Frankfurt/Main, September 13, 2022 - The months of April to June this year marked for CFD trading in Germany the weakest quarter for two and a half years: While the number of accounts remains almost constant at currently around 289,000, collapsing trades and volumes literally collapse in the second quarter - to a level that is as low as it was last This is a key finding of the most recent 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 increased by nearly by almost 50 percent to 9.0 million compared to the same quarter of the previous year. volume traded fell by around 38 percent to 361 billion euros. Compared with the quarter, the first quarter of this year, the declines were even more pronounced at 43 percent and 54 percent respectively. and 54 percent respectively, are even more significant.

The Contracts for Difference Verband e.V., or CFD Association for short, attributes the slump mainly to the disadvantages, which the tax-conditioned loss set-off restriction for Investors means. "It is true that the capital markets in the second quarter with their weak markets did not exactly provide a tailwind - but this decline in CFD activities is, in our in our view, is primarily due to the effects of the unconstitutional loss unconstitutional restriction on loss offsetting," explains Stefan Armbruster, member of the Armbruster, board member of the CFD Association. "CFD customers are slowly but surely realizing surely the disastrous consequences of the annual tax law 2020, which with the loss offset restriction for futures transactions alongside all other financial products CFDs strongly disadvantaged," Stefan Armbruster continues. "With the latest figures from the industry, the effects of the restrictive tax legislation have for the first time become visible. This legislation deprives investors of an important instrument, with which he could react flexibly to market turbulence, for example in the form of in the form of hedging transactions."

On average, in the most recent quarter, a volume of nearly 40,000 EUR traded. The most popular underlying in the use of CFDs represented thereby Stock indices represented 90 percent of the traded volume and 80 percent of transactions. accounted for 80 percent of the transactions. With a share of 48 percent, contracts on the DAX were, as before, the most index CFDs, but the share of Nasdaq contracts increased compared to the previous year. Nasdaq contracts almost doubled compared with the prior-year quarter, from 12.4 to 23.6 percent. percent.

In CFDs on currency pairs, there are also some changes. Thus went the share of the currency pair British pound / U.S. dollar, in the comparable period of the Previous year with 20.2 percent still the second most popular pair after the traditional euro/US dollar, declined to just 3.1 percent. In the case of CFDs on commodities contracts on energy replaced those on precious metals as favorites - presumably against the backdrop of the Ukraine crisis. energy CFDs accounted for more than 57 percent of the volume in the commodities sector, after only commodities, up from just 17.3 percent in the same period last year. The data show that market participants are making extensive use of the flexibility and diversity that the CFD tool tool to respond to market developments with both long and short positions. as well as with short positions. "Especially in times like these, such flexibility is essential for investors and must be made possible. The loss relief introduced by the introduced by the Annual Tax Act achieves exactly the opposite. opposite: it counteracts all the demands of the German government for a for citizens to build up their own private assets on their own responsibility and, in addition the complexity with the production of the tax declaration still beyond that substantially ? Stefan Armbruster further. Before this background the CFD federation prepares a Sample procedure prepares, about which investors and investors on the federation Website under www.cfdverband.de can inform. The model procedure is to clarify the so far open Constitutional questions to the loss set-off restriction clarify.

The key figures of the annual comparison of CFin are based on a data collection on behalf of the Contracts for Difference Verband e.V. The survey refers to the German market and to German market and to customers resident in Germany. To calculate the market, data from the association members comdirect and onvista bank (both Commerzbank brands) (both brands of Commerzbank), Consorsbank (a brand of BNP Paribas), flatex and ViTrade (both brands of flatexDEGIRO), S Broker, IG Europe, WH Selfinvest, GBE brokers and FXFlat raised.