Cristiano Ronaldo and the 'Volatile' Investments

In August, Cristiano Ronaldo sent a message to his 59 million Twitter followers. Happy with his new partnership with @EXNESS, wrote the Real Madrid striker and world's most famous soccer star. He also retweeted a statement from a company called Exness Group, in which he praised how it fosters a "socially conscious culture. European regulators may disagree. Exness, an online brokerage based in Cyprus, deals in so-called contracts for difference (CFD), instruments that officials across the continent are seeking to curb because of the risks they pose to individual investors. It offers leverage, or borrowed funds, of as much as 500 times traders' deposits, a feature that rule makers say helps people lose money on market bets they don't understand. CFDs were called "a volatile form of gambling" by an Irish judge in 2014. The contracts allow investors to bet on the direction of stocks, bonds, currencies, and commodities without buying the underlying assets. They aren't traded on public exchanges and are largely prohibited for retail customers in the US.