| Account | IG account (of type CFD or spreadbet), against which trades may be made, eg A1960 |
| Affected deal identifier | The deal identifier of a subsequent trade that was executed as a result of a trade, eg to net off positions |
| Currency | The currency denomination, eg GBP |
| Bet size | Governs how much you make or lose on a spread bet for every point of movement in the price of the market |
| Bid | A spread betting price is made up of a level at which you can 'sell' and a level at which you can 'buy'. The level at which you can 'sell' is always the lower |
| Binary | A binary allows you to take a view on whether a specific outcome will or won't occur. For example, 'Will Wall Street be up at the close of the day?'
If the answer is 'yes', the binary settles at 100. If the answer is 'no', the binary settles at 0.
Your profit or loss is the difference between 100 (if the event occurs) or zero (if the event doesn't occur) and the level at which you 'bought' or 'sold'.
Binary prices can be extremely volatile even when the underlying market is relatively static. A small movement in the underlying can make all the difference between the binary settling at 0 or 100 |
| Buy | You 'buy' a market if you think it will rise (if you are opening a new trade or bet). You also 'buy' to close out an existing 'sell' trade or bet |
| CFD | Contract for difference |
| Closing | The process of ending an existing trade or bet. Closing the position results in a profit or loss being realised |
| Contract size | In the case of CFDs, this is the number of contracts you wish to trade or of open positions. For spread bets this is the amount of profit or loss per point movement in the market |
| Controlled risk | A bet which has a strictly limited maximum loss by virtue of a guaranteed stop |
| CST | Client Security Token - identifies an authenticated client session |
| Date | Unless otherwise specified, all dates and times will be relative to the time zone of the account |
| Deal reference | Transient deal reference for an unconfirmed trade |
| Deal identifier | Permanent deal reference for a confirmed trade |
| Deposit | The funds required as an initial (margin) outlay for a bet. It is not the total amount that can be lost on the bet |
| DMA | Direct market access - a way of directly interacting with the order book of an exchange |
| EPIC | IG instrument identifier, eg X.D.EURGBP.CASH.IP. |
| Expiry | The date (and sometimes time) at which a spreadbet or CFD will automatically close against some predefined market value should the bet remain open beyond its last dealing time. Some CFDs do not expire, and have an expiry of '-'. eg DEC-14, or DFB for daily funded bets |
| Fill | The execution of an order |
| Force open | Enabling force open when creating a new position or working order will enable a second position to be opened on a market. Working orders (orders to open) have this set to true by default. |
| Guaranteed stop | A stop-loss order that puts an absolute limit on your liability, eliminating the chance of slippage and guaranteeing an exit price for your trade. Please note that guaranteed stops come at the price of an increased spread |
| Instrument | IG tradeable financial instrument (market), typically based on some underlying financial market instrument. Since our instruments are derived, they do not have recognisable real-world identifiers such as the Reuters or Bloomberg codes. Instead, IGs instruments are identified by proprietary identifiers known as EPICs. KA.D.VOD.CASH.IP, for example, is the EPIC for IG’s Vodafone spot (as opposed to futures) instrument.
The IG instrument EPICs for an underlying market of interest may be determined via our API’s set of /market services.
Please note that in the case of expiring time-based instruments, the IG instrument is 'rolled' over to the next interval, and so will represent a different underlying instrument, even though the EPIC is unchanged
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| Instrument type | A type of IG tradeable financial instrument, eg Binary |
| Level | Instrument price |
| Lightstreamer | Third party streaming software from lightstreamer.com |
| L1 | Level 1 pricing refers to the current best bid and offer levels |
| L2 | Level 2 pricing is relevant for direct market access (DMA) products. As well as showing the best bid and offer you can also view the market depth. Market depth displays the liquidity in the instrument in more detail, listing other buyers and sellers and the size they are willing to trade in below and above the current bid/offer levels |
| Limit working order | An instruction to deal if the price moves to a more favourable level, eg to 'buy' if the price goes down to a specified level |
| Liquid market | A liquid market has a sufficient volume of two-way business for a trade to occur without moving prices unduly. The market will normally exhibit narrow bid-offer spreads |
| Lot size | Minimum amount of unit that an instrument can be dealt in the market. It's the relationship between unit and the amount per point |
| Margin | The amount required from a client (in addition to any deposit due) to cover losses when a price moves adversely. Sometimes called variation margin |
| Market | A financial market, which may refer to an underlying financial market, or the market being offered in terms of an IG instrument. IG instruments are organised in the form a navigable market hierarchy |
| Market identifier | The name of a natural grouping of a set of IG markets, typically representing the underlying 'real-world' market. For example, VOD-UK represents Vodafone Group PLC (UK). This identifier is primarily used in the our market research services, such as client sentiment, and may be found on the /market/{epic} service |
| Market order | An order that you use to specify the direction and size of a bet, but not the price. This ensures we will fill your order as quickly as possible, even if the price indicated on the deal ticket is not available for your requested order size |
| Offer | A CFD or spread betting price is made up of a level at which you can 'sell' and a level at which you can 'buy'. The level at which you can 'buy' is the higher of the two prices and is called the offer |
| Period | Another name for expiry |
| Point | The increment in price movement that results in you making or losing your bet size |
| Price | Price of an IG instrument. IG instrument prices are streamed via Lighstreamer, subject to the permissions of the active account |
| Position | A running bet, which may be long (buy) or short (sell) |
| Profit and loss | Realised profit and loss is the amount of money you have made or lost on a bet once the bet has been closed. Realised profit or loss will add or subtract from your cash balance |
| Pseudo position | DMA positions will be made up of one or more pseudo positions, each of which constitutes a partially filled DMA position |
| Quote | The two-way market price that we are making for a given instrument. Because it is two-way, you can 'buy' or 'sell', according to whether you think the price will rise or fall |
| Rollover | Where a trade or bet approaching expiry is closed and a position of the same size and direction is opened for the next period, thereby prolonging the exposure to a particular market |
| Scaling factor | Scaling factor to be used to multiply/divide the level values for an instrument in order to calculate market exposure |
| Sell | You 'sell' a market if you think it will fall (if you are opening a new trade or bet). You also 'sell' to close out an existing 'buy' position |
| Slippage | The difference between the level of a stop order and the actual price at which it was executed. Slippage can occur during periods of higher volatility when market prices move rapidly or gap |
| Spread | The difference between the 'buying' and 'selling' price |
| Spread bet | A bet on whether a financial market (the underlying market) will rise or fall. We offer two prices on every market; the difference is known as the bid/offer spread. If you think a market is set to rise you 'buy' at the higher (or offer) price, and if you think it will fall you 'sell' at the lower (bid) price. Whether you gain or lose money on the bet – and how much – depends on the size/direction of any movement in the underlying market. Only available in the UK |
| Stop order | An instruction to deal if the price becomes less favourable; normally placed to prevent a loss of more than a certain amount of money |
| Trailing stop | A type of stop order that moves automatically when the market moves in your favour, locking in gains while your position is open |
| Time | Unless otherwise specified, all dates and times will be relative to the time zone of the account |
| Underlying | The actual traded market or markets from which the price of a CFD or spread bet is derived |
| Watchlist | A collection of markets of interest |
| Working order | An order that has not yet been executed. Also known as an order to open |
