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Rachael Micallef is a journalist with InvestorDaily, a Sterling publication.

Saxo Capital Markets has expanded its range of asset classes by providing retail investors with contracts for difference (CFDs) on government bonds.

The new offering enables retail clients to invest directly in European debt with more favourable terms compared to those offered on the futures markets.

"Bond CFDs provide a cost-efficient way for experienced investors to trade on the political risk and uncertainty in the eurozone that has overshadowed financial markets," Saxo Capital Markets Australia chief executive Anthony Griffin said.

"These products have previously only been available for institutions to trade. By adding this asset class to our platform, Australian retail investors can now access a desirable product that has until now been unavailable to them."

Benefits of the new bonds include much lower margin requirements, lower minimum trade sizes and tick values, no financing costs, exchange fees or minimum commissions and better control of exposure to risk margin.

The platform now has products such as French OAT, Italian BTP, German Bund, German Bobl and German Schatz available to retail investors.

To coincide with the release of the bond CFDs, Saxo also rolled out new charting tools for its SaxoTrader and SaxoWebTrader platforms.

The improvements were designed to give traders greater ease in identifying market trends, through improved data range selection and a faster update of current prices.

"The chart allows clients to easily work through all the steps involved in scanning and analysing the markets, before making the decisions and executing them on the platform," Griffin said.

"The chart we offer plays a crucial role in improving our client's trading activity."