Even at Major UK Brokers, Most CFD Accounts Lost Money, Report Finds

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Most CFD traders lost money even at the UK's biggest, most trusted brokers, a new report finds.

Most retail CFD accounts lost money even at some of the UK's best-known regulated brokers, according to a new TradingPlatforms.co.uk report that examined risk disclosures from five large firms.

The study found that established brands, including IG and CMC Markets reported the lowest loss rates in the sample, yet even there around 68% of retail customers ended up in the red.

The percentage rose to 76% at Plus500 and exceeded 81% at Swissquote, underlining how punishing leveraged trading can be even within well-regulated mainstream platforms.

Rather than exposing weakness at a handful of outliers, the figures point to a structural feature of the product itself: even when offered by major listed brokers operating under regulatory oversight, CFDs continued to produce losses for the majority of retail users.

The report framed those numbers against the small size of the market itself. Only 0.7% of UK adults engage in CFD trading, which TradingPlatforms.co.uk attributed to the fact that these contracts are among the most technically difficult instruments available to retail investors.

Unlike conventional share dealing, CFD trading usually involves leverage, which magnifies both gains and losses and leaves traders more exposed to sharp short-term market moves. It also requires users to navigate margin requirements, fast price swings and the risk of losses accumulating quickly if positions move against them. For that reason, CFDs have long sat at the more speculative end of the retail investment landscape, attracting only a narrow slice of the wider public.

The report also noted that the FCA requires authorised brokers to display warnings about the inherent risks of CFDs and the percentage of retail accounts that lose money.

The regulator has separately said that approximately 80% of customers lose money when investing in CFDs, showing that the high loss rates highlighted in the report sit firmly within a long-established regulatory concern.

In that context, the broker-level disclosures do not look like isolated red flags but like consistent evidence of a wider pattern. Even the firms with the lowest share of loss-making accounts still showed that losses were the norm rather than the exception.

The firms examined in the report were not fringe operators. TradingPlatforms.co.uk said all five brokers were publicly listed, either on the London Stock Exchange's main or secondary markets or, in Swissquote's case, on the LSE's International Order Book in addition to its primary Swiss listing.

The report added that these companies had market capitalisations ranging from roughly £913.6 million to more than £9.4 billion, while annual revenues stretched above £1 billion in IG Group's case. That scale matters because it suggests the loss rates are not an anomaly at marginal providers but a standard feature of the sector, including at some of its most established names.

For consumer and personal finance desks, the message is direct: CFD trading remained a niche activity in Britain, but among those who took part, losing money was still overwhelmingly the most common outcome.