The months of April to June this year marked the weakest quarter for CFD trading in Germany for two and a half years:  While the number of accounts remains almost constant at around 289,000 at present, trades and volumes literally collapsed in the second quarter - to a level that is as low as it was last in the fourth quarter of 2019. This is a key finding of the latest surveys by the Research Center for Financial Services (CFin), which regularly collects data for the German CFD industry. Specifically, the number of trades in the second quarter fell by almost 50 per cent year-on-year to 9.0 million, while the volume traded fell by around 38 per cent to €361 billion. Compared to the previous record quarter, the first quarter of this year, the declines are even more significant at 43 and 54 percent respectively. The Contracts for Difference Verband e.V., or CFD Association for short, attributes the slump primarily to the disadvantages that the tax-related restriction on offsetting losses means for investors. "Although the capital markets did not exactly provide a tailwind in the second quarter with their weak condition - in our view, this decline in CFD activities is primarily due to the effects of the loss offsetting restriction, which is unconstitutional not only in our eyes," explains Stefan Armbruster, board member of the CFD Verband. Read more