calculating the current buy price of a stock

[Guest chance11]

Hi everyone, I'm  new to trading and currently using a demo account and have got a hang of looking for good buying points and positions, but iv notice on the live account that it doesn't calculate the price of a stock when buying.

gold as an example - its currently at 1203.05, if this was the current price I would expect it to be £1203 pounds per share  but the buy price  £60. 

how do I formulate this as I can't see any straight forward answers / calculations.

 

thanks in advance, 

[Caseynotes]

Hi @chance11, you are using a spread betting account to trade gold so you are not actually buying gold but rather a derivative in the form of gold contracts. The price you are seeing on the chart is not the current price but rather the mid price between the current sell and buy price as displayed in the buy/sell box. The £60 you mention seems to refer to the margin requirement which is the amount of free capital in your account needed to open the trade. 

Don't forget to take a look at the IG training academy,

https://www.ig.com/uk/learn-to-trade/ig-academy

[Guest chance11]

@Caseynotes thanks for the reply, ill have a read. whats got me lost is how I calculate the margin required when purchasing, so how much its going to cost to buy in.  would you be able to give me an example using gold, thanks in advance . 

[Caseynotes]

Hi @chance11, no problem, the initial margin requirement is calculated on the deal ticket for you, this is how it's done;

bet size (£/point)  x  price  x  margin %   

so on the gold buy deal ticket in your pic it's;

1 x £1203.20 x 5 %  =  £60.16

https://www.ig.com/uk/spread-betting-cfds-margin

[Caseynotes]

Actually I just found a new trick James and Chance, sorry if you already seen it before, but google will do the calc just by typing the equation straight into the search box, before I would have gone to a calc page first.

[JamesIG]

4 minutes ago, Caseynotes said:

Actually I just found a new trick James and Chance, sorry if you already seen it before, but google will do the calc just by typing the equation straight into the search box, before I would have gone to a calc page first.

it will also automatically calculate it on every deal ticket as well  

[Guest chance11]

makes perfect sense  thanks for your help guys.