The short version
- UK100 is the contract-for-difference symbol that tracks the FTSE 100 index level on MetaTrader 5 at LHFX.
- The index is a basket of the 100 largest companies listed in London by free-float market cap, rebalanced four times a year by FTSE Russell.
- Despite the London listing, around three quarters of constituent revenue lands in non-sterling currencies, which inverts the usual 'weak currency hurts the index' assumption.
- Leverage at LHFX runs up to 1:200, commission is a flat $3 per side, settlement is in USD, execution is STP/ECN on MT5.
- The same five sectors (oil majors, miners, big pharma, global banks, consumer staples) carry roughly two thirds of the weight, so commodity prints and FX often move it more than any UK-only headline.
What UK100 actually tracks
Strip away the marketing and UK100 is a calculation, not a basket of shares you can hold. Every 15 seconds during London cash hours, FTSE Russell publishes a number that represents the combined free-float market capitalisation of 100 companies, rebased to a starting value of 1,000 set in January 1984.
The word 'free-float' matters more than most retail traders realise. If a company has 2 billion shares outstanding but a sovereign wealth fund or founding family holds 40% of them in a way that does not trade publicly, only the 1.2 billion floated shares count toward index weight. This treatment penalises tightly-held names and rewards companies with broad public ownership.
The index covers the Main Market of the London Stock Exchange, not the Alternative Investment Market (AIM). A company joins by passing market-cap thresholds at the quarterly review and exits when it falls beneath the cut. Promotions and relegations happen on the third Friday after the review meeting, with the changes taking effect the following Monday morning.
What you trade on the UK100 symbol is the price of that calculation, not the underlying shares. When you click buy on MT5, no AstraZeneca shares change hands in your name. You hold a contract whose profit and loss tracks the index level move, settled in USD, with daily financing applied to overnight positions.
Who is actually inside
Index weights drift every minute as share prices move, but the broad shape has held steady for several years. The ten largest names typically account for around 45 to 50% of the entire index, which is a heavier concentration than SPX500 or GER30. If you trade UK100 you are mostly trading a handful of mega-cap stories.
Approximate weights at the most recent quarterly review
| AstraZeneca | Pharmaceuticals | 8 to 9% |
| Shell | Integrated oil and gas | 7 to 8% |
| HSBC Holdings | Global banking | 6 to 7% |
| Unilever | Consumer staples | 4 to 5% |
| BP | Integrated oil and gas | 3 to 4% |
| GSK | Pharmaceuticals | 3 to 4% |
| Diageo | Beverages | 2 to 3% |
| Rio Tinto | Diversified mining | 2 to 3% |
| Glencore | Mining and commodity trading | 2 to 3% |
| BHP Group | Diversified mining | 2 to 3% |
Notice what is missing. There is no Apple, Microsoft, Nvidia, or Amazon equivalent on the list. The largest non-financial tech weight inside the FTSE 100 rarely climbs above 3 to 4% in aggregate, which is why UK100 lags during global software rallies and holds up better during tech selloffs. A trader rotating into UK100 is implicitly selling growth and buying dividends, energy, and global cyclicals.
How the number is built
FTSE Russell uses a free-float market-capitalisation methodology with quarterly reviews in March, June, September, and December. The calculation rule itself is straightforward: sum the free-float-adjusted market values of the 100 constituents, divide by an index divisor that is adjusted whenever a company issues new shares, conducts a buyback, or is replaced during a review.
A capping rule applies to the related FTSE 100 ESG and Equal Weight variants but not to the headline index, so a single very large company can creep above 9% weight if its share price rallies between reviews. This is one mechanic behind the 'AstraZeneca days', when a positive trial result for a major drug shifts the entire UK100 level by 0.4 to 0.6% before any other stock has moved.
Reconstitution is the most under-discussed source of mechanical flow in UK100. Index-tracking funds rebalance toward the new weights on the effective Monday morning of each quarterly review, which produces visible buy and sell pressure on promoted and relegated names. The index level itself absorbs the flow, but the underlying shares can move 2 to 4% on review-effective days against a quiet macro backdrop.
