Why can’t the media get it that Plus 500 does not offer spread betting

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CFD broker Plus 500 does not offer spread betting. It only offers CFDs (contracts for difference). So why does the nation’s financial media get it wrong all the time?

There are some fairly significant differences between financial spread betting and CFDs. I’m not going to go into them here, but you can watch our video discussion on CFDs Vs Spread betting or, read one of the many articles we discuss the pros and cons of each type of online trading.

Why don’t Plus 500 offer spread betting?

I don’t know is the answer, it’s one that I’d like to ask the CEO when we get to interview them. After all, we’ve interviewed the CEO’s of most of the major CFD brokers here:

We have a comparison table of UK regulated spread betting brokers here.

But it’s probably because the spread betting market in the UK is utterly saturated and has been for some time. There are around 100,000 to 120,000 spread betting traders in the UK that would generate revenue for spread betting brokers. Which is not a lot.

There are of course millions of traders, but many are so small that to a broker that doesn’t profit entirely from the B-book, probably not worth going after.

Spread betting is unique to the UK because there is no tax on profits. You can see why spread betting is tax-free here.

CFDs can be offered globally. So it makes sense that Plus 500, which is a pretty basic broker doesn’t complicate their offered by segregating spread betting and CFD traders.

Also, I would say that as a basic broker Plus 500 won’t attract serious traders or large accounts, so the tax breaks that spread betting offers probably wouldn’t be a big enough draw to make it worth their while.

You can read our Plus 500 review here and see what their customers have to say about trading with Plus 500.

Example of Plus 500 being called a spread betting broker

The list goes on endlessly if you look back through the archives, but as Plus 500 released a trading update today, they have been in the press. here are some examples of Plus 500 being called a spread betting broker when they are not:

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