Kevin Davis of the University of Melbourne (homepage here)  presented an innovative , interesting and informative seminar on a new type of financial derivative contract known as a CFD. There are no published academic arguments on CFDS so you (listeners/viewers) are first off the block! As Kevin explains, a CFD is a type of future's contract on the shares in a company that is a substitute for holding individual shares - and also individual shares futures contracts. It is dividend protected, but becasue it involves an implicit loan from seller to buyer of the CFD it also involves an interest payment. In theory (via an arbitrage argument) a CFD should trade at the same price as the underlying stock - but the theory turns out to be only an imperfect predictor of actual CFD prices, partly because there is no  expiry date on the contract . Kevin discusses a number of historical and institutional (regulatory) characteristics of CFDs in the Australian markets and tests several hypotheses about the equality between CFD prices and stock prices, as well as about the size of bid-ask sp[reads in the CFD market.