FAQ: Can you Trade Stocks on cTrader?

cTrader is a CFD Trading Platform

cTrader is primarily a spot forex trading platform. However, in 2014 the platform started to evolve from supporting just FX and precious metals. cTrader began supporting more asset classes. Today cTrader is considered a multi-asset FX and CFD trading platform. One of the asset classes supported is stocks, sometimes referred to as equities or shares. 

Keep in mind, cTrader is not a stock trading platform where you can actually buy and own stocks of a company, where you have voting rights and receive dividends. cTrader only lets you open positions using contracts-for-difference, a derivative where the underlying instruments is a share of a company.

In 2014 cTrader introduced stock indices, such as the Dow Jones 30 (US30), Standard and Poors 500 (S&P500) and others. Today, almost every broker offering cTrader offers spot indices. Later in 2015, cTrader introduced single-stock CFDs. Not many brokers that offer stocks in cTrader. The Spotware Public Beta version of cTrader contains hundreds of stocks from across the world, thus proving the platform’s capabilities for offering stock trading on cTrader.

Why don’t Brokers Offer Stocks on cTrader?

There are a few valid reasons that brokers do not offer stocks on cTrader, these are:

• Market data is expensive, and brokers need special licenses to distribute real-time stock market data to their traders.
• Those stock market data licenses are needed for each exchange.
• Stocks are an administrative burden. There are thousands of stocks and dozens of exchanges. All of which have their own trading sessions, public holidays and other variables.
• The cost of trading stocks is much more than forex. These costs seem to be very expensive to traders who are accustomed to trading forex.

Brokers offering Stocks on cTrader

A handful of cTrader brokers have endured the challenge of offering stocks as contracts-for-difference on cTrader. For example, VARISANSE lists the top 100 shares listed on the Nasdaq stock exchange. Several other cTrader brokers have started offering stock CFDs, although the range of instruments, quality of historical data and commissions varies significantly from broker to broker.