The "Consolidated Account" allows for consolidated position keeping and provides you with a netted open position view.

The "Single Positions" trading account allows you to keep each position in a given instrument open separately without positions being netted off unless you specifically choose to do so.

Further Details:

Consolidated Accounts

Consolidated Account open positions are automatically netted off against each other. For example, if you have a long trade open in Tesco shares (ie. you have bought a CFD on Tesco shares) and you subsequently place a short trade, or sell a CFD on the Tesco shares, the "sell" or short trade will automatically close off the original open "buy" or long trade. Therefore your profit/loss will be realised when the opposite trade to an open position is executed. This is normally suitable for clients who are likely to trade a single instrument frequently.

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Single Positions Accounts

For Single Positions Accounts, each trade is treated as an individual open position. When buy and sell trades in a single instrument are created, all positions are kept open and will not be netted off until you manually choose to close an open position or net more than one position off. So for example, you might choose to keep a separate long and short position open in Tesco shares. This type of account might suit a more experienced trader who might be holding open trades to hedge an existing portfolio, for example.

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Numerical Examples:

On day 1 the following trades are placed:

• Buy 10 FTSE @ 5965
• Buy 10 FTSE @ 5912
• Sell 10 FTSE @ 5975

Consolidated Position Account

Based on the FIFO method (first in, first out), the first 10 FTSE contracts bought at 5965 would therefore be sold when the 10 contracts are subsequently sold, leaving the 10 contracts bought at 5912 open. The Position would therefore be displayed as below on your Positions tab, and the profit from the closing trade added to your closed P&L.

Single Position Account

You would hold open the three separate trades until you decided to close one or more of these. The average price for this position would instead be 5951, and the positions would be displayed as below on your Positions tab:

In this view you can see each trade placed as an open position, giving full clarity of the trade price. It would then be your choice entirely which positions you might want to match off against each other. For example, in this case by matching trade 1 and trade 3, you would lock in a profit of 10 contracts x (5,975 – 5,965) = 100. The remaining average trade price would therefore be 5912. Below is how this would be displayed on the Positions tab after this trade.

For more information on the two types of account, please see here for the User Guides on these.

If you still have any further questions on the different account types, please Contact Us and we would be delighted to help answer them.