Contracts for difference

Stock Bid / Ask spreads & Commissions

A Stock CFD tracks the price of an underlying stock, hence the bid/ask spread of the CFD equals the spread of the underlying stock.

When trading Single Stock CFDs on Webtrader a fixed commission in percentage terms is charged on the notional value of the trade with a minimum fee applicable for small trade sizes. For North American exchanges commission is calculated as cents per CFD.

Order Management

Market, Limit and Stop Orders are supported. Stop Limit and Trailing Stops (the order moves in line with the market) are also available on Webtrader. You can place conditional 'If done' and 'O.C.O.' (One Cancels Other) orders as well.

Market Orders

Standard Bank may choose to convert Market Orders into aggressive Limit Orders. This will be to, amongst others, comply with regulatory restrictions and/or its internal compliance requirements. Market Orders may also be subject to a conversion by our executing brokers for the same reasons.

Please note that it is the client's responsibility to check if the order is filled in the market after order entry. Standard Bank will not be responsible for missing fills due to the client's failure to check.

Exchanges Affected by conversions from Market Orders to aggressive Limit Orders:

Exchange
NYSE MKT (AMEX – American Stock Exchange)
London Stock Exchange (LSE_SETS)
Oslo Børs/Oslo Stock Exchange (OSE)
NASDAQ OMX Copenhagen (CSE)
NASDAQ OMX Helsinki (HSE)
BME Spanish Exchanges (SIBE)

US - American Stock Exchange (AMEX)

Due to a limited order book on the American Stock Exchange (AMEX), Standard Bank does not support Market Orders on AMEX. Clients are only permitted to use Limit Orders.

US Stop (and Market) Orders

For US markets, sweep algorithms are used to add liquidity from more venues than the primary exchange. This implies that orders can be filled before trading commences on the primary exchange.

Market Orders placed after 09:30 EST will not be filled before the Stock is crossed on the primary exchange. Stop Orders are triggered on the primary market price feed and follow the routing rules for such Market Orders.

Please note as some Stop Orders are handled manually, delays can occur.

Partial Fills

Partial fills may occur on Limit Orders and the remaining amount stays in the market as a Limit Order and may be filled within the order duration.

Market Orders can be filled at numerous levels. The price paid will be the volume weighted average price of all the fills.

Short Selling CFDs

When short selling a Stock CFD, you will be subject to the rules applicable to the underlying instrument of the respective exchange. For example, when short selling Stock CFDs, you may experience forced closure of a position if the borrowed stock underlying the Stock CFD gets recalled.

This may happen if the underlying stock becomes difficult to borrow due to corporate events such as take overs, dividends, rights offerings (and other merger and acquisition activities) or increased hedge fund selling of the stock.

Short Selling Restrictions

Due to market conditions, regulations may affect short-selling of Stocks. These regulations protect the integrity and quality of the securities market and strengthen investor confidence. As a consequence, certain regulations may affect short-selling of related Single Stock CFDs.

It is the client's responsibility to keep itself informed about what markets imply restrictions in short-selling. This can be done by contacting local authorities. Further, a list of Stock CFDs which are available for short-selling is available under CFD Trading Conditions on the Webtrader trading platform.

Borrowing costs on Short CFDs

A borrowing cost may be applied to your short Stock CFD positions held overnight.

This borrowing cost is dependent on the liquidity of the Single Stocks and may be zero (0) for certain high liquidity Single Stocks.

More details on the borrowing cost are available under Commissions, Charges and Margin Schedule

Corporate Actions

Even though clients holding Single Stock CFD positions do not own the underlying instrument, the value of their positions is still affected by corporate actions. In general, positions and prices are adjusted by Standard Bank to take account of the respective corporate actions.

Details on all corporate actions applied to Single Stock CFDs can be found in the Corporate Actions menu below.

Pre-market trading

If offered by the exchange, Single Stock CFDs trading setup allow you to also participate in pre-market trading.

Pre-market trading

For Single Stock CFDs in Europe and APAC (all non US) where Standard Bank's appointed service provider or agent acts as a Market Maker, client orders in these instruments are routed to the exchange closing auction by the order management system and participate in the closing auction on the exchange.

Orders placed after continuous trading ends, and before the auction uncrosses will also participate in the uncrossing. Orders placed after the uncrossing will be queued for next day.

Financing overnight debit / credit

As CFDs are a margined product, you finance the traded value through an overnight credit/debit charge. Details are available under 'Overnight Financing costs' on the Commissions, Charges and Margin Schedule.

Competitive Bid/Ask spreads

When trading Index-Tracking CFDs on Webtrader, you only pay a spread, as a fee, on the bid/ask price.

