CMC Markets

In the world of finance the most important word is trust. Traders need to make sure that their broker is well-regulated before transferring funds to them. 

CMC Markets consists of representative companies regulated by various brokers. Depending on where you are located, your broker might have a different regulator. For example, CMC Markets UK plc and CMC Spreadbet plc are supervised by the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA).

• CMC Markets Germany GmbH is regulated by the Bundesanstalt für Finanzdienstleistungsaufsicht (BaFin).
• CMC Markets Canada Inc. is a member of the Investment Industry Regulatory Organization of Canada (IIROC)
• CMC Markets Singapore Pte. Ltd. is regulated by (MAS).
• CMC Markets Asia Pacific Pty Ltd is registered with the Australian Securities and Investments Commission (ASIC).

The number of high-trust regulatory bodies that have authorized CMC Markets indicates that the broker is trustworthy.

Policies 

In accordance with strict regulations that CMC Markets follows, the broker provides its clients with negative balance protection, keeps funds in segregated accounts, and is a member of the traders’ compensation scheme.Keep in mind that the negative balance protection is only provided to retail clients to help shield traders against the negative outcomes of margin trading. Margin trading is a highly leveraged activity, which enables traders to trade using borrowed funds and as a result risk money that they do not own. On some occasions, when markets are highly volatile and a trade goes against prediction, it is possible for a trader’s balance to go into the negatives, causing the trader to become indebted to the broker. To counter this, retail traders are offered less leverage, up to 30:1 when trading Forex pairs, compared to professional traders who can use levels going up to 500:1. In addition, the broker uses automatic Stop Out levels to prevent the balance from going negative. Even in the unlikely event that your account goes into a negative, you can contact customer support and they’ll turn the balance from negative to zero. 

Something else that is in use is segregated accounts, which increase the level of safety as traders’ funds become inaccessible for the company’s general use and even if the broker goes bankrupt, traders can get their money back.

 Assets 

CMC Markets offers one of the largest varieties of available Forex pairs for trading. What’s more, the broker provides access to trading both physical and CFD stocks. CFD stands for Contract For Difference and offers various advantages over trading physical assets. On the other hand, physical assets are best for long-term investing as there are no fees for keeping an open position overnight.

CFDs are preferred for short-term investments or speculations as CFDs can be traded in both bullish and bearish markets by going long or short. In addition, CFDs are more liquid and spreads are tighter due to the fact that more people are trading CFDs than actual assets at any given time. 

Keep in mind that while CMC Markets offers various trading assets, some of the assets are only available via dedicated account types and the number of assets and policies offered might be a little different depending on your location.

Forex

CMC Markets offers 330 currency pairs for trading. The list consists of Major, Minor, and Exotic pairs. Exotic pairs are less liquid and are characterized by larger spreads. Major pairs such as EUR/USD, USD/JPY, and AUD/USD offer the tightest spreads starting from 0.7 pips. There are no additional fees charged by the broker, only spread markups. 

In addition, traders are able to trade currency indices for instance the USD index, EUR index, GBP index, and others.CMC Markets gets liquidity from top global banks for trading Forex such as Deutsche Bank, JP Morgan, Barclays, Goldman, UBS, Citibank, and HSBC.

Shares as CFDs

There are 10,000 shares as CFDs available for trading with CMC Markets. As already mentioned, CFDs are great for speculating on the markets. In addition to other benefits, trading shares as CFDs is available using leverage. For shares leverage offered is up to 20:1.

You can trade Tesla, Google, Amazon, Meta, and other famous company shares as CFDs using a dedicated share trading platform. The fees are reasonable and are starting from 0.10 points on Tesla. What’s more, traders can speculate on Penny stock prices and various instrument types such as growth, technology, banking, ETFs, consumer & retail, as well as share baskets.

Physical shares

Physical shares are preferred by long-term investors as you are not charged any fees for keeping assets long-term. On the other hand, you need more capital to start investing as there’s no leverage available. Overall there are over 35,000 shares available for trading. Keep in mind that you can only profit from trading in one direction. On the upside, trading fees are very reasonable, starting from $0 on US, UK, Canadian, and Japanese markets.

Cryptocurrencies

Cryptocurrencies are constantly becoming more and more popular amongst speculative traders. CMC Markets offers access to 19 major cryptos and alt-coins. Keep in mind that when trading cryptos with CMC Markets, you don’t buy or sell actual coins, you are merely trading these assets as CFDs. As a result, you don’t have to worry about where to cash out profits or how to store them, since you don’t actually own the assets. 

CMC Markets charges no commission, however, the broker charges traders with spread markups. The markups for cryptos start from 0.5 pips on MATIC and the spread on the most popular pair, BTC vs USD, starts from as low as 75 pips. The maximum leverage available for crypto trading is 2:1, which is lower than what other brokerages are offering. CMC views cryptos as high-risk products and in an attempt to provide negative balance protection to retail investors, limits the risks. 

Indices

Indices are a very good measure of the health of certain industries and economies. For instance, the S&P 500 measures the performance of the top 500 American companies that are publicly traded in the stock market. You can use the S&P 500 or US 500 as indicators or you can trade them as CFDs.

There are 80 indices available for trading with CMC Markets including the UK 100, US 30, Germany 40, Hong Kong 50, Australia 200, and others. Spreads start from 0.5 pips on the US 500 and the leverage goes up to 20:1.

Commodities

Commodities are raw materials that are used for creating consumer goods and there are two types of commodities that can be found on the markets. The ones that can be grown are called soft commodities while the commodities that are mined are referred to as hard commodities. 

With CMC Markets, you can trade both hard and soft commodities including precious metals, energies, agriculture, and commodity indices. Spreads are starting from as low as 0.3 points on gold and natural gas. 

Commodity prices are changing based on changes in global demand and supply. Keep in mind that the assets offered are CFDs and you can trade them in both directions.