Plus500 expresses prices of CFDS in the form of a buy sell spread. At the time of writing, the spread on the Bitcoin CFD was $2.80, and the CFD price was; Buy: $206.20 Sell: $203.40.

There are some fees with Plus500, and any trade you open will not be in profit until you are ahead of the fees. One fee we experienced wasbthe maintenance fee, which is expressed as a percentage, and charged once a day at a predetermined hour. Plus500 expresses this in your own local time.

For the instruments we looked at, the times fees are charged in our time zone are:

6:00am for Bitcoin

6:00am for AUD/USD

1:00pm for Gold

The daily premium charged varies between instruments and is expressed as a percentage

Bitcoin premium is 0.10% both buy and sell

Gold premium is 0.014% both buy and sell

AUD/USD, the buy premium is 0.0190%, and the sell is 0.0160%.

The difference in buy sell premium on the forex instrument, is due to interest rate differentials and other factors which influence the borrowing costs associated with investing in two currencies at the same time.

There are two main advantages to trading with CFDS:

Market Exposure - Despite being located in Australia, I can easily invest in international shares, commodities, foreign exchange and a whole lot of other markets, including Bitcoin. Investing directly into these markets as an individual, would be very difficult, specially if they are overseas or require large sums to open an account. Leverage (click for TFG definition) - The borrowing side of CFDs is very similar to how a margin loan works. The interest on the loan, is built into the daily premium. The leverage available varies depending on which instrument you are looking at. In the details section of each CFD, you will see a leverage ratio

In our hypothetical case, we are looking for ways to short sell Bitcoin, Plus500 has that covered so we have found the market exposure we were looking for. The next question is 'how much can we invest?', which depends on the amount of leverage available

T