Trading Hours

You can trade the most popular indices in the trading session timeframe up to 22 hours.

See trading hours for each Index-tracking CFD under CFD Trading Rates.

Short Selling

Short selling of Index-Tracking CFDs is fully supported with Webtrader. See short selling CFDs above for more information.

Order Types

Limit, Market, Stop, Stop Limit and Trailing Stop Orders are supported.

A Stop Order to sell your position is triggered on the bid price and Stop Orders to buy are triggered on the ask price.

From January 2014 the Italian Financial Transaction Tax (FTT) of 0.1% will apply on all purchases of Italian shares, Derivatives and Equity linked securites (ie. Depository receipts) in listed companies that have a registered office in Italy.

CFDs are traded on margin. This means that you are able to leverage your investment by opening positions of larger size than the funds you have to place as margin collateral. Margin requirements may be changed without prior notice. Standard Bank reserves the right to increase margin requirements for large position sizes, including client portfolios considered to be of very high risk.

Margin Calls

You must at all times maintain the required margin collateral as listed in the Account Summary on Webtrader. If at any time while a margin position is held, and the margin required to maintain that position exceeds the funds available for margin trading on the account, a margin call would be made. This can be done by either:

• reducing the size of the open margin positions; and/or
• providing more funds (margin collateral) to fund the open position.

When the required margin exceeds your margin collateral you are at risk of a stop-out where Standard Bank may liquidate your margin positions.

Risk Warning

Margin trading carries a high level of risk to your capital with the possibility of losing more than your initial investment and may not be suitable for all investors.

Ensure you fully understand the risks involved and seek independent advice if necessary.

Long CFD trade

When you expect the price of a stock to go up, you can choose to take a long position in a Single Stock CFD.

In this example you expect the ABC123 Bank share price to rise from its current mid-price of £1.72. You have £10,000 to place on margin. With Standard Bank you have a 10:1 leverage on this specific underlying instrument, meaning you only have to place 10% of the trade amount on margin..

You decide to buy 50,000 Single Stock CFDs at the offer price of £1.73 which gives you a position of (50,000*£1.73) £86,500 in notional value.

Each day you hold the long position open you pay financing cost on the notional opening value of the position.

The interest rate used is LIBOR+3% (0.27144%+3% = 3.27144%). 10 days later, the ABC123 Bank price has risen and you sell the 50,000 CFDs at £1.85.

The trade details are:

Opening the position	How to calculate	Amount (GBP)
Margin Available	£10,000 x 10	100,000
Notional Transaction Value	50,000 x £1.73	86,500
Margin used	£86,500 x 0.10	8,650
Commissions on the trade	£86,500 x 0.10%	86,50
Stamp Duty	n/a	n/a
Financing of position:
Financing of margin	3.27144% x 10 days x £86,500 / 360	78.61
Borrowing costs	n/a	n/a
Closing of position:
Notional Transaction Value	50,000 x £1.85	92,500
Commission on the trade	£92,500 x 0.10%	-92.50
Profit / Loss:
Profit on trade	£92,500 - £86,500	6,000
Total Cost	£86.50 + £78.61 + £92.50	257.61
Total Profit	£6.000 - £257.61	5,742.39

Short CFD trade

When you expect the price of a stock to fall, you can choose to take a short position in a Stock CFD.

In this example you expect the ABC123 Bank share price to FALL from its current mid-price of £1.72. You have £10,000 to place on margin. With Standard Bank you have a 10:1 leverage on this instrument, meaning you only have to place 10% of the trade amount on margin.

You decide to sell 50,000 Single Stock CFDs at the offer price of £1.71 which gives you a position of (50,000*£1.71) £85,500 in notional value.

Each day you hold the short position open you receive financing cost on the notional opening value of the position.

The interest rate used is LIBID – 2.5% (0.26561%-2.5% = -2.23439%). Since the rate is negative you effectively have to pay 2.23439% overnight financing. 10 days later, the ABC123 Bank price has fallen and you sell the 50,000 CFDs at £1.65.

The trade details are:

Opening the position	How to calculate	Amount (GBP)
Margin Available	£10,000 x 10	100,000
Notional Transaction Value	50,000 x £1.71	85,500
Margin used	£85,500 x 0.10	8,550
Commissions on the trade	£85,500 x 0.10%	-85,50
Stamp Duty	n/a	n/a
Financing of position:
Financing of margin	2.23439% x 10 days x £85,500 / 360	53.07
Borrowing costs	No borrowing costs on ABC123 Bank	n/a
Closing of position:
Notional Transaction Value	50,000 x £1.65	82,500
Commission on the trade	£92,500 x 0.10%	-82.50
Profit / Loss:
Profit on trade	£85,500 - £82,500	3,000
Total Cost	£85.50 + £53.07 + £82.50	221.07
Total Profit	£3.000 - £221.07	2,778.93

Bonus Issues

New Stock CFDs are allocated on the Ex-date. Clients with short positions will be debited and clients with long positions credited.

