Why CFD Brokers Are Ramping Up Stock and Commodity Offerings in 2025

A Strategic Shift in Product Focus

In 2025, many retail brokers that previously focused on forex are shifting their attention to other asset classes, most notably equities and commodities. This shift is visible across platform menus, marketing campaigns, and product updates, as more single-stock CFDs, thematic baskets, fractional share derivatives, and short-term commodity contracts are being pushed to the front of trading dashboards. The reason isn’t a sudden drop in trader interest, but a response to changing patterns in retail demand, regulatory pressure, and margin allocation.

The contract-for-difference (CFD) model allows brokers to offer synthetic exposure to a wide range of assets. While currency pairs historically made up the bulk of this activity, the appetite for alternative exposure, such as US tech stocks, energy futures, and gold, has grown steadily, and brokers are adjusting accordingly.

“Retail flow into single-stock CFDs and commodities has grown as traders look for volatility outside major currency pairs,” says a senior researcher at ForexBrokersOnline.com, a platform that tracks CFD and multi-asset broker developments. “Brokers are responding by widening access to US tech stocks, gold, and energy contracts. It’s about keeping clients active during a cycle where forex volatility has flattened.”

The expansion of stock and commodity CFDs is not a trend for the sake of trendiness. When we look at the underlying dynamics, it is easy to see that this shift is a strategic adjustment to changing markets. For brokers, it’s a necessary evolution in a fast-moving, highly regulated business model. As forex volatility levels off and regulatory scrutiny increases, brokers are looking for ways to retain retail engagement without breaching compliance limits. By offering access to global stocks, popular commodities, and thematic asset groups, CFD platforms are redefining what retail trading looks like in 2025. It is no longer a market defined by currency pairs alone. The product shelf is wider, the user interface is tailored to real-time headlines, and retail CFD brokers are competing on breadth of access as much as on pricing. For traders, this means more choice, but also more complexity.

Declining Forex Volatility

While forex remains an essential product line for many retail traders, recent market conditions have made it less appealing to day traders and certain other short-term traders. Volatility in major currency pairs has decreased, and while central bank policy is still relevant, surprise rate movements and interbank shocks have become less frequent. In contrast, stock markets (or at least parts of them, such as large-cap tech companies) and commodity markets (like crude oil, natural gas, and gold) have delivered more consistent, headline-driven volatility.

Short-term retail traders are known to follow volatility. This means that when major currency pairs such as EUR/USD or GBP/JPY offers less movement, attention shifts to more volatile things. Depending on the circumstances, that could be Tesla earnings, Nvidia splits, WTI crude oil price shocks, or something entirely different. Brokers that offer fractional exposure to high-priced US equities, or allow weekend commodities trading, are capturing a lot of this shift in behavior, and many retail platforms now offer CFD access to pre-market and after-hours sessions on US stocks to match demand for off-hours event trading.

Expanded Product Menus and Thematic Trading

One of the most noticeable changes in 2025 is the size and structure of product menus. Brokers that once listed 50–60 underlying instruments and financial products now list several hundred, including sector-specific baskets (e.g. “Green Energy”, “US Banks”, “AI Stocks”), leveraged ETFs, and mini contracts on commodities such as gold, silver, and WTI crude oil. This expansion allows traders to build more diverse positions. Just as with a CFD with only one underlying asset (e.g. NASDAQ: GOOG), a CFD where a basket is the underlying will allow you to speculate on price movements without owning the underlying things.

Thematic trading where traders target macro or trend-driven narratives is growing in the retail space, and brokers now market collections of assets grouped around stories: AI adoption, electric vehicle rollouts, food supply chains, or geopolitical tension in energy-producing regions. These groupings allow traders to follow headlines without researching individual names, but you do give up a certain degree of control in exchange for convenience when you allow someone else to do the selections for you.

Commodity CFDs

Commodities have become a major focus area for CFD brokers looking to keep retail clients engaged. Gold remains the most traded non-forex asset on many platforms, especially during macroeconomic uncertainty. Its appeal to traders is easy to understand, as the gold price typically offers clean technical levels and a strong response to inflation data.

Crude Oil, particularly WTI and Brent, has returned as a high-volatility instrument after several years of relatively stable pricing. Geopolitical instability, supply shocks, and OPEC policy shifts have worked together to reintroduce a type of volatility that aligns with many retail CFD traders' preferred timeframes, and CFD brokers have not been slow on the uptake.

