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Fatwa CenterBinary Options Are Forbidden
Question
I invest some capital in my account ... Question: amount is deducted /added to my account immediately in the case,. on a binary trading options website (a broker website), one make a deposit, select. an investment amount and predict where the price (for example, the US dollar exchange rate) will go in a few minutes or hours. Unlike gambling, where everything depends on chance, international cash flows are subject to the economy, in particular – to the law of supply and demand. An investor does not use a chance or intuition, but a trading strategy that helps him seize the moments of possible gain.this is halal /haram?
Answer
All perfect praise be to Allah, The Lord of the Worlds. I testify that there is none worthy of worship except Allah, and that Muhammad 
is His slave and Messenger.
The view that we adopt here in Islamweb is that binary options are forbidden because, in their current form, they does not fulfill what is Islamically required for a contract to be permissible when concluded. The investor, in predicting the future situation of the market, will either gain or lose.
The fact that the binary option is not based on intuition and that it is based on study and by looking at the laws of economy and the impact of supply and demand and so on; this does not affect the ruling, because the contract here does not fulfill the Islamic conditions in regard to what is permissible to buy or sell.
The mere wish and intent to conduct a contract do not make this a contract (i.e., no item to buy or sell yet), nor is there anything to get a recompense for.
The decision of the International Islamic Fiqh Academy No. 63, 1/7 reads: "Binary options contracts, as conducted today in the stock markets, are new contracts that do not fall under any mentioned Islamic contracts. Since the subject of the contract is neither money, a benefit, nor a financial right that is permissible to compensate for, then it is a contract that is not permissible in Islam." [End of quote]
There are many alternative lawful ways of earning but one has to look for them.
For more benefit, please refer to Fatwa 376456.
Allah knows best.
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