Because of regulatory changes in New Zealand, Interactive brokers has determined to stop offering over-the-counter trading of CFDs and metals to our New Zealand clients effective November 1, 2016. This restriction does not affect any other product except OTC CFDs and metals and does not affect any product traded on an exchange. If you are a New Zealand client with CFD or metals trading permissions, you will not be able to add any new CFD or metals positions (or increase existing positions) from November 1, 2016.Likewise, we ask that you close any existing CFD or metals positions as soon as practicable. We anticipate that we will require all open CFD and metals positions for New Zealand clients to be closed by December 31, 2016, although we may require these positions to be closed sooner.As noted above, these changes do not affect trading in any other products. For example, New Zealand clients are free to trade shares or exchange-traded index products instead of CFDs. Likewise, New Zealand clients can continue to trade exchange-traded commodity futures (including exchange-traded metals contracts).
To give you an idea of how much cheaper IB is compared to your typical local promoter:
100 Apple shares with IB costs $1
100 Apple shares with IG cost $15, CMC $10, FPM $15
IB CFDs were also DMA, and mirrored the underline product.
