On 6 October 2026 (7 figures updated on 13 October 2026), the median CFD provider in our set said 73.46% of its retail accounts lose money, across 31 CFD providers whose sites we read from the UK (range 51% to 84%; the 51% figure is eToro's, whose legal entity we haven't confirmed). Provisional: an independent automated second read on 13 October 2026 matched 16 of 31 figures.

• Every figure: firm's page, read date, text fingerprint
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• Method

CFDs are complex instruments and come with a high risk of losing money rapidly due to leverage. Each figure is the firm's own statement about its retail clients. Data, not advice.

Read this first

• Not all UK firms22 of 31 figures belong to FCA-regulated firms. 7 are EU firms (6 CySEC, 1 BaFin) whose sites we also read from the UK. 2 with an unconfirmed regulator are left out of the FCA-only figure.
• Regulator not register-checkedIt comes from our own list of firms, not yet checked on the FCA, CySEC or BaFin registers.
• Legal entity not confirmedeToro and AvaTrade: their sites list several group companies and the warning doesn't say which one the figure belongs to.
• EvidenceEach live figure has a SHA-256 fingerprint of the page text we read; public saved copies are not online yet. Each history figure links to its Wayback Machine capture.

Provisional release: second read

On 13 October 2026 a second automated check, separate from the first, re-read each page. It ran from outside the UK.

Matched

16 of 31

Changed

0 we still show the published figure; the new reading is in the firm's row

UK warning not shown

5 pages didn't show it to the check

Refused

10 sites refused the check

No person has re-read these figures yet. Every figure was read by our script and matches the number in its own warning sentence.

Is it true that 90% of traders lose money?

Not according to these firms' own figures. Each of the 31 providers' mandated warnings says between 51% and 84% of its retail accounts lose money; the median provider says 73.46%. None states 90%.

Each figure covers one firm's own retail CFD clients over the previous 12 months, not all traders or day trading in general.

All 31 providers

The figures

Select a column heading to sort. Figures are each firm's own; we don't adjust them.

Quarterly history

Providers with history

18 of 31

Archived figures

404 Wayback Machine, 2018-Q3 onwards

Shared scale

50% to 90% 2018-Q3 to 2026-Q4

Gaps are real gaps: we never fill them. The red dot is the live figure.

• AvaTrade

  2018-Q4: 71% → now 65% · 12 quarters

  Use with care entity unclear; same figure 12 quarters running (page may not have been updated)

• CICity Index

  2022-Q2: 69% → now 68% · 17 quarters

• CMC Markets

  2018-Q3: 78% → now 69% · 31 quarters

• eToro

  2018-Q4: 65% → now 51% · 14 quarters

  Use with care entity unclear

• Forex.com

  2018-Q3: 80% → now 74% · 22 quarters

• FXCM UK

  2018-Q3: 79.79% → now 67% · 32 quarters

• FxPro

  2018-Q3: 79% → now 75% · 29 quarters

  Use with care 15 of 29 archived pages show two different figures

• IMIC Markets EU

  2021-Q2: 75% → now 73.46% · 23 quarters

• IG

  2018-Q3: 79% → now 70% · 32 quarters

• Markets.com

  2020-Q2: 74.93% → now 81.9% · 20 quarters

• Pepperstone

  2020-Q2: 76.5% → now 73.6% · 24 quarters

• Plus500

  2022-Q1: 73% → now 76% · 8 quarters

• Saxo

  2018-Q3: 69% → now 61% · 34 quarters

• Spreadex

  2018-Q3: 67% → now 61% · 33 quarters

  Use with care same figure 6 quarters running (page may not have been updated)

• Swissquote

  2025-Q2: 82.48% → now 78.23% · 6 quarters

• Tickmill

  2019-Q1: 81% → now 68% · 21 quarters

• Trading 212

  2018-Q3: 80% → now 74% · 13 quarters

  Use with care same figure 10 quarters running (page may not have been updated)

• XTB

  2018-Q3: 80% → now 74% · 33 quarters

Histories marked "use with care" should not be used to compare firms. The live page and the archived page are not always the same URL, and the entity shown is today's, not read from each archived page.

Firms we couldn't include

7 firms on our list had no figure we could read on 6 October 2026. We don't estimate or copy figures from elsewhere.

• Admiralsevery page refused our script with a bot check (6 October 2026). We don't get round bot checks.
• Interactive Brokersour script found no percentage warning on the UK homepage it read on 6 October 2026, and we haven't yet found the UK page that shows one.
• Vantagevantage.com didn't show our script a UK broker site on 6 October 2026, and we haven't yet found its UK address.
• XMthe page didn't load in time for our script (6 October 2026).
• FP Marketsthe page our script read showed general risk text but no percentage (6 October 2026).
• Freedom24freedom24.com returned "not found" and freedom24.co.uk showed a holding page when read from the UK (6 October 2026).
• Hantec Marketsthe site showed our script its Australian company, not a UK one (6 October 2026).

Download

• cfd-loss-rates.csvOne row per provider: figure, verbatim warning, page, date, fingerprint.
• cfd-loss-rates-history.csvOne archived figure per provider per quarter, with the Wayback link.
• cfd-loss-rates-summary.jsonCount, median, mean, range, change since the earliest archived figure.
• cfd-loss-rates.datapackage.jsonField definitions (Frictionless Data package).

Cite this

Free to use, share and adapt under Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 (CC BY 4.0). Please credit TradingLookup and link to this page.

Suggested citation

TradingLookup (2026). CFD loss-rate series, v1.0.0 (provisional: not every figure confirmed on a second read), data as of 6 October 2026. https://tradinglookup.com/brokers/cfd-loss-rates/. Licence: CC BY 4.0.

Quotable line (permanent link: /brokers/cfd-loss-rates/#stat)

Across 31 CFD providers read from the UK, the median provider's risk warning says 73.46% of retail accounts lose money (range 51% to 84%), according to TradingLookup's CFD Loss-Rate Series (October 2026).

Full headline, with its caveats: #headline. Source: TradingLookup, https://tradinglookup.com/brokers/cfd-loss-rates/

Charts for your article (PNG, CC BY 4.0)

How we built it

• Read from the UKEach provider's site, as a visitor sees it.
• Strict matchA percentage counts only when the mandated wording follows it directly.
• Version 1.0.0Data as of 6 October 2026. Standard, limits and changelog on the method page.

Spotted a mistake, or represent one of these firms? Tell us. We log every fix on the corrections page.