Monthly and Quarterly Contracts (Forwards)

CMC Markets offers real-time spread betting and CFD forwards pricing on nearly all the major indices, FX, commodities and treasury products.

Why trade forwards with CMC Markets?

• To ensure we are the preferred provider for active traders, we have set our forwards spreads to be some of the tightest in the industry.
• Our clients can manually roll positions forward or set them, via the platform, to be auto-rolled or cash-settled upon expiry. With other providers you may only be able to give these instructions over the phone.
• On a roll-over, CMC Markets will only apply the full spread when closing out of the existing transaction; entry into the new equivalent transaction is at the mid-price (the buy price and sell price of a product at any particular time added together and divided by two). Most of our competitors will apply some of the spread (if not the full spread) on the entry of the new equivalent transaction as well.
• Receive platform alerts approximately 24 hours prior to a forwards contract reaching the last roll-over date and the last trading day, making it easier to make informed trading decisions.
• View historical forward contract pricing via the related tab within the charts. This gives you the ability to look back at previous performance after a contract has been settled and removed from the product library.
• CMC Markets offers spot contract (cash) alternatives to forward commodities and treasuries. Our unique cash price has no expiry, offering a smoother and more continuous price. Many providers only offer a futures product on these asset classes, we give you the choice. The smoother cash price lends itself to technical analysis, as the cash products have continuous chart history.

Forwards contract specifications

Information regarding our forwards contracts can be found in the individual product factsheets within the platform. This includes trading hours, spreads, any trade limits, available financing and key dates around last roll-over date, last trade opening date and settlement date and time.

What are forward contracts?

Forwards are a contract between two parties to buy or sell a product, like gold or crude oil, at a specified future time at a price agreed upon today. This is in contrast to a spot contract (cash products), which is an agreement to buy or sell a product today.

Forward contracts therefore have an expiry date, where if you are still holding the position on that day it will be closed out, settled in cash and the proceeds deposited into your trading account. It is important to note however that a forward position can be closed out at any time.

Alternatively, if you wish to keep the position longer you can also roll-over the current forward into the next near-dated expiry (the particular forward is closed out and an equivalent transaction is entered into on a forward with the same underlying asset and the next arising expiry date), either manually or you can have the Next Generation platform do it automatically just prior to the expiry date.

All forward contracts with CMC Markets are initially set up to automatically roll-over, however this can be changed easily within Order Preferences.

Forwards pricing

CMC Markets offers forwards on nearly all the major indices, commodities (excluding those traded on London Metals Exchange LME) and treasury products. Margin requirements start from just 0.25% for the major products like UK 100, US 30 and Germany 30.