CMC Markets Review

For this CMC Markets review, we have opened a CFD account with the broker and deposited over €5,000.

We traded the popular instrument in each market to get the real spreads and placed a total of 12 trades.

We also reached out to customer support to solve the issues we faced.

Finally, we withdrew our funds to see if there are any issues with the withdrawal process.

What is CMC Markets?

CMC Markets is an UK forex broker, offering financial trading services with contracts for differences (CFDs) and spread betting.

The brokerage was founded in 1989 and is publicly listed on the London Stock Exchange (LSE) under the ticker CMCX.

CMC Markets operates globally (except some restrictive countries) and is regulated in the United Kingdom, Germany, Australia, Singapore, New Zealand, Canada, and the United Arab Emirates.

It offers trading with a number of popular asset classes, including forex, indices, stocks, commodities, and cryptocurrencies.

Some of the highlights of CMC Markets are:

Licenses and Regulations

CMC Markets holds 8 regulatory licenses from mostly the top financial market regulators. The broker is regulated in the United Kingdom, Germany, Australia, Singapore, New Zealand, Canada, and the United Arab Emirates.

CMC Markets holds two licenses from the UK’s Financial Conduct Authority (FCA), one as a top CFD broker and the other for spread bets.

The full list of CMC Markets licenses is below:

Is CMC Markets Safe?

Yes, CMC Markets is a safe broker.

CMC Markets is a publicly-traded company on the London Stock Exchange. It has to report its complete financials every quarter, making its operations very transparent.

The broker is regulated by most of the reputed regulators for its global operations. Many regulators like the FCA, BaFin, MAS, FMA, and IIROC also offer compensation schemes, which protect the client funds in any unforeseen circumstances.

For our tests, we opened a CFD account with CMC Markets UK Plc, which is regulated by FCA in the UK.

You can register with any of the CMC Markets entities, whichever is available in your jurisdiction, as all of them are overseen by reputed regulators.

CMC Markets Fees and Commissions

CMC Markets trading fees forex, indices, cryptocurrencies, and commodities are built into spreads. It charges fixed commissions on share CFDs.

Spreads for our trades were much below the average industry benchmark for forex and commodities.

Share CFDs commissions table:

Spread Charged in Our Trades

For our tests, we have chosen popular instruments in each market. We placed 3 trades for each instrument to get a picture of the average spread.

Our test is based on CMC Markets’ CFD account, and all spreads are too consistent for our trades. Spreads on forex and indices were constantly minimum charged by the broker.

Details of our trades are shown below the table.

Our testing finds that forex spreads much lower than the industry average. Spreads on commodities are also lower than the average benchmark, while for indices, it was higher.

Other Fees

CMC Markets has bare minimum non-trading fees. The broker offers free deposits and withdrawals (with some exceptions), and there are no account maintenance fees.

However, CMC Markets charges £10 (amount depends on your account currency) for dormant accounts after 12 months of inactivity.

CMC Markets Australia

Additionally, there are certain costs to access market data in Australia and Hong Kong. Monthly subscription fees to view the prices for Australian and Hong Kong share CFDs are AU$20 and HK$120, respectively. However, these fees can be waived by executing two or more trades in the relevant markets.

The broker also charges fees for Guaranteed stop losses (GSLO), which gets refunded if GSLO is not triggered.

Account Types

CMC Markets three straightforward accounts: Spread betting account, CFD account, and Professional account.

Details of all CMC Markets accounts are:

Account Opening

Our overall experience of opening a new account with CMC Markets was quick and simple.

We opened a CFD account for our tests under the FCA-regulated entity.

The process of registration of a new CMC Markets account:

1. Select your country (CMC Markets will open the account under its relevant entity in the jurisdiction).
2. Enter email and password (UK-based clients have to choose if they want to open Spread betting account or CFD trading account).
3. Enter the verification code sent to the email.
4. Provide personal details like first name, last name, country of residence, account type (individual or corporate), and account currency.
5. Provide additional personal details like date of birth, mobile number, nationality, passport details, and tax identification number. Declare non-US citizenship.
6. Enter the full residential address.
7. Provide employment status and industry.
8. Provide annual income and value of savings and investments. Also, state the reason for opening a CMC Markets account and give details of other investments.
9. Customize your trading platform layout.

We submitted the following documents to verify our CMC Markets account:

1. Copy of national identification (both front and back)
2. Copy of our bank statement

We also had to confirm if we are a private or non-private investor.

The registration process took around 10 minutes. Our account was verified on the same working day.

Our account was registered on October 18, 2020, and approved on the same day.

Our overall account opening experience was smooth and without any issues from registration to verification.

