Shorting shares vs. CFDs

I'm thinking of try CMC just to get started. and from there to go to the better DMA based brokers. let me know of any 'tricks' that might happen to me (in simple language) . I see cfd trading has a bad rap in other forum threads. scary stuff (~

I'm also very interested in OP's method I too am the most familiar with shares than anything else and am looking to day trade shares both long and short.


also I don't leverage so I'd put say 10k into an account and use it to open a 10k position on shares either long or short intra day.

what's the best way/platform to go about doing this?

ahyeah said:

I'm also very interested in OP's method I too am the most familiar with shares than anything else and am looking to day trade shares both long and short.


also I don't leverage so I'd put say 10k into an account and use it to open a 10k position on shares either long or short intra day.

what's the best way/platform to go about doing this?

Click to expand...

lol . u trying to sound like me . hehe . but don't put all your money into 1 position. that's nuts


i don't know much about day trading. that's very advanced. short term trading is still quite good - you'll see things change quickly enough, maybe even to your liking. i'm only interested in doing it anyway cause my current job and job prospects aren't very good. watch the news. u know how hard it is to get oneself a house these days. it's ridiculous. so i need a way to get out of this mess my friend. at the very least i shall try.

grah33 said:

maybe u were leveraging. i won't do that. and if i start losing money i wont keep going. i'll just shelve it and wait for the market to start going up again.

Click to expand...

Leveraging is efficient use of capital but like Canoz said, you have to understand the power and destruction of high leverage, Money management and restricted number of position at any one time forms the risk management to consider. One of the reason I don't trade stocks leveraged any more is the gaps in the morning and trading halts. It is ok if the gaps are in your favor but stops will not protect a gap against your favor. Some CFD brokers offer guaranteed stops but this is costly so no free lunch.

Have you ever considered FX trading. No gaps usually except Monday morning first thing and no trading halts. Very liquid markets and most brokers offer spread and no brokerage or brokerage and very tight spread. Stocks or FX each have their nuances and beast of their own.

I think MacPrime has discontinued CFD. I got an email but have not even logged into the platform for ages!

CMC is a market maker model and I prefer a lit DMA like MacPrime. They only take brokerage albeit more expensive but you see your order in the real ASX market depth.

Now is a good time to be short the market but like anything else you don't want to be the last shorter around.

I just wanted to go back to an earlier post that said shorting was possible through some brokers (Macquarie and IB). Currently I only use Commsec and Nabtrade neither allow shorting. I could use CFDs but the unfortunately the margin requirements (25%) are too high for me, considering all I want to do is short an ETF (very low volatility/risk, similar to shorting the ASX200, you can do that on a 1% margin with CFDs).

So can anyone please recommend a good retail broker which allows shorting of stocks/ETFs?
Thanks

Kipp said:

I just wanted to go back to an earlier post that said shorting was possible through some brokers (Macquarie and IB). Currently I only use Commsec and Nabtrade neither allow shorting. I could use CFDs but the unfortunately the margin requirements (25%) are too high for me, considering all I want to do is short an ETF (very low volatility/risk, similar to shorting the ASX200, you can do that on a 1% margin with CFDs).

So can anyone please recommend a good retail broker which allows shorting of stocks/ETFs?
Thanks

Click to expand...

Retail brokers usually don't have good shorting facilities. Even if they did 25%+ margin would be standard.
CFD providers already let you overleverage

After reading the last couple of posts, I was wondering whether writing DITM calls might be a viable alternative to shorting a security.