In this article we show you, in a simple way, what costs you can find if you decide to trade with the Plus500 online broker.
This online broker is duly authorised and regulated (Plus500 UK Ltd is authorised and regulated by the Financial Conduct Authority of the United Kingdom under licence FRN 509909. Plus500 CY Ltd is authorised and regulated by the Cyprus Securities and Exchange Commission with licence number 250/14. Plus500AU Pty Ltd is regulated by the Australian Securities and Investments Commission with licence ACN 153 301 681, AFSL # 417727).
Plus500 is an online broker with years of experience offering Contracts for Difference (CFDs) to traders worldwide (since 2008). It allows CFD trading on more than 2000 different financial instruments in the following financial markets:
- Forex (foreign exchange market).
- Cryptocurrencies (such as Bitcoin, Ethereum, Litecoin, NEO, IOTA, Stellar, EOS, Cardano, Tron, Monero,…).
- Commodities.
- Stock indices.
- Shares of the most popular markets such as the United States, United Kingdom, Germany,…
- ETFs (exchange traded funds).
- Financial options.
Without further ado, let’s take a look at what kind of commissions it charges for its services and how much they can amount to. If you are interested, you can also consult this article for in-depth customer reviews of Plus500’s services, reliability, security,…
What are Plus500’s fees?
Basically, the costs that we can find when trading CFDs can be classified into two types:
- Trading costs: these are the costs charged by the broker for opening, closing or maintaining trading positions.
- Associated services costs: whether or not to apply this type of commission depends on the broker’s commercial policy. Some, such as Plus500, eliminate part of them. These are the costs for using a service outside of trading, such as deposits or cash withdrawals, trading account maintenance, etc.
We will look at these fees in detail below:
– Trading fees
Spread
The spread is applied each time a position is opened.
Plus500 does not charge a fixed commission for executing orders to buy and sell financial assets, the costs incurred by the trader come in the form of a spread: the spread is a spread, a differential between two prices.
CFD brokers, such as Plus500, offer two prices to allow trading of any of the financial instruments they have available:
- One for buying: this price is called “Ask” and is the price that the trader must pay if he decides to buy the financial asset.
- Another for selling: also called “Bid”. This is the price that the broker offers to sell the financial asset.
Thus, the trader can open a buying position (long trade), with the intention of selling back the financial asset (i.e. the CFD on the financial asset), close the trade and make a profit or loss with the difference in price.
However, you also have the possibility to make the opposite trade. You can take a “short position” (or short trade). This manoeuvre consists of selling the financial asset in order to buy it back at a lower price and pocket the difference.
CFD trading allows you to open a short trade or a long trade. It is possible to trade the ups and downs of the market and therefore gives the possibility to make profits (or losses) in both rising and falling markets.
In any case, any trading position includes a purchase and a sale of the CFD; the order in which these trades are made depends on whether you decide to trade long or short. In other words, all trades must be bought at the Ask price and sold at the Bid price (including opening and closing the position).
The spread is nothing more or less than the difference between the Ask and Bid price. It is measured in price points.
Thus, the price of the spread depends on the monetary value of each price point.
In the Forex market, the minimum quote point is called the “Pip” and corresponds to the fourth decimal place (except for pairs trading against the Japanese Yen, JPY, which is the second decimal place).
How is the spread calculated?
The amount of the spread depends on the value of the trade.
For example, if for the currency pair EUR/USD (euro against US dollar) we have these values:
- Bid (sell): 1.18072
- Ask (buy): 1.18086
In this case, the fifth decimal place is taken as the minimum quotation point. In this case, the spread would be 1.4 pips.
If we open a position of one standard lot, i.e. 100,000 units of the base currency (the first in the pair), the value of each pip would be 10 units of the quoted currency (the second in the pair).
In other words, every pip that the pair moves, up or down, is $10 for or against. And the spread will cost $14 (1.4 pips).
It is possible to open smaller positions, such as a mini lot (10 000 units of the base currency) or a micro lot (1000 units of the base currency), so that the pip value is lower, the risk is lower and the spread is also cheaper. It all depends on the initial capital you are willing to trade with and the risk you want to take on each trade.
In any case, the spread depends on the value of the pip (and this depends on the monetary volume of the position). It is charged at the start of each trading operation. This is why all trades start with a small loss.