Dividends are handled outside the price index. FTSE 100 is a price return index by default, so the headline number does not include reinvested dividends. The FTSE 100 Total Return version exists for benchmark purposes but is not what UK100 CFDs track. Because the FTSE 100 has historically yielded around 3.5 to 4% per year, there is a structural drag against simple long-and-hold price comparisons against SPX500.
What moves the price
Five drivers dominate the daily session. Knowing which one is loudest on a given morning is the difference between sizing a position into a catalyst and being run over by one.
Sterling FX direction
Around three quarters of constituent revenue is earned in dollars, euros, yen, or other non-sterling currencies. A weaker pound mechanically inflates reported earnings in pounds, which supports share prices. A 1% drop in GBP/USD has historically lifted UK100 by 0.5 to 0.8% on the day, before any change in real underlying business. Watching Cable on a second monitor is more useful than watching the FTSE All-Share.
Bank of England policy moments
The Monetary Policy Committee meets eight times a year. The Bank Rate decision, the accompanying Monetary Policy Report, and the Governor's press conference all hit the same morning. The cleanest channel is GBP, but the banking weight inside UK100 (HSBC, Lloyds, Barclays, NatWest, Standard Chartered, around 11 to 13% combined) reacts directly to the rate path.
Commodity prices
Brent crude, copper, iron ore, and gold all show up in UK100 through Shell, BP, Rio Tinto, BHP, Glencore, Anglo American, and Antofagasta. The energy and materials block alone runs 18 to 22% of the index. A 3% Brent move on an OPEC decision day, or a sharp iron-ore reaction to Chinese steel rebar prices, often shows up as a 0.4 to 0.7% UK100 reaction within minutes.
Chinese demand data
Even though the index is nominally British, China is the marginal buyer for iron ore and a key end market for Diageo, Unilever, Burberry, and the luxury and consumer-staples names. NBS PMI, industrial production, retail sales, and PBoC stimulus announcements move UK100 the same morning, sometimes before any UK trader has woken up.
Fiscal and political flashpoints
Budget Day, the Autumn Statement, snap election calls, gilt-market stress episodes such as the September 2022 mini-budget gilt blowout, and credit-rating reviews on UK sovereign debt produce session-defining gaps. These events route through GBP first and equities second.
When UK100 is worth trading
The London Stock Exchange cash session opens at 08:00 London time and closes at 16:30 London time, which is 03:00 to 11:30 New York time. That is the window when liquidity in the underlying shares is deepest, spreads are tightest at LHFX, and price discovery is real rather than synthetic.
UK100 pricing at LHFX runs nearly 24 hours from Sunday 17:00 ET through Friday 17:00 ET, with a short daily break around 16:15 to 16:30 ET for index resetting. The out-of-hours pricing is functional but thinner. Spreads widen, single trades move the screen more, and gap risk into the cash open is real.
There are three high-conviction windows worth circling. The first is the London open at 03:00 ET, which often produces a 30 to 60 minute drive in one direction as the cash market absorbs overnight news. The second is the 08:30 ET cluster, when US data releases (CPI, NFP, PCE, jobless claims) drag UK100 alongside SPX500 via global risk channels. The third is the Bank of England policy day window, typically 07:00 ET, when the rate decision, the report, and the press conference together can produce a 1 to 2% range in under an hour.
Low-conviction hours include the post-close Asian session between 12:30 and 19:00 ET, when there is little fresh information and pricing drifts on thin volume.
