Commissions & Conditions

To receive real-time prices for an exchange, use the exchange subscription tool in the trading platform.

Subscription costs

As soon as you subscribe to your chosen service, your account will be debited for the cost of subscription for a full calendar month, whatever date you subscribe.

Corporate clients are classed by exchanges as professional investors. Accordingly, barring terms to the contrary in the subscriber agreement, corporate clients are charged the professional end-user fees.

Using market risk (volatility) and liquidity parameters, we assign a rating on a scale of 1 to 6, with 6 representing the highest risk level.

The formulas used for margin calculation are as follows:

The percentages of the underlying required for margin calculations are set out in the table below:

If you wish to trade additional strategies, such as covered calls, vertical spreads or other advanced option strategies, including writing (selling) options, you need to be enabled. Please contact us for further assistance.

The check of available cash is performed independently on each subaccount where the option is booked. When the required cash (or stock) is reserved, it cannot be used for trading. The calculation of the underlying commitment is performed by observing all ITM positions before expiration as follows:

Monitoring time: there are four observation times, at each of which a progressive tiered level is assigned. At each tier, the platform calculates and increases the cash that needs to be available as collateral on your account.

Once an option has been ITM at any point during the observation period, the corresponding cash reserve will remain allocated according to the highest tier reached. For example, if an option is ITM at T1 but moves back out of the money (OTM) between T1 and T2, the reserved cash will still be maintained at the T1 level. This ensures that the necessary funds remain set aside to cover potential obligations, even if the option’s status fluctuates before expiration.

At T0 (3 hours before expiry) in particular: the platform verifies that 25% of the commitment is covered by your account specifically. The required coverage increases to 50% at T1 and subsequently to 75% at T2 and to 100% at T3.

At any time up to and including T2, you can close your position yourself without waiting for the system to do so. After T3, opening new positions on the same observed options is no longer allowed.
If during observation times the available cash is insufficient to cover the reserve cash required at expiration, in the best case scenario your expiring observed option position (both ITM and OTM) will be automatically closed.

This tiered approach ensures a progressive allocation of margin requirements, helping traders manage their positions effectively as expiration approaches. 

If the physically settled options are not covered by a sufficient quantity of existing or potential underlying positions, equivalent cash should be reserved for stock purchase. Finally, all required cash should be added together to determine the expiration requirement for the underlying.

It is assumed that options on the same underlying have the same trading hours and last trade time. The last trade date for options with an “open” settlement style is the trading day before the expiration date.

Stocks and ETF short positions are not allowed, meaning that if after expiration you end up with a short stock position, the system will cover it for you.

Risk of early assignment: please note that, in the case of short options, you may incur an early assignment; even in this case, potentially short positions will be covered.

 You can monitor the required stock under the column “Required stock”.

The carrying cost is calculated based on the daily margin requirement and applied when a position is held overnight.

Carrying cost = margin requirement *days held* (relevant interbank rate + markup 1.5%) / (365 or 360 days)

Initial margin

This is a pre-trade margin check on order placement, i.e. when you open a new position, there must be sufficient collateral on your account to meet the initial margin requirement.

Maintenance margin

This is a continuous margin check, i.e. the minimum amount of cash or collateral that must be maintained on your account to hold an open position. The maintenance margin is used to calculate the margin utilisation. A close-out of margin positions occurs as soon as you do not meet the maintenance margin requirement.

You will find the initial and maintenance margin of bond CFDs in the platform under Trading conditions.

Example:

The carrying cost is calculated based on the daily margin requirement and applied when a position is held overnight.

Carrying cost = margin requirement *days held* (relevant interbank rate + markup 1.5%) / (365 or 360 days)

Initial margin

This is a pre-trade margin check on order placement, i.e. when you open a new position, there must be sufficient collateral on your account to meet the initial margin requirement.

Maintenance margin

This is a continuous margin check, i.e. the minimum amount of cash or collateral that must be maintained on your account to hold an open position. The maintenance margin is used to calculate the margin utilisation. A close-out of margin positions occurs as soon as you do not meet the maintenance margin requirement.

You will find the initial and maintenance margin of Forex CFDs in the platform under Trading conditions.

Example:

The carrying cost is calculated based on the daily margin requirement and applied when a position is held overnight.

Carrying cost = margin requirement *days held* (relevant interbank rate + markup 1.5%) / (365 or 360 days)

The current contract and following contract are offered to enable you to manually transfer positions from one expiry to the next. You will find the specific expiry date and time for commodity CFDs in the trading platforms on the contract trading ticket.

Trading will cease at the specified time listed in the Contracts Specifications table for each contract. You should pay attention to when the Last Trade Day will take place as it differs from contract to contract and month to month. Any positions still open on the Expiry Date will be automatically closed at the closing price set by Cornèrtrader and cash-settled.

Initial margin

This is a pre-trade margin check on order placement, i.e. when you open a new position, there must be sufficient collateral on your account to meet the initial margin requirement.

Maintenance margin

This is a continuous margin check, i.e. the minimum amount of cash or collateral that must be maintained on your account to hold an open position. The maintenance margin is used to calculate the margin utilisation. A close-out of margin positions occurs as soon as you do not meet the maintenance margin requirement.