In addition to the hard commodities, some CFD brokers have also begun to add more agricultural commodities to their offering. Agricultural commodities and their world market prices impact our daily life, and you might for instance have noticed how the store prices of cocoa powder and chocolate have moved recently. CFDs based on so called soft commodities like cocoa, wheat, corn, and coffee are now fairly easy to find online, but they still remain niche due to pricing complexity and limited understanding among retail users. Still, the diversification of offerings reflects the broader goal: give retail CFD traders more reasons to stay active.

For retail traders who are used to to the dynamics of one or a few major currency pairs, moving into soft commodities can come with a sharp learning curve, as each agricultural product has its own set of parameters that must be taken into account, and a drought in Brazil that causes serious turbulence on the green coffee market may have zero impact on the price movements of lean hog. For agricultural commodities, weather and climate conditions are key drivers of volatility, including everything from a sudden flood in an important growth region to the established patterns associated with El Niño and La Niña. Pest and disease outbreaks are other notable factors, and sometimes they work in conjunction with adverse weather. Of course, Mother Nature is on the only player here. A soft commodity trader must be ready to handle factors such as sociopolitical instability, government policy changes regarding subsidies and tariffs, and supply change issues linked to anything from port congestion to labor strikes.Throw the speculative actions of huge institutional commodity investors into the mix, and you have your work cut out for you. Certain other financial market movements can also impact agricultural commodities, and increased or unstable fuel prices is a known issue, especially for a commodity like cocoa where a vast majority of the consumption takes place very far away from the major production regions. Most agricultural commodities are priced in USD, and a weaker USD can increase demand from buyers holding other currencies and vice versa.

While all this can seem daunting, it is also what keeps the commodity market interesting and worthy of speculation. Changes in commodity prices and trends also have a tendency to reach the headlines of mainstream media, which boosts retail trader interest. When poor cocoa harvests in West Africa caused a surge in chocolate prices in 2024, it hit the news hard, as consumers began asking questions about rising chocolate prices and decreased chocolate bar sizes.

Another notable example is orange juice, where NY ICE (New York Intercontinental Exchange ) futures climbed to an astonishing ~$4.92/lb in June 2024. In 2025, NY ICE responded to volatility by expanding daily price limits, hoping it would help manage the sharp swings. The background can largely be found in Brazil, where citrus farms were struggling with droughts and heat waves on top of citrus greening disease (HLB) in 2023-2024. Back in 2022, Brazil produced roughly 70% of global orange juice exports, so it is not difficult to see why problems in Brazil would have a huge impact on the world market price for orange juice. Notably, citrus groves in Florida were also hit hard in 2023 and 2024, when destructive hurricanes ravaged the state.

Platform Upgrades and Interface Adjustments

To support expanded product offerings, some CFD brokers have adjusted their platforms. Asset filters, watchlists, and price alerts now default to stock and commodity instruments more frequently. Many platforms display real-time earnings calendars, sector performance summaries, and news feeds focused on equities rather than currencies.

Mobile apps have been redesigned to include swipe-based access to hot stocks or trending assets, with engagement metrics suggesting that traders respond better to visual heat maps and breakout alerts than traditional price ladders. The shift is as much about interface psychology as it is about market exposure. Retail CFD brokers want users to view stocks and commodities as accessible instruments suitable for short-term speculation, not long-term investments reserved for fund managers.

Risk, Leverage, and Compliance Adjustments

As brokers push more retail traders into equities and commodities, regulators are watching. Leverage restrictions for CFDs remain in place in both the UK and EU, and brokers must continue to display risk warnings and publish loss ratios under FCA and ESMA rules. Most equity CFDs are now capped at 1:5 leverage for retail traders, while commodities may go as high as 1:10 depending on the asset.

There is also increased scrutiny on how brokers present performance data, margin requirements, and stop-out policies. Misleading advertising around “free stock trading” or guaranteed profits is being targeted by enforcement actions, particularly where brokers are onboarding inexperienced tradersthrough social media channels or affiliate funnels.

Retail CFD brokers dedicated to staying within the regulatory parameters while still generating activity have found it beneficial to expand their stock and commodity offerings, as these underlying categories now display strong engagement metrics, and retail traders tend to place multiple trades per week when volatility aligns with major news events. From a business perspective, this keeps spreads flowing and platforms sticky.

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