UK100 against the alternatives
There are four reasonable ways for a retail trader to take a position on the FTSE 100. Each carries different cost, structure, and risk:
| Structure | Ownership | Leverage | Dividends | Funding cost | Best fit |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| UK100 CFD at LHFX | Contract, no shares held | Up to 1:200 | Adjustment credited to longs, debited to shorts | Daily overnight financing on the notional | Active directional traders who want short-side access and intraday leverage |
| FTSE 100 futures (ICE FTSE) | Standardised exchange contract | Approximately 1:20 via initial margin | Embedded in the futures price via fair value | Cost of carry built into roll | Larger-account directional traders who want a central counterparty |
| FTSE 100 tracker ETF (for example iShares ISF or Vanguard VUKE) | Beneficial ownership of fund units | 1:1 with cash; broker margin available separately | Paid out as cash distributions | None on unleveraged holdings | Long-only buy and hold inside a tax-wrapped account |
| Spread bet on the FTSE 100 | Wager, no shares held | Up to 1:200 (regional limits vary) | Adjustment applied to the bet | Embedded in the wider quoted spread | UK-resident retail traders using a spread-bet wrapper for tax reasons |
A UK100 CFD is the most flexible of the four for short-horizon trading. You get the same directional exposure as a futures contract with smaller minimum size, you can short with no borrowing constraint, and you avoid the ETF tracking error and management fee. The trade-off is daily financing on overnight positions and a contract structure rather than ownership, so holding for years is not the use case.
Trading UK100 at LHFX
UK100 sits in the indices group on MT5 alongside GER30, FRA40, EUSTX50, SPX500, NAS100, US30, and JPN225. Execution is STP/ECN with prices passed through to the platform without a dealing desk intervening. Order types follow standard MT5 conventions: market, limit, stop, stop-limit, with attached stop loss and take profit.
UK100
MetaTrader 5
STP/ECN
Up to 1:200
$3 per side, per standard lot
USD
$10
Sunday 17:00 ET to Friday 17:00 ET
A position sizing walk-through
Picture an account funded with $5,000 and a setup that gets you long UK100 at an index level of 8,150 with a planned exit at 8,210 and a hard stop at 8,120. The structural plan: risk 1.5% of the account ($75) on a 30-point stop, with a target that delivers a roughly 2-to-1 reward.
A standard UK100 contract at LHFX is 1 unit per point of index move per 1.00 lot, denominated in GBP and converted to USD at the prevailing GBP/USD rate. With GBP/USD trading at 1.27, one full point is worth approximately $1.27 per 1.00 lot. A 30-point stop on 1.00 lot therefore puts about $38 at risk, leaving room to scale up to roughly 0.50 lots before exceeding the $75 risk budget. Round down to 0.40 lots for comfort.
Margin required at 1:200 on a 0.40 lot position with the index near 8,150 is roughly $20.70 (8,150 multiplied by 0.40 multiplied by 1.27, divided by 200). Commission is $3 per side, so $1.20 in and $1.20 out for a 0.40 lot fill, plus daily overnight financing if held past 17:00 ET.
If the index hits the stop at 8,120, the loss is roughly $60 plus commission and financing. If it reaches the target at 8,210, the gain is roughly $120 before costs. The point of running the math before clicking buy is not to predict the outcome, it is to make sure the worst-case outcome is one you can absorb without your account taking damage.
What can go wrong
Two failure modes are specific to UK100 rather than to indices in general.
The first is the sterling cross-current. You can be correctly positioned on global risk and still lose money on UK100 because a sterling rally is mechanically deflating the value of constituent foreign earnings. The cleanest version of this story plays out around US CPI prints: a softer print lifts SPX500 on the rate-cut hope, drags the dollar weaker, pushes GBP/USD up sharply, and pulls UK100 in the opposite direction to every other index on your screen. If your strategy assumes UK100 moves with SPX500 day in, day out, that day will surprise you.
The second is concentration risk. A single weak earnings update from AstraZeneca, Shell, or HSBC can take 0.4 to 0.7% off the index level on its own, even with the rest of the constituents flat or up. This is structurally different from SPX500, where no single stock outside the top three usually moves the headline number on its own. UK100 is a top-heavy index in a way that punishes traders who skip the earnings calendar.
Mitigations are straightforward. Cap effective leverage at 1:15 to 1:30 rather than the 1:200 headline limit. Use a stop on every position. Read the next-day UK earnings calendar before holding overnight. Watch GBP/USD as a leading input rather than a confirming one. Size down on Bank of England decision days, UK CPI release mornings, and major Chinese data drops.