Warning: The prices shown in the image above are illustrative and do not correspond to current prices.
Dynamic Spread
Plus500 uses a dynamic spread. This is a variable spread.
A variable spread means that the difference between the Ask and Bid price is not always the same (as opposed to the fixed spread that some brokers offer, which is always the same for each financial instrument). The difference varies depending on the liquidity of the asset and market conditions.
Under normal circumstances, this type of variable spread is usually cheaper than when working with fixed spreads, however, it can be triggered if something extraordinary happens in the market (for example, a major economic news or any other event that generates high volatility).
Therefore, when trading with Plus500, the spread or commission for trading will depend on:
- The financial asset you are trading (normally, the more liquid the asset, the lower the spread).
- The market situation.
- The volume of your trading operation.
To see in detail the instruments that Plus500 broker Plus500 offers and the spreads of each one you can access this list on their website:
List of Plus500 financial instruments and commissions
Swap or Overnight Funding
The swap, also called “overnight funding” or “roll over”, could be included in the operational costs. This is because this type of fee is only charged for holding open positions.
When trading CFDs, positions can last as long as you want until you close them (from a few seconds to several days, CFDs are not suitable for medium or long term investments). However, every day, positions have to be rolled over. And it is precisely the swap commission that is the cost of this rollover (hence also called “roll over”).
Why are trades rolled over on a daily basis?
When working with CFDs and opening a position in Forex or any of the other financial instruments that Plus500 makes available, you do not have to deposit 100% of the money that the investment costs. The broker itself puts up part of that money and only asks for a percentage of it as margin (to cover possible losses). This is known as financial leverage.
That is, if we open a position, for example, in Apple shares (in the following image we can see the conditions and rates).
Warning: The prices shown in the image above are illustrative and do not correspond to current prices.
First of all, we note that opening a trade in this asset has a spread cost of 0.02 price points. As we have discussed above, depending on the size of the position, this is how much each price point will be worth and therefore the monetary total of this spread (differential).
However, we can check the “Overnight funding” rate (both for buying or long positions and for selling or short positions). This rate corresponds to the swap, overnight funding or roll over.
If we look at the information in the image below, we can see that the broker allows a leverage of 1:5 (the maximum leverage for stock trading according to the ESMA – European Securities Markets Authority restriction).
This means that to open a position of, for example, €2,000 in Apple shares, we must deposit €400 as margin. The 1:5 ratio is maintained; one euro of margin for every five euros of position size (20%). It is not necessary to pay out the €2,000. For major currency pairs the leverage can be as high as 1:30 (3.33% margin margin) . In countries outside the European Union the leverage levels available may be higher
In other words, the trader deposits the margin percentage and the broker opens the position, putting up the investment money. This borrowed money is subject to daily funding and for this reason, when trading CFDs we are charged the swap fee for each day an open position is held.
And when is the swap charged?
This cost is also called overnight funding because it is applied at night time.
It is known that certain markets, such as Forex, do not close from Monday to Friday (the cryptocurrency market does not close even on weekends). However, a cut-off time is taken to establish when one trading day has ended and another begins.
Normally, this time usually coincides with 17:00 according to New York time (US East Coast Time). Although it may also depend on the area where the broker has installed its server.
At Plus500, it will depend on each financial instrument, but it usually coincides with midnight, hence the name “night premium” (you can see these issues in the details of each instrument).
A curious note is that if a position is opened one minute before the cut-off time and closed one minute after, for all intents and purposes it is considered an “overnight” position and swap will apply.
Another important detail is that in many brokers, one day a week, the overnight premium can be multiplied by three. This is due to holding an open position over the weekend. You may think that this “triple” fee will apply on Fridays, if the position is left open; but the truth is that it can also be charged on Wednesdays (because trades are usually settled two days later).
However, according to Plus500’s customer service, the broker does not apply the triple swap fee, but rather for each day the position is left open.
And how much is the swap?
Plus500 informs us what is the daily interest that is subtracted from the trader’s account for each day that the position is kept open in the file of each financial instrument.
The calculation is done as follows:
- Position size * Opening price * Overnight financing %
As you can see, the swap fee is applied to the total value of the trading operation (the money deposited by the broker to invest), not on the margin actually deposited by the trader.
