CMC Markets Review

Review

CMC Markets, launched in 1989 in the United Kingdom, has become one of the world’s leading CFD and spread betting providers. It is regulated by the FCA in the UK.

CMC Markets has been recognized as the ‘UK Financial Services Provider of the Year’ by Shares magazine in 2011, 2013 and 2014, and is the recipient of almost 60 awards globally in the last two years, including ‘Best Online Trading Platform’, ‘Best Mobile Trading Platform’ and ‘Best Investor Education’. These awards reflect the broker’s focus on providing clients with the best possible trading experience.

Since launching in the United Kingdom in 1989, CMC Markets has broadened its presence to cover Asia, Australia, New Zealand, Europe and Canada, making them a world leading online CFD provider.

Accounts

There are two types of accounts at CMC Markets. They offer dedicated CFD trading and corporate accounts. According to the comparison charts on their website, the accounts are very similar.  Traders can choose from over 5,700 products across 5,000 shares, 79 global indices, 320 different currency pairs, commodities, and treasuries, and benefit from competitive pricing, such as tight spreads, low margins and commissions.

Spreads differ depending on the asset chosen. Charts listing both the minimum and typical spreads and the trading times for each market are conveniently posted on the website.

There is no minimum deposit required to open an account. Some of the key features of either type of account are that they accept 10 different forms of currency for deposit, order boundaries, account netting, telephone trading, a price depth ladder, and position hedging.

I was pleased to find when doing this CMC Markets review that a demo account is offered on the CFD trading accounts and can be used on mobile devices as well.  

CMC Markets 

Features

CMC Markets is big on spread betting which is a tax-efficient way of trading on the price movements of almost all financial products.  With spread betting, traders don’t buy or sell the underlying asset but rather place a bet on whether the price of a product will go up or down in value.

Spread betting uses margin which allows traders you to do more with their capital such as open more or bigger positions than they would be able to if they had to fund the full value of the position on their own.  

CFD trading is another area of trading at CMC Markets. With CFDs, traders don’t buy or sell the underlying asset; they buy or sell a number of units, depending on whether they think a product’s price will go up or down. For every point the price moves in their favor, they gain multiples of the number of units they have bought or sold. CFDs provide a flexible way to trade on the price movements of thousands of global financial products.

Since CFDs are leveraged products, traders only need to deposit a small percentage of the full value of the trade in order to open a position. Besides the spread, traders pay a holding cost at the end of each trading day, a fee for market data and a commission on UK-based shares starting from 0.10% of the full exposure of the position with a minimum commission charge of £9.

Spread betting and CFD trading both provide similar economic benefits for investments in shares, indices, commodities and currencies using margin. However, spread betting is usually more popular with UK residents because profits are exempt from both capital gains tax and stamp duty.

CMC Markets Spread Betting

 

Additional features offered to traders include hedging and the ability to sell short in a falling market.

CMC Markets was one of the first companies to provide online Forex trading. There are over 340 currency pairs available to trade as Spread bets and CFDs, including all of the major crosses as well as a selection of emerging market currencies.

Forex traders benefit from 100% automated execution, optional 1-Click trading, fully-customizable trading tools and layouts, trading from award winning charts, spreads as low as 0.7pts and margins starting from 0.20%.

High volume traders receive a cash rebate.

Education

CMC Markets offers a range of educational features that are geared towards both new and experienced traders. There are extensive choices of topics and educational resources ranging from platform guides to explanations of technical indicators.  They offer webinars, videos, trading and platform guides, a glossary of terms and more.

Anyone interested in social trading can link onto the London Trader Network where traders from all over the globe can experience live trading with similarly matched people in the CMC Markets London office.

A live webinar is offered which provides a running commentary on the monthly non-farm payroll report. In addition, instructional webinars are provided for training traders on the most successful way to use CMC Markets’ Next Generation platform. The session is held in the London office and is hosted by one of their platform specialists.

In addition, their trading strategy videos cover a wide range of topics and provide an introduction to trading and the various strategies beneficial for traders.

I found the Trading Smart series very informative. This free series of articles is made up of concise guides on some of the key trading concepts and analysis techniques and can be accessed by clients via 

CMC Markets Webinars

 

Via technical and fundamental analysis, the CMC Markets team provides valuable, regular updates on market conditions to CMC Markets clients through their trading platforms and to the public through major media outlets, their website and twitter. A listing of the analysts and their locations can be viewed on the site.

Market reports provided by Reuters are added daily to the news analysis page and an economic calendar lists online and offline events.

Customer Support

Traders can contact CMC Markets by email and phone to their London office. An online email form is provided. CMC Markets has headquarters in several locations and customers can speak to representatives in Chinese, English, French, German, Italian, Spanish and Swedish. There is also an email address given for each of their offices.  Given the amount of resources the website contains, it is surprising that they do not seem to offer other methods of customer service such as chat or sms

Conclusion

Spread betting and CFD trading is the focus at CMC Markets and they go out of their way to educate traders so they can come out profitable. On the whole, CMC Markets uses a fantastic spread betting platform and the selection of training materials at is second to none.  They have protection for their customers up to 50,000 GBP through the Financial Services Compensation Scheme which can be a huge advantage over other firms based in areas with much less regulation. 

