A word of caution about CFDs
CFDs such as those I personally use at GCI Financial offer 50:1 to 200:1 margin leverage. This means that with $100 in capital, you can control $5,000 worth of stocks, for example. High leverage is often desirable in order to capture small price movements, but it also means that you can lose all your capital in a few minutes if the underlying instrument makes a significant move against your position.
Such high leverage is definitely not for everyone and I would typically not recommend them for absolute beginners. They require strict money management. (And no, it's not just a matter of setting tight stoploss points: those get triggered way too often and end up costing even more money.)
There are also two important differences between holding a CFD (Contract For Difference) and the underlying instrument, for example a company's stock:
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With a CFD, you borrow the underlying instrument with interests from your broker. This usually makes holding long-term positions unattractive.
For example, if you hold one CFD of eBay, or 100 shares worth long or short, you can expect to pay interests of about $5-10 per month, the equivalent of $0.05-0.10 per share. It adds up. Note: It does not appear to be the case for currency positions.
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With a CFD, you are not entitled to receive dividends and other such derived income from the underlying instruments. All the contract is for, as the name implies, is price differences.
With CFDs, your broker will not necessarily hedge your position with an actual market position, or one of the same size; you are often playing "against the house." (Which is okay, by the way: it doesn't change the prices their dealers will quote you by much.) Brokers can therefore not commit to relaying underlying dividends to CFD owners even if they wanted to.
So as you can see, CFDs are geared towards short-term positions in many ways. If I wanted to hold a Pengrowth Energy Trust or a Permian Basin, I'd go to a stock broker instead, and own the trust units directly. I'd have no leverage on the capital (or maybe 2:1 on a margin account), but I'd be receiving double-digit dividends every month. :)
Personally, I use CFDs for day trading on occasion (although for that, I prefer having a Nasdaq TotalView terminal handy, and the sub-minute price differences and delays with CFDs make it very challenging.) Mostly though, I use CFDs for swing trading, as you can see on this site. Positions lasting between a few hours to a few weeks work best as they incur little interests and wouldn't be traded for dividends anyway.