Founded in 1989, CMC Markets is one of the largest forex brokers offering over 9,500 CFDs products across FX, indices, shares to cryptocurrencies with EUR/USD spreads from 0.7 pips and margin rates from 0.20% with cash rebates for high volume forex traders.
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As one of the largest brokers in the world, CMC Markets caters to traders with regulations in the UK, Australia, Singapore, NZ, and Canada. In all markets, CMC offers CFD trading, while in Australia they also offer stockbroking, while in the UK the additional service is their spread betting platform.
CMC forex traders can choose between MetaTrader 4 and the next CFD Next Generation platform, while a separate stockbroking platform is needed to trade shares in Australia.
There are three trading accounts available with CMC depending on the location of the trader. The most popular is their CFD account available worldwide (except for restricted countries such as the USA). Spread betting with CMC is only available in the UK and offers some tax benefits, while stockbroking services are only available in Australia.
| CFD Account | Spread Betting | Stockbroking | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Designed For | Global Traders | UK/Ireland Traders Only | Australia Traders Only |
| Tradable Instruments | Forex, Indices, Cryptocurrencies, Commodities, Shares CFDs, Treasuries | Indices, Forex pairs, Cryptocurrencies, Commodities, ETFs + Share CFDs, Treasuries | International Shares (not CFDs) |
| Base Currencies | USD, EUR, GBP, AUS, CAD, SGD, PLN, NOK, NZD, SEK | GBP, EUR | AUD |
| Pricing | Spread + Commission | Spreads only | Classic 0.1% to Premium 0.075% |
| Capital Gains Tax | Yes | No | Yes |
| Corporate Account | Yes | No | No |
Each account type has separate trading platforms. This means that if, for example, a trader in Australia wants to trade shares and trade CFDs, they will need to use two separate platforms. The below score and detailed CMC Markets review focuses primarily on the CFD account.
There are no commissions when trading CFDs (except for Shares) with CMC Markets. The broker though does not publish their average spreads. Instead, they only publish their minimum spreads, making it difficult to compare their spreads to other brokers.
Minimum spreads published in February 2023 include:
Forex Trading spreads from 0.7 pips (EUR/USD)Other trading costs with CMC include:
Unlike most other brokers, the lack of transparency from CMC about their average spreads makes it impossible to calculate their exact brokerage costs for CFDs or spread betting. If you’re looking to calculate brokerage on the most popular CMC Markets alternatives, including Pepperstone and IG, you can use the calculator below.
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There are three trading platforms offered for CFD trading with CMC Markets:
The CMC Next Generation platform is the primary software offered for CFD trading. The best feature of the platform is the charting package (chart forum) with 115+ technical indicators, 70 chart patterns, and 12 built-in chart types. Traders can implement detailed technical analyses and make price movement analyses. This charting package helped it win the 2019 Investment Trends survey and the best mobile trading app for 2021.
Three trading tools offered by the Next Generation trading platform include client sentiment the displays the quantity and position value for the instrument traded. The second is multiple layouts, such as a ‘five-minute chart layout’ to give unique insights into price movements. The third is the pattern recognition scanner, which identifies and alerts traders when patterns emerge.
The Next Generation trading platform is available on:
Our CMC Markets review found that the CFD Trading mobile app can do basically anything you want to do on your desktop. Traders can access CMC Markets’ trading instruments, complex order and account types, account details, screeners, and charting from the Android or iPhone apps. The app is extremely intelligent. It allows clients to create their own layout so that what’s important to them is the first thing they see on the screen, creating a truly personal experience.
Whilst the iPhone app includes fingerprint security, the Android version does not. Although the app includes fingerprint security in the iPhone version, there is no added security beyond the login password. Ideally, the applications should include classical security features such as automatic sign-out and verification of login from other devices. Many traders trade with an incredible amount of money, so a lack of security is quite unnerving.
Integrated into the Next Generation are multiple news and information sources. This is located within the insights section and includes Morningstar research reports incorporating ‘fair market estimates’, Reuters news, and CMC TV featuring experts discussing market technical analysis. The insights section also has a market calendar and CMC Twitter feed.
CMC Markets also offers MetaTrader 4 (MT4) which is the most popular forex trading platform. The platform’s popularity is based on its Expert Advisor’s (EA’s) automated trading ability, advanced order types, technical analysis, and user-friendly interface. MT4 also has advanced features for trading strategies from pattern recognition to an economic calendar. It has advanced chart types and drawing tools offering extra market insights such as customer sentiment. The online trading platform has a Best Demo Account For Forex and live account, allowing users to test trading in a simulated environment.
While CMC offers MetaTrader 4, only a limited number of instruments and functionality is offered on the forex platform as shown below. In fact, it’s recommended that the Next Generation account be selected if you want to trade with CMC but if you want MT4, then view our Best MT4 Brokers.
As you can see below, the CMC platform is ranked the second-lowest out of the leading brokers. This is a concern as they only offer one platform. By comparison, Pepperstone, which was voted as the broker with the best forex trading platform, has 7 different platforms, including the world-renowned MetaTrader 5 and cTrader. This clearly indicates that customers prefer a variety of reputable platforms rather than homegrown ones.
Institutional clients can also find a home at CMC Markets via the brand-new Prime Derivatives platform which enables professional traders to trade over 9,000 stock CFDs across 20 countries.