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CMC Markets AU Review

The main difference between the next Generation platform for CMC Markets in the UK and CMC Markets in Australia is that spread betting is not allowed down under. Instead, the platform allows stockbroking, a form of share trading that offers superior research and charting through a suite of tools designed to keep traders up to date and help them make more informed trading decisions.

The platform offers a choice of market data packages, unlimited free conditional orders and free news reports with Dow Jones newswires.

CMC Markets AU - Stockbrokering portfolio reporting

In addition, traders are entitled to use the Screener, a leader in independent equity analysis that uses complex calculations to provide star-rated reports, inclusive of risk profiles for over 5,000 stocks. This simple-to-use software is integrated to the platform giving traders the information to make better informed investment decisions.

CMC Markets AU - theScreener Service

All CMC Markets Stockbroking traders benefit from the Screener's investment insights of ASX-listed stocks, while advanced reporting features are available only to Active and Premium trader tiers.

There is currently a Refer-a-Friend promotion at cmcmarkets.com.au whereby any account holder bringing in a new client that yields a $250 credit for both the referrer and the referee.

CMC Markets AU is regulated by ASIC. It’s website can be viewed in Chinese.

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Features

The main focus at CMC Markets is their CFD and spread betting capabilities. Their unique Next Generation platform is user-friendly and the accompanying explanations and support are extremely beneficial for both new and experienced traders.  The host of education tools provides traders with additional support in improving their trading abilities and learning how to manage risk.

This brokerage operates in the UK and they do not allow US clients.  The types of accounts offered are demo accounts and segregated accounts.  The maximum leverage allowed on these accounts is 1:500.  The commissions and spreads vary by region.  They do not offer Islamic accounts or managed accounts.

The website for this brokerage is available in English and Chinese.  Customer support is available 24 hours a day, 5 days a week via email or chat but not SMS.

The proprietary platform offered by CMC Markets offers many of the same features as traditional platforms such as trading signals, a charting package, mobile alerts, email alerts, guaranteed stop losses, scalping and one click execution.  Their platform is available in 7 different languages as well. This platform is compatible with web, mobile, IPhone and IPad.

 

Some differences exist in the platform features offered in the various CMC Markets locations and it is worthwhile checking each website for these variations. 

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Platforms

CMC Markets uses its own proprietary platform which offers a host of different and useful features.

The award winning trading platform, Next Generation, is the culmination of over two decades worth of industry experience, innovation and technological investment and is their most advanced platform yet, with fast execution and expert features and charts.  This platform won several awards in 2016 for its charting and its features in addition to overall user satisfaction.

Next Generation has a charting package with over 80 technical indicators, chart types and drawing tools for the user’s benefit allowing for a very detailed technical analysis.

Another interesting feature which this platform provides is a client sentiment tool.  With this tool you can gauge the climate and feelings of other traders to help predict which direction the market will turn.  The tool allows for checking the sentiment of all traders or of the top traders.  The more volatile the market the more useful this tool can be.

The Next Generation platform also gives users access to multiple news sources and analysis.  They have an active twitter account and YouTube channel giving users a very wide picture of the markets at any given moment.

There is an extensive Users Guide available for download so that users can understand the platform and all that it offers.   Mobile trading apps are also available for download from the brokerage’s website for IPhone, IPad and Android. 

CMC Markets Platform Charts

 

 

The team at CMC Markets is constantly updating their platform to meet the ongoing needs of its clients.

Their latest update was completed in March 2015 and offers several additions and improvements to their already existing features.

They’ve enhanced their risk management offering by adding a new type of stop loss to the platform-- Guaranteed Stop Loss Orders (GSLOs). GSLOs work exactly the same as regular Stop Loss Orders except that for a premium they guarantee to close you out of a trade at the price specified, regardless of market volatility or gapping.

GSLOs can be placed during regular trading hours but are only available on the latest version of their mobile trading app.

Another new feature offers quicker platform navigation with Module Linking. This allows traders to group different modules together so that if a change to the product is shown in one module, all of the other modules in that group will automatically update to show the new product.

 

CMC Markets Chart Forum

 

An additional built-in search function to the headers of most modules, as well as to the main navigation toolbar helps traders find and view products more easily straight from a module’s header. 

 

Mobile Apps

The CMC Markets platform can be used on most mobile devices which traders can use to modify live trades and open and close positions using the same order ticket and functionality as our online web platform.

With the iPhone and Android apps, traders can view the last 500 historical transactions on their phone and have easy access to product information including commission costs, headline spreads, holding rates, margin rates and trading hours. 

CMC Markets Mobile Apps

In addition, the iPhone app allows live streaming prices calculating real-time account information and live Reuter’s news and CMC Markets analysts’ insights.

The IPad app provides the same features as the IPhone app but adds on access to mobile charting, including line, candlestick, bar, heikin-ashi and spread charts, the ability to add over 20 of the most popular technical indicators and 10 drawing tools and additional support tools. 

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User Reviews

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