Capital gain distribution

Cash payment is allocated on Ex-date for value Pay date.

Cash Dividends

Cash adjustments are booked on the Ex-date reflecting the market price movement on the Ex-date, but the actual value of the payment will be settled on the Pay Date.

Deletion of Open Orders as a Result of Corporate Actions

The day before a Corporate Action event is scheduled to take effect (the Ex-date), open orders are deleted for certain event types.

The following details the rules of behaviour:

Event Type	Never delete orders	Always delete orders	Rule defined below
Tender offers	X
Stock splits		X
Reversed stock splits		X
Bonus issues		X
Mandatory Mergers		X
Spin offs		X
Ticker changes		X
De-listings		X
Cash dividends			X
Stock dividends			X
Optional dividends			X
Right issues			X

For dividends and rights issues, all open orders for the given instrument will be deleted if the change in the market price is calculated to be over 20% due to the Corporate Action event

Dividend reinvestment plans (DRIP)

Single Stock CFD holders will receive the cash payment. The cash adjustments on Single Stock CFD positions are booked on the Ex-date reflecting the market price movement on the Ex-date, but the actual value of the payment will be settled on the Pay date.

Dividends on Index-Tracking CFDs

When any underlying stock that is part of an Index-Tracking CFD goes ex-dividend, the Index-Tracking CFD will be price adjusted to reflect this dividend. The weighted proportion of the applicable dividend within the Index- Tracking CFD will be credited to the client's account for long positions and debited for short.

Please note that the DAX30 is a Total Return Index, meaning the index is automatically adjusted for dividends.

Index Dividend = Share Dividend * Shares in Index / Index Divisor*.

* Divisor: an amount used to stabilise the index value when its composition changes. The sum of all index members' prices is divided by the divisor to achieve the normalised index value. The divisor is adjusted when capitalisation amendments are made to the index members, allowing the index value to remain comparable at all times.

To prevent the value of an index from changing due to such an event, all corporate actions that affect the market capitalisation of the index require a divisor adjustment to ensure that the index values remain constant immediately before and after the event.

Liquidation by Issuers

Holdings of stock in the respective liquidated company will be removed. Liquidation proceeds (after deduction of costs, fees and charges), if any, will be allocated.

Optional Dividends

Single Stock CFDs will receive the cash payment. The cash adjustments on Single Stock CFD positions are booked on the Ex-date reflecting the market price movement on the Ex-date, but the actual value of the payment will be settled on the Pay Date.

Positions in instruments that are not online tradable

It can happen that a Corporate Action involves an instrument that is not tradable online with Standard Bank.

In that case CFD positions in new instruments that are not tradable online are, if possible, liquidated. The proceeds are paid in full to clients (net of all costs, fees and charges).

Right Issues

Tradeable Rights

Tradeable Rights are granted and booked in accordance with the ratio on the Effective Date (Ex-date) and automatically orders for sale of the rights are placed when the relevant market opens for trading. Following the order executions proceeds from the sold Rights are booked to the client's account.

In case the client wishes to participate in the Rights Issue, this is possible by buying the actual related Stock Rights.

Non-Tradeable Rights

New Single Stock CFD positions in the original instrument are granted and booked according to the ratio and the price of the underlying rights issue on the Effective Date (Ex-date), with the value date as payment date.

Share premiums

Cash payment is allocated on Ex-date for value Pay date.

Spin Offs

Single Stock CFDs positions on the underlying Stock are allocated on the Ex-date. Clients with short positions will be debited and clients with long positions credited.

Stock Dividends

Single Stock CFDs are allocated on the Ex-date for value on Pay Date. Clients with short positions will be debited and clients with long positions credited.

Stock Splits / Reverse Stock Splits

New Single Stock CFDs positions are allocated on the Ex-date.

Special Corporate Action Events

Special and infrequent Corporate Actions that do not come under the descriptions above may occur.

Standard Bank will handle such Corporate Actions in the best interest of the client to the extent that time and operational procedures allow.

Taxes and Fees on Corporate actions

Taxes and fees may also occur on other corporate actions other than cash dividends such as, amongst others, fee on a stock dividend or tax on a merger.

When such taxes and fees occur Standard Bank will debit the client's account accordingly.