The terms share trading and share dealing are often used interchangeably, but they describe two different approaches to the stock markets. Share trading is short-term speculation using leveraged products, share dealing is longer-term investing.
When you trade shares, you typically use leveraged products such as CFDs to take a view on share prices without taking ownership of the underlying stocks themselves. So you don’t build a portfolio, but instead aim to profit from short-term price movements – which could be up or down.
Share dealing, on the other hand, is the traditional method of buying stocks outright and adding them to your portfolio. This gives you a much longer-term view, and is usually only used to take advantage of upward price movement.
Find out more about the difference between CFD trading and investing.