Deposit and Withdrawal

Both deposits and withdrawals on CMC Markets are easy and fast. All our funding and withdrawal requests were completed without any issues.

CMC Markets Minimum Deposit

CMC Markets does not have minimum deposit requirement.

Deposit

CMC Markets supports deposits with bank transfers, credit and debit cards, and PayPal.

CMC Markets does not allow transactions with AMEX or Diners cards. The broker does not charge anything for deposits.

We tested the deposit process on CMC Markets using card payment and PayPal.

Details of our fund deposits are shown in the below table.

We had to provide a photo of our credit card to process the funding transaction with the card.

Withdrawal

CMC Markets allows withdrawals via credit/debit cards, bank transfers, and PayPal. Withdrawals are usually free with this broker. 

However, CMC Markets charges a £15 fee for instant withdrawal with bank transfer or transfer to an international bank account.

Overall, our experience with CMC Markets’ withdrawal process was positive. The requests were smooth but took 2 working days.

Details of our withdrawal requests are in the table below.

We had to provide the statement of the bank account connected to put PayPal account to process the withdrawal request.

Markets and Products

CMC Markets offers CFD trading services with forex, indices, stocks, commodities, treasuries, and cryptocurrencies instruments.

CMC Markets CFD

The broker is known for its forex and share CFDs offering and has a vast offering in both markets. It offers trading with company stocks in various global markets. Indices, commodities, and cryptocurrency offerings of CMC Trading are also impressive.

The complete list of CMC Markets offerings are:

Cryptocurrency trading is only available from 11 pm (GMT) Sunday – 9 pm (GMT) Friday.

The number of instruments offered and the markets might differ depending on your jurisdiction.

Trading Conditions

CMC Markets offers good trading conditions. It allows both hedging and scalping strategies. But only professional clients can change leverage levels.

Leverage

Leverages offered by CMC Markets on various asset classes are standard, as per the regulatory requirements, and are detailed below:

CMC Markets Bonus

Only the Australia-registered entity of CMC Markets offers a bonus scheme to traders.

Traders can receive AU$250 as a bonus if the following conditions are satisfied :

• Fund the account with a minimum initial amount of AU$1,000
• Place trades on the account with a minimum aggregate turnover of US$500,000 in share CFDs (excluding US Shares) or US$2,000,000 across all CFD classes

CMC Markets Trading Platform

CMC Markets offers two trading platforms to the traders:

• MetaTrader4 (Third-party platform developed by MetaQuotes Software)
• Next Generation platform (Proprietary platform)

The Next Generation platform does not have backtesting capabilities.

Shares CFDs trading is only available on the Next Generation platform.

Our account was based on CMC Markets’ Next Generation trading platform.

We downloaded the mobile version of the trading platform and tried to place an order of EUR/USD. But the “Confirm” button did not work.

We provided a screenshot to the CMC Markets support team to investigate but did not receive any response. We finally operated our trades on the desktop client.

Research and Tools

CMC Markets offers excellent market research and analysis tools. The broker’s tools are useful to both beginner and advanced traders.

Some of the tools offered by CMC Markets are:

• Excellent charting tools
• Fundamental market data (through Morningstar reports)
• Economic calendar (powered by Thomson Reuters)
• Market analysis (in multiple languages)
• Newsfeed
• Trading ideas

Education

CMC Markets offers easy-to-understand and good quality educational resources. Its tutorials are categorized into several sections for ease of learning.

Some of the educational materials offered by the brokers are:

• Text-based tutorials
• Video tutorials on trading
• Explainaire videos for tools
• Webinars
• Demo account

CMC Markets Demo Account

Customer Service

CMC Markets has good customer support.

Traders can contact the broker via:

• Live chat
• email
• Phone

The support staff is available only on weekdays.

Our experience with CMC Markets’ customer support was mixed. Most of the time, the support team was very quick in response, and answers were also direct and accurate.

However, we did not receive any response to one of our queries.

CMC Markets provides customer support in multiple languages.

The broker also has a detailed FAQ section for frequently faced issues.

Conclusion

Our overall experience with CMC Markets was smooth.

The broker offered excellent forex spreads, which were low and stable. The expectation speed was also fast.

However, deposit and withdrawal methods were limited. We also faced issues with trading on the mobile client of the broker’s own platform.

Our experience with customer support remained mixed as we did not receive any answer to one query. But the remaining replies were fast and accurate.

We recommend traders to run EA, scalping, hedging, and other trading strategies with CMC Markets

We recommend CMC Markets for traders who are

• Beginners in trading
• Trading Stocks
• Trading currency pairs
• Use Automated trading
• EA trader
• Scalping
• Hedging
• Spread Betting
• Social Trading

CMC Markets might not be a fit if you are

• Day trader
• Trading of Real Stocks