest single provider of CFD accounts in the UK, we are able to draw on our extensive expertise to provide you with up-to-the-minute information that you can use to make better-informed trading decisions, including:

• Insight centre
  For expert news and analysis
• Video update
  The latest news direct from our trading floor
• Real-time charts
  Monitor index movements and spot trends with our charting package

Efficient trading of the world's indices

We make it easy to trade a huge range of the world's stock indices, including the FTSE^® 100, Wall Street, Germany 30, Japan 225 and many more. You can trade 24 hours a day as we quote prices for the leading indices even when the underlying markets are closed.

Opening a new position on stock indices is simple, with immediate execution. To discover more about how trading stock index CFDs works, view an example.

Intraday and long-term trading

You can choose between making a trade based on immediate market direction, or deal based on longer-term trends.

If you thought, for instance, that the FTSE^® 100 was going to experience a significant amount of volatility over the course of a single day, you might choose to try and take advantage by trading our FTSE^® 100 cash contract.

However, if you thought the FTSE^® 100 was going to be affected by a longer-term trend over the course of a few months, you might elect to trade one of our FTSE^® 100 forward contracts.

Our minimum contract sizes are usually smaller than the minimum transaction size in the equivalent futures market, and we offer trades for a wide range of contract months, often including months that aren't quoted in the comparable futures market. Visit our stock indices contract details page for more information about the contracts we offer.