What is the Spread?

Every instrument on the platform has two prices: a BUY price and a SELL price. The difference between the two prices is called the spread.

The spread contains the commission that your broker (in this case, etoro) charges for the trade.

As soon as you open a trade, it will open at the BUY price, but the current rate shown in your portfolio and on the charts will be the SELL price.

For example, if you BUY Litecoin at 40.00 and the SELL price at that moment is 39.25, the spread is the difference between the two: 75 pips, or 1.9%.

Due to the difference between the two rates, a new trade always shows an immediate loss.

You can find a list of our typical, minimum, spreads per instrument on our fees page.

Bear in mind that spreads are variable, meaning that they can be affected by market conditions.

Some instruments are typically more volatile and so are likelier to see wider spread variations than other, more stable, instruments. This means that the spread you’ll receive at the opening and closing of a position cannot be fully predicted.