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In finance, a contract for difference (CFD) is a contract between two parties, typically described as "buyer" and "seller", stipulating that the seller will pay to the buyer the difference between the current value of an asset and its value at contract time (If the difference is negative, then the buyer pays instead to the seller). In effect CFDs are financial derivatives that allow traders to take advantage of prices moving up (long positions) or prices moving down (short positions) on underlying financial instruments and are often used to speculate on those markets. For example, when applied to equities, such a contract is an equity derivative that allows traders to speculate on share price movements, without the need for ownership of the underlying shares. CFDs are currently available in Australia, Austria, Canada, Cyprus, France, Germany, Hong Kong, Ireland, Israel, Italy, Japan, The Netherlands, Luxembourg, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Russia, Singapore, South Africa, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Turkey, United Kingdom and New Zealand. They are not permitted in a number of other countries. In the United States, under the Dodd-Frank Act, CFDs are considered to be “swaps” or “security-based swaps,” depending on the nature of the underlier on which they are based, and are subject to the regulatory framework for those products established by Title VII of the Dodd-Frank Act.〔“Further Definition of ‘Swap,’ ‘Security-Based Swap,’ and ‘Security-Based Swap Agreement’; Mixed Swaps; Security-Based Swap Agreement Recordkeeping,” Securities and Exchange Commission Rel. No. 34-67453 (Jul. 18, 2012), 77 FR 48207, 48259-60 (Aug. 13, 2012), available at: http://www.gpo.gov/fdsys/pkg/FR-2012-08-13/pdf/2012-18003.pdf〕 For example, a CFD on Apple common stock would be a security-based swap (SBS) subject to the regulatory framework for SBS established by the Dodd-Frank Act.〔Id.〕 Under the Dodd-Frank Act, among other things, transactions in SBS with or for retail investors (that is, persons who are not “eligible contract participants”)〔Section 3(a)(65) of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934, as added by the Dodd-Frank Act, available at: http://www.sec.gov/about/laws/sea34.pdf, cross-referencing Section 1a(18) of the Commodity Exchange Act, available at: https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/html/uscode07/usc_sup_01_7_10_1.html〕 must be done on a registered national securities exchange〔Section 6(l) of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934, as added by the Dodd-Frank Act, available at: http://www.sec.gov/about/laws/sea34.pdf〕 and offers and sales of SBS to retail investors must be registered under the Securities Act of 1933.〔Section 5(e) of the Securities Act of 1933, as added by the Dodd-Frank Act, available at: http://www.sec.gov/about/laws/sa33.pdf〕 ==History== CFDs were originally developed in the early 1990s in London as a type of equity swap that was traded on margin. The invention of the CFD is widely credited to Brian Keelan and Jon Wood, both of UBS Warburg, on their Trafalgar House deal in the early 90s. They were initially used by hedge funds and institutional traders to hedge cost-effectively their exposure to stocks on the London Stock Exchange, mainly because they required only a small margin and because no physical shares changed hands avoided the UK tax of stamp duty. In the late 1990s CFDs were introduced to retail traders. They were popularised by a number of UK companies, characterized by innovative online trading platforms that made it easy to see live prices and trade in real time. The first company to do this was GNI (originally known as Gerrard & National Intercommodities); GNI and its CFD trading service GNI touch was later acquired by MF Global. They were soon followed by IG Markets and CMC Markets who started to popularize the service in 2000. It was around 2000 that retail traders realized that the real benefit of trading CFDs was not the exemption from tax but the ability to leverage any underlying instrument. This was the start of the growth phase in the use of CFDs. The CFD providers quickly expanded their offering from London Stock Exchange (LSE) shares to include indices, many global stocks, commodities, bonds, and currencies. Trading index CFDs, such as the ones based on the major global indexes e.g. Dow Jones, NASDAQ, S&P 500, FTSE, DAX, and CAC, quickly became the most popular type of CFD that were traded. Around 2001 a number of the CFD providers realized that CFDs had the same economic effect as financial spread betting in the UK except that spread betting profits were exempt from Capital Gains Tax. Most CFD providers launched financial spread betting operations in parallel to their CFD offering. In the UK the CFD market mirrors the financial spread betting market and the products are in many ways the same. However unlike CFDs which have been exported to a number of different countries, spread betting relying on a country specific tax advantage has remained primarily a UK and Irish phenomenon. The CFD providers started to expand to overseas markets with CFDs being first introduced to Australia in July 2002 by IG Markets and CMC Markets. CFDs have since been introduced into a number of other countries; see list above. Until 2007 CFDs had been traded exclusively over-the-counter (OTC); however, on 5 November 2007 the Australian Securities Exchange (ASX) listed exchange-traded CFDs on the top 50 Australian stocks, 8 FX pairs, key global indices and some commodities. There were originally 12 brokers offering ASX CFDs, but as of 2009 this had dropped to only five. As of June 2014 ASX ceased to offer CFDs. In June 2009, the UK regulator the Financial Services Authority (FSA) implemented a general disclosure regime for CFDs to avoid them being used in insider information cases.〔(FSA brings forward CFD disclosure rules - Times Online - 3 March, 2009 )〕 This was after a number of high-profile cases where positions in CFDs were used instead of physical underlying stock to hide them from the normal disclosure rules related to insider information. In October 2013, LCH.Clearnet in partnership with Cantor Fitzgerald, ING Bank and Commerzbank launched centrally cleared CFDs in line with the EU financial regulators’ stated aim of increasing the proportion of cleared OTC contracts.〔http://www.lchclearnet.com/media_centre/press_releases/2013-10-30.asp〕 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Contract for difference」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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