The amended Directive now expressly provides that a 10% initial margin requirement applies for CFDs where the underlying is a commodity or any stock index, not expressly listed in the Directive. This effectively means that Cyprus Investment Firms (CIFs) may offer such CFDs at a maximum 10:1 leverage.

CFDs with gold as the underlying continue to be subject to a 5% initial margin requirement.

This amendment aims to further enhance protections of offering CFDs to retail clients and to eliminate uncertainty in the industry’s interpretation of the Directive.

The amending Directive (only available in Greek) can be found here

The consolidated version of the Directive (only available in Greek) can be found here