You will find the initial and maintenance margin of commodity CFDs in the platform under Trading conditions.

Example:

In order to receive live streaming quotes on exchange listed products with Cornèrtrader, you are required to subscribe to the relevant stock exchange data. However, as a client of ours, you have access to delayed market data on listed securities on which you can trade.

An online subscription tool is available on the trading platform. There you will find the list of futures & options available and news services, with the applicable monthly fees. You can subscribe and unsubscribe to the services of your choice.

Monthly subscription fees are charged for the data you elect to receive in real-time. The exchange subscription agreements can only be submitted via the subscription tool on the platform.

When you subscribe to live prices from a derivative exchange, if the exchange offers both futures contracts and options contracts, live prices on both are included in the same subscription.

Subscriptions levels

Some of the stock and future exchanges might offer Level 1 only or also the Level 2 market data. With the Level 1 subscription, you receive the first level of the order book on the exchange: you can see real-time, bid/ask quotes and their sizes/volumes. With the Level 2 subscription, you can see not only the top of the book, but also the market depth of bid/ask prices and the size available at each price point.

Example of Market Depth:

Subscription costs

As soon as you subscribe to your chosen service, your account will be debited for the cost of subscription for a full calendar month, whatever date you subscribe.

Corporate clients are classed by exchanges as professional investors. Accordingly, barring terms to the contrary in the subscriber agreement, corporate clients are charged the professional end-user fees.

Financing cost = Bid/Offer financing rate +3pp / -2.5pp

If you keep a CFD position on single stocks and/or stock indices overnight (after 10p.m. London Time), financing costs on long and short positions apply. The finance of the traded value consists of a credit/debit charge, booked daily.

The cost of financing is composed of two elements:

• bid/offer financing rate*
• commercial product markup/markdown

The Financing cost for CFD indices is calculated as follow:

• Number of nights held x (market closing price x trade size x (relevant interest rate benchmark +/- commercial markup/markdown)) / 365.

*The bid/offer financing rate refers to the financing price in individual currencies. Our broker uses publicly accessible and internationally recognised Alternative Reference Rates (ARR) as the basis for constructing the funding rates. For currencies without a designated ARR, money market rate, monetary policy rate or other relevant financial benchmark apply as an input. The bid/offer financing rates have a floor of 0% and therefore cannot be negative. The interest is calculated daily and charged monthly at the end of each calendar month.

Details on the applied interest rates is visible under Financing, Account Transaction widget of your account.

Generally, all short positions in Single Stock CFDs held overnight are subject to the cost of borrowing the underlying shares. The fee varies according to the instrument, market conditions and the availability of shares to be borrowed in the market. Instruments that are in high demand for short selling can experience an increase in the borrowing cost.

The borrowing cost is fixed and will be charged on a daily basis. However, due to the execution of certain corporate action events, the borrowing cost on the short position can be reset to the current rate in the market.

In order to receive real-time streaming quotes on exchange listed products with Cornèrtrader, you are required to subscribe to the relevant stock exchange data. However, as a client of ours, you have access to delayed market data on listed securities.

An online subscription tool is available on the trading platform. There you will find the list of available exchanges and news services alongside the applicable monthly fees. You can subscribe and unsubscribe to services of your choice.

Monthly subscription fees are charged for the data you elect to receive in real-time. The exchange subscription agreements can only be submitted via the subscription tool on the platform.

When you subscribe to live prices from a stock exchange, both the company shares, the ETFs, ETPs, ETNs, ETCs and single stock CFDs listed on that stock exchange are included in the same subscription.

Subscription cost

As soon as you subscribe to your chosen service, your account will be debited for the cost of subscription for a full calendar month, whatever date you subscribe.

When subscribing to the service, it is important to enter your personal and professional data correctly. Any errors, use of pseudonyms or incomplete information can lead to the subsequent and automatic cancellation of the request or of the subscription if already active, even if only for a few days.

Exchanges require users to renew their personal information every six months. Before this deadline, the platform will send a notification to remind you to reactivate subscriptions which are expiring.

Corporate clients are classed by exchanges as professional investors. Accordingly, corporate clients are charged the professional user costs.

If you keep a CFD position on single stocks and/or stock indices overnight (after 10p.m. London Time), financing costs on long and short positions apply. The finance of the traded value consists of a credit/debit charge, booked daily.

The cost of financing is composed of two elements:

• bid/offer financing rate*
• commercial product markup/markdown

The Financing cost for CFD indices is calculated as follow:

• Number of nights held x (market closing price x trade size x (relevant interest rate benchmark +/- commercial markup/markdown)) / 365.

*The bid/offer financing rate refers to the financing price in individual currencies. Our broker uses publicly accessible and internationally recognised Alternative Reference Rates (ARR) as the basis for constructing the funding rates. For currencies without a designated ARR, money market rate, monetary policy rate or other relevant financial benchmark apply as an input. The bid/offer financing rates have a floor of 0% and therefore cannot be negative. The interest is calculated daily and charged monthly at the end of each calendar month.

Details on the applied interest rates is visible under Financing, Account Transaction widget of your account.