Four markets, and how each one behaves
Currencies, stock indices, commodities and company shares sit behind the same balance and the same margin rules. What changes between them is when they trade, what moves them, and how closely a position wants watching once it is open.
Start with the market you understand
Each page below covers what the instruments are, what tends to move them, and what to keep an eye on while a position is running.
Currencies
Majors, minors and crosses, quoted through the trading week rather than inside one session. Every price is one economy measured against another, which is why the news that moves it is usually rates and inflation.
Indices
A benchmark is an entire equity market in one instrument. A single position takes a view on that market instead of on the companies inside it.
Commodities
Metals and energy behave like the physical goods behind them: what is produced, what is stored, and what it costs to move.
Shares
Individual companies from the major venues, held long or short. This is the narrowest exposure on the account and the one that reacts hardest to a single announcement, because there is nothing else in the position to absorb it.
They do not all trade the same way
The account treats the four identically. The markets themselves do not: a benchmark stops when its exchange stops, and a currency pair carries on. It is worth knowing which kind you are in before you leave a position alone.
| Market | When it trades | What tends to move it |
|---|---|---|
| Currencies | Runs through the trading week without a daily close. There are busier hours and quieter ones rather than a bell. | Interest-rate expectations, inflation readings, and how one economy is faring against the other side of the pair. |
| Indices | Tied to the exchange behind the benchmark, so this market has an open and a close, and quiet spells around them. | Earnings season, policy decisions, and anything broad enough to reprice a whole market at once. |
| Commodities | Set by the venue where the underlying contract trades. Energy does not keep the same hours as metals. | Production and storage, weather, and the cost of getting a physical cargo from where it is to where it is wanted. |
| Shares | While the home exchange of the company is trading. Outside that, the position sits with whatever the market last paid. | Results and guidance, sector news, and corporate actions such as a dividend or a split. |
Hours are a property of each market rather than of the account. Every market page goes through its own session in more detail, including what happens to an open position while the market it belongs to is closed.
One account behind every position
Moving between markets does not mean moving money, learning a second platform or reading a second set of rules.
One balance
Funds sit in one place. A position in one market draws on the same balance as a position in another, so there is nothing to transfer when you change your mind about where to be.
One set of margin rules
Margin is worked out the same way whatever you are holding. What differs is the requirement on the instrument itself, and that is stated against the instrument rather than buried in a policy.
One platform
Charting, the order ticket and your open risk in the same window, on desktop, browser and phone. A position opened on one of them shows up on the others.
Open the account once
All four markets are already in it, so there is nothing to add later and nothing to move between them. The risk warning at the foot of this page is worth a minute first.