General Information & Regulation
CMC Markets was founded in London, UK, in 1989 and started to operate then. In 1996, it launched the world's first online retail FX trading platform, allowing its clients to take advantage of markets previously only accessible to institutional traders. In 2000, CMC Markets expanded its business to become a CFD broker and in 2001 launched an online financial spread betting service, becoming the first spread betting company to launch the daily rolling cash®Bet. In 2002, CMC Markets opened its first overseas office in Sydney, then more offices were opened in Beijing, Canada, and Germany. In 2007, the company had expanded, with additional offices in New Zealand, Germany, Canada, Singapore, and Sweden, and had sold a 10% equity stake to Goldman Sachs. In 2015, offices in Poland and Austria were opened; MetaTrader 4 trading platform has introduced functions such as guaranteed stop-loss, simultaneous long and short, and module links. CMC Markets was listed on the London Stock Exchange in 2016. After 30 years of development, today's CMC Markets has entered the markets of 15 countries, providing nearly 10,000 global financial products, including stocks, indices, forex, bonds, cryptocurrencies, and other major asset classes, becoming the first choice of active traders platform. CMC Markets' branches in different countries are regulated by local financial regulators, including the FCA in the UK (regulatory license number 173730 ), FMA in New Zealand (regulatory license number 41187), IIROC in Canada, and MSA in Singapore.
Market Instruments
CMC Markets offers a wide selection of trading products, nearly 10,000 tradable instruments. There are 348 forex products (more than 330 spot and forward currency pairs CFDs, including major, minor, and emerging currency pairs), 116 indices (100 spot and futures stock indices CFDs worldwide), 9441 types of Stocks (can open positions on more than 9,000 global stocks, including 1,000 ETF funds, providing CFD trading on many popular stocks, including Apple, BP, Lloyds Banking Group, Tesco, Rio Tinto, etc.), 110 commodities ( Open positions for CFDs on spot and futures commodities, including Brent crude oil and West Texas light crude oil, gold and silver), 51 types of bonds (the bond market includes government debt instruments, such as British Treasury bonds, German long-term and short-term Treasury bonds and U.S. Treasury bills, more than 55 kinds of global bond CFD quotes, including spot and futures products, 12 cryptocurrencies (more than ten popular cryptocurrency CFD products, including Bitcoin and Ethereum, and a series of unique Cryptocurrency index products).
CMC Markets Minimum Deposit
CMC Markets offers two CFD accounts in total, the CFD account and the Corporate account. Both accounts require no minimum deposit, free for new traders to get started.
Account Opening
As CMC Markets is regulated by Financial Conduct Authority , every new client must pass a few basic compliance checks to ensure that you understand the risks of trading and are allowed to trade. When you open an account, youll likely be asked for the following, so it is good to have these handy:
A scanned colour copy of your passport, driving license or national ID;
A utility bill or bank statement from the past three months showing your address;
CMC Markets Leverage
The maximum leverage of major currencies for forex products is up to 1:500, and the maximum leverage of stock index products is also up to 1:500. The leverage of bond products varies from 1:200 to 1:400, and the leverage of commodities varies from 1:100 to 1:200. The company has set up a real account and a demo account. Each investor can hold a CFD account, and the company will decide whether to provide multiple CFD accounts according to the situation.
Spreads & Commissions
The minimum spreads for forex products are as low as 0.7, for the UK 100 and 30 stock indices in Germany as low as 1, for the 30 stock indices in the United States as low as 1.4. The spreads of Gold are as low as 0.4, crude oil as low as 3.5, and natural gas as low as 0.3. The minimum spread for bonds is 1.0, for Bitcoin Cash in USD 1.9. The minimum spread for Ether in USD is 1.9, and the minimum spread for Bitcoin in USD is 40. There are two commission charges for stock CFDs when opening and closing positions. The commission fee depends on which country the stock products are from. For Non-US stocks, the commission standard is calculated as a percentage of the order amount. For US stocks, the commission standard is 2 cents per share. 5:00 pm (New York time) at the end of each trading day, any cash position held in the user's account may be charged a fee called “position cost”.
Trading Platforms
CMC Markets employs the MT4 trading platform, which is a powerful online trading platform and mobile phone application. Apart from previous advantages of technical indicators & drawing tools, price estimation tools, module associations, mobile phone trading charts, and direct trading from the charts, it also has a series of innovative tools, including customer sentiment indicators, multiple chart layouts, and patterns identification scan. Customer sentiment indicators allow traders to view the number of customers and the value of their positions in almost real-time. Customer sentiment is automatically updated with events and price changes of the day-this is especially useful when market conditions are highly volatile. Multiple chart layouts allow users to set the platform desktop according to their preferences, enables users to fully customize their own modules, and freely save or switch up to 5 trading desktops. Pattern recognition scans the data of more than 120 most popular products, automatically reminds users of the formation and breakthrough of popular chart patterns such as triangles, wedge shapes, and channels, and updates every 15 minutes to ensure that investors are informed of potential trading opportunities.
Deposit & Withdrawal
The deposit and withdrawal methods are bank transfer, Paypal, BPAY (BPAY is a unique bill payment system in Australia, which allows traders to pay bills through banks or other financial institutions, using telephone or online systems), and POLi (POLi is an online payment service, allowing investors to transfer money to CMC Markets safely and in real-time directly through their online bank account, no fees charged by CMC Markets ). Investors can use a credit or debit card or transfer money from a bank account to deposit funds into the account. Using a credit card to transfer money will charge a 1% fee, and a debit card will charge a 0.5% handling fee. The company does not accept checks or cash deposits. Regarding withdrawals, users can click on the “Transfer” icon and then select the “Transfer Funds” tab to transfer funds online from their accounts. If the client's bank information has been saved, as long as the application is made before 2:00 pm Sydney time, the user's application will be processed on the same day.
Accepted Regions
When it comes to its services covered countries, CMC Markets only accepts traders from United Kingdom, Poland, Norway, Sweden, Denmark, Germany, Spain, Italy, France, Canada.
Customer Support
Traders can contact CMC via phone. Their website claims 98% of calls will be answered in under 20 seconds. User reviews show staff are both courteous and helpful. There is also an option to email customer support. On top of that, help can be found in the form of quick start guides, platform tours, and even live trader events. Its international trading services available in multiple languages, including English, German, French, Spanish, etc.
