Crackdown on share bets

THE City watchdog wants to clamp down on sales of complex derivative products to retail customers.

Measures include a ban on binary options – bets on whether a share price, currency or index will go up or down, and restricting the sale of contracts for difference, which give exposure to price movements without owning the asset. The FCA said: “We are concerned about the harm to retail consumers being caused by the design of some complex derivative products.”

In 2017 about 100 CFD providers had 800,000 funded retail client accounts holding over £1.5billion in retail client money.