However, in the foreign exchange market the swap fee works in a special way, because in such a transaction there are two currencies involved, one bought and one sold.
Each of the currencies is subject to a different overnight financing rate. Depending on whether your position is long or short, the swap rate can be positive or negative, as the difference between the two is actually applied.
Thus, when trading in the foreign exchange (Forex) market, the swap rate may be a credit to your account rather than a debit.
In fact, there are trading strategies based on making a profit on the difference in interest between two currencies (carry trade).
If you are new to trading, the best way to see how these trading fees (spreads and swaps) impact your trading is to open a demo account at Plus500. A demo account is a testing environment, very similar to a real money account, but loaded with virtual balance so you can test the broker’s platform and trading conditions without putting your money at risk.
– Commissions for other services
In addition to the operational fees, i.e. the fees that Plus500 charges (like any other online Forex and CFD broker), there are other types of fees for services in addition to the trading activity.
Deposit and Withdrawal Fees
At this point it should be noted that Plus500 does not charge any fees for depositing or withdrawing funds from your trading account. However, the trader may have to bear some costs depending on the payment method used to transfer money (but these fees are outside the broker’s control).
For example, your bank may charge you for sending or receiving a bank transfer, if you use an electronic payment method (such as Skrill or Paypal) you may incur costs for currency exchange or for sending money to your bank account or card,…
Currency conversion fee
When trading in a currency other than the one in which the funds are held in the trading account, Plus500 performs a conversion transaction subject to a fee.
This fee can be as high as 0.7%, on the profit or loss made on that trade in the different currency. It is calculated in real time and can be seen in the evolution of the trading operation itself.
If, for example, we have our account denominated in euros and we open a position in Amazon shares (company quoted in USD), this fee will be deducted from the profits obtained; or it will be added to the losses that we may have had in this position.
Inactivity fee
In the event that you have an open account with Plus500 and are not logged in for a period of three consecutive months, the online broker has a registered Inactive Account Maintenance Fee; to cover the cost of keeping the services available.
This fee amounts to a maximum of $10 per month as long as the account is not logged in. Likewise, the fee cannot be higher than the balance on deposit in the account
In other words, if the balance in your trading account is less than $10, the broker cannot leave your account negative: it will subtract the maximum amount corresponding to the balance you have in your account.
Thus, it is possible to avoid this fee in several ways:
- Depositing into the account periodically at intervals of less than three months: this in itself is considered activity and prevents the commission from being charged.
- Withdrawing funds from the account: If it is foreseen that we will not be able to log in to our trading account for a period of more than three months, it would be advisable to withdraw the balance from the account to prevent the broker from subtracting the funds as an inactivity fee.
No commission or inactivity fee applies to the Plus500 demo account.
Guaranteed Stop Loss Order
Plus500 calls a stop loss order a “guaranteed stop loss order “ which, as the name suggests, is guaranteed by the broker.
Stop loss orders, as is well known, are useful to stop losing trades and prevent risk from skyrocketing (as well as taking more losses than initially expected and calculated for a given trading operation). The problem arises when, in extremely volatile markets, the stop loss order cannot be executed at the indicated price.
The guaranteed stop loss order obliges the broker to execute it at the established price, and the broker is responsible for any possible problems in closing the operation at this price due to lack of liquidity. It is natural that a commission is charged for this service, depending on the financial instrument and the spread set: the trader guarantees the closing of his position at the required price, without assuming the risk that the orders cannot be executed at that price due to a lack of counterparty (this may occur in very special market circumstances).
This type of order is not available for certain financial instruments . Once established, it can be modified, but not eliminated.
Throughout this article we have been able to find out which commissions are charged by the broker Plus500. We hope you found it useful. We also encourage you to share this article on your social networks so that this information can reach more people.
Thank you very much for your attention.
You can register with Plus500 here:
Risk warning: CFDs are complex instruments and have a high risk of losing money quickly due to leverage. 82% of retail investor accounts lose money when trading CFDs with this provider. You should consider whether you understand how CFDs work and whether you can afford the high risk of losing your money
The information presented here about Plus500CY Ltd. and its services is purely generic and derived from reliable publicly available sources or received from Plus500CY Ltd. (entity authorised to operate in Spain through the passporting regime, reg. 3848).
