Bulgaria

Bulgaria supervises investment firms through the Financial Supervision Commission, which licenses a domestic brokerage sector and oversees EEA firms operating in the country. Several brokers hold Bulgarian licences and passport outward across the EEA.

Trading conditions

The ESMA product intervention applies without modification: 30:1 on major currency pairs, 20:1 on minors, gold and major indices, 10:1 on other commodities, 5:1 on individual shares, 2:1 on cryptocurrencies, with mandatory negative balance protection, margin close-out at 50% of required margin, a prohibition on bonuses, and the standardised risk warning stating each broker's retail loss rate. Binary options cannot be sold to retail clients.

Tax

Bulgaria levies a flat 10% rate on personal income, among the lowest in the European Union, and gains from trading fall within it. Gains from certain instruments traded on regulated EU markets have historically enjoyed relief that does not extend to over-the-counter leveraged contracts, so the treatment of CFD trading is not the same as the treatment of shares. The annual declaration is the resident's responsibility, and a foreign broker provides no reporting to the Bulgarian authorities.

The currency board

Bulgaria has operated a currency board since 1997, fixing the lev against the euro at an unchanging rate after a banking crisis and hyperinflation. This has direct consequences for traders: the country's monetary policy is imported from Frankfurt, BGN pairs do not move against the euro, and the country's path toward euro adoption is a political and fiscal question rather than a market one. It is also a working example of the point that matters for anyone trading pegged currencies — a fixed rate holds until the arrangement behind it changes, and the arrangement is a policy, not a law of nature.

Compensation

Clients of Bulgarian-licensed investment firms are covered by the domestic investor compensation fund up to a statutory limit. A broker passporting in from another member state brings its own home scheme instead. As everywhere in the EEA, the entity on your client agreement determines this, not the country you live in.

Checks

The FSC maintains public registers of licensed investment firms and of EEA firms operating in Bulgaria, along with warnings about unauthorised providers.