CFDs are complex instruments and come with a high risk of losing money rapidly due to leverage. 61% of retail investor accounts lose money when trading CFDs with this provider.

You should consider whether you understand how CFDs work and whether you can afford to take the high risk of losing your money.

Please be advised that our Client Portal is scheduled for essential maintenance this weekend from market close on Friday 5th April, 2024, and should be back up and running before markets open on Sunday 7th April, 2024.

We’re excited to share that we’re gearing up for an update to our Client Portal, aimed at improving your experience with us. Client Portal will be unavailable to you from market close on Friday 16th February, 2024, and should be back up and running before markets open on Sunday 18th February, 2024.

CFDs are complex instruments and come with a high risk of losing money rapidly due to leverage. 61% of retail investor accounts lose money when trading CFDs with this provider.

You should consider whether you understand how CFDs work and whether you can afford to take the high risk of losing your money.

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Indices Trading

Explore and trade the major indices in Europe, Asia, Australia, and the US. Take advantage of weighted exposure to the stock market of a single economy or across an economic area. Indices allow you to express a positive or negative view of both.

Why Trade Indices CFDs?

Live Indices Prices

Trading Indices CFDs with Hantec Markets

Available Symbols

14+

Starting Deposit

$10

Spreads From

0.5

Maximum Leverage

500:1

Indices Trading Conditions

Indices Trading Conditions

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Indices Trading FAQ

Before we can look at the specifics of indices or averages, we first need to explore the underlying financial market assets that are included in stock indices: namely stocks, shares, or equities.

Shares are a type of security defined as part ownership in a company, usually, one that is publicly listed. This gives the owner of the share an entitlement to the corporation’s earnings and assets, voting rights in major decisions about the company at the Annual General Meeting (AGM), and a dividend payment if there is one (effectively a proportion of the company’s profits).

Furthermore, if the company is run profitably and successfully, the hope is that the company’s share price will rise, and the owner of the share will make a capital gain on the value of their shareholding. Stocks and shares are primarily bought and sold on Stock Exchanges.

Averages are calculated from the prices of the selected stocks within an index (as we see below) and are used by investors as a way of gauging the performance of the different markets that the stock indices reflect. There are two main ways of calculating the value of stock indices: a price-weighted index or a capitalisation-weighted index. 

Without doing a deep dive into the mathematics behind these calculations, in simple terms they differ in this way:

  • A price-weighted index uses the price of the individual stocks to determine the weighting of the stock to determine the index value. 
  • A capitalisation-weighted index uses the value of the company to determine the weighting of the stock in the average. 

The Dow Jones Industrial Average is an example of a price-weighted index. The S&P 500 a capitalisation-weighted index.

Many factors can influence the level of a stock index, but the main factors are:

Data: This includes both macroeconomic and microeconomic data. 

Macroeconomic data is the major data that reflect the health of an economy or region and would include employment, inflation and Gross Domestic Product (GDP)

Microeconomic data is corporate data, which would include the usually quarterly release of company profits and revenues during earnings season. These data releases impact on an individual stock, and if the market moves are significant and/ or if the individual share has a significant weighting in an equity average, then it can have an impact on the overall index/ average.

Central Banks: Central Banks in most major economies control monetary policy, through changes to the national interest rate. Depending on how interest rates are expected to rise or fall in the future, this can impact on the whole economy by slowing or encouraging growth. That can affect individual shares and, by extension, the stock indices they form a part of.

Geopolitics: This is a broad concept which includes political, environmental, geographic and social impacts on economies and financial markets. Examples of geopolitics include trade wars (US-China trade war, 2018-2020), large political events (US elections, Brexit) and geographic events (also described as “Acts of God”) such as the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster in 2011.

Additional Information

US – S&P 500, Dow Jones Industrial Average (DJIA), Nasdaq Composite and Nasdaq 100, Russell 2000.

Europe – FTSE 100 (UK), DAX (Germany), CAC 40 (France), EURO STOXX 50 (pan-European), FTSE MIB (Italy), IBEX 35 (Spain), SMI (Switzerland).

Asia/ Pacific – Nikkei 225 (Japan), S&P/ASX 200 (Australia), Shanghai Composite (China), Hang Seng (Hong Kong), KOSPI (South Korea), Nifty (India).

 

In our blog post, we explore the 10 diverse indices across industries and regions for successful trading.

Bid

The rate at which you can sell the base currency, in our case it’s the Euro, and buy the quote currency, i.e the Japanese Yen.

Ask (or Offer)

The rate at which you can buy the base currency, in our case the British Pound, and sell the quoted currency, i.e. the Japanese Yen.

Spreads

The difference between the Bid and the Ask prices.

Currency rate

The value of one currency expressed in terms of another. Its fluctuation depends on numerous factors including the supply and demand on the market and/or open market operations by a government or by a central bank.

Lot

Usually, the contract size is based on a lot system, and for most currency pairs 1 lot is 100,000 units of a base currency.

Pip

Minimum rate fluctuation

Account types

Hantec Markets offer a variety of live and demo trading accounts including Joint and Corporate accounts.

Trade Indices Online on MT4

Access the Hantec Markets MetaTrader4 platform, an award-winning technology available on desktop, mobile and Mac.

Indices Trading: Related Articles

top 10 largest companies in China 2024
Top 10 Largest Companies in China 2024

In this article, we will look specifically at the 10 largest China companies: Tencent, ICBC, Alibaba, PetroChina, China Mobile, Pinduoduo, Bank of China, etc.

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