CMC Markets has global support offered 24 hours a day, 5 days a week (no weekend support). The three main customer service channels offered are:
Customer support is available in 9 languages
| English | French | Spanish |
|---|---|---|
| German | Italian | Polish |
| Chinese | Norwegian | Swedish |
The main office that CMC Markets’ customer service is based out of CMC Markets UK plc, 133 Houndsditch, London. There are also 12 other offices as shown below, each with its own contact number and e-mail address.
Some Forex brokers have high minimum deposit requirements. Swissquote has a USD$1000 minimum deposit requirement while other brokers like Price Markets, and Vantage have significantly high deposit requirements too. While a minimum deposit of $200 is an industry standard, CMC Markets have $0 minimum deposit requirements.
No minimum deposits can be great if :
One thing to note is that even if CMC has no minimum deposit, you will still need to have enough in your CMC account to meet margin requirements when trading.
CMC offers a range of funding methods including credit card/debit card, bank transfer (from most bank accounts), PayPal, and electronic wallets. As mentioned earlier there are no deposit fees for any of these payment methods, but an inactivity fee is charged if the account isn’t used for a month. There are $0 fees on withdrawals as well, which need to be made through the deposit methods.
The CFD account offers a plethora of instruments that can be traded from ETFs to Bitcoin as shown in the table below.
| Currency Pairs | Stock index CFDs | Stock CFDs | ETF CFDs | Commodity CFDs | Bond CFDs | Cryptocurrencies | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| CMC Markets | 338 | 92 | 8,000 | 1,000 | 136 | 56 | 15 |
In Australia, stockbroking services are offered. Meanwhile in the UK, spread betting is offered to traders. This can all be done on the cmcmarkets.com website which has sub-folders based on country locations.
The maximum allowable leverage brokers can make available are subject to regulatory requirements of a particular country or region. Leverage trading, which is also known as trading on margin, means you can make a profit if markets move in your favour. Leverage poses risks as you can increase your losses significantly should the market price for the currency pair not move in your favour.
CMC in Australia is ASIC-regulated with the AFSL number 238054. As such, it is limited to the leverage level it can offer retail traders to 30:1 on major forex pairs. Professional traders can trade with up to 500:1 leverage as shown below. You can compare CMC to other ASIC-regulated brokers on our best forex brokers Australia page.
CMC is FCA regulated within the UK with licence number 173730. For major currency pairs such as EUR/USD, USD/JPY and AUD/USD, leverage of 30:1 or a margin of 3.3%. For minor and exotic currency pairs such as Euro/GBP, EUR/AUD and GBP/JPY, a leverage of 20:1 (margin 5%) is available. These levels are the maximum permitted by the FCA and comparable with the best UK forex brokers.
Under the broker’s FMA regulation in New Zealand, traders can use the highest possible leverage of up to 500:1. In Dubai, it is capped at 50:1 under DFSA regulation and in Singapore 20:1 as required by MAS.
Using high forex leverage levels or margin allows traders to maximise their returns with a low capital investment when they take their position.
An example of a 500:1 forex leverage strategy at work would be having $200 as underlying equity, which would ultimately provide traders with $100,000 worth of funds for trading currency. Any changes in the currency pairs will amplify the losses or gains incurred which is a critical issue as explained below and must be understood when using our forex broker comparison. They also offer this same leverage for CFDs trading.
The best forex brokers in Australia not only need to offer high leverage for brokers but also help forex traders manage their investment risks. CMC Markets offers Guaranteed stop losses (GSLO) which is a good way to protect your investment against excessive losses.
For a small fee, a guaranteed stop-loss ensures you cannot lose more than you are prepared to lose for a particular trade. This type of protection guarantees your position is closed should prices fall below your loss tolerance level as the broker will absorb any differences in the event of slippage.
Another nice feature of CMC Markets offer is trailing stop-loss. A trailing stop-loss ensures stop gaps are moved when a currency pairing moves in the predicted direction leading to profits. When the currency then moves the other way by a certain amount of points, the stop-loss will come into force at a more favourable price.
Leverage involves high risk when trading CFDs, which are complex instruments. In February 2023 CMC Markets UK posted that 78% of retail investor accounts lost money when trading on their retail investor accounts. When opening a CMC Markets account or any CFD broker worldwide, it’s important to understand risk and understand if CFD and spread betting are right for you.
CMC Markets is regulated around the world, including the following:
Each regulator above has different trading experience rules from leverage, instruments offered, to how segregated bank accounts are treated. These will impact the trading experience so you need to understand the conditions each regulator places on complex instruments such as CFDs.
If you are a CMC Markets client of the United Kingdom, then bear in mind that the FCA regulations can lead to some necessary differences that are available to clients of CMC Markets outside the United Kingdom.
The FCA regulations are required to follow guidelines set by the European Securities Markets Authority (ESMA) in their Financial Instruments Directive (MiFID). ESMA is responsible for setting trading conditions for retail traders and professional traders which brokers of European regulators have to follow.
CMC Clients in the UK can choose from 3 types of accounts. These are CFD Account for retail traders, CFD Account for professional traders, and spread betting accounts.
Note* The FCA ban on crypto-assets prohibits CMC Markets to offer crypto CFD products to UK retail traders starting from February 2023.
The main thing difference to be aware of between these two accounts is the use of leverage and the application of guaranteed negative balance protection.
Below compares the leverage differences for each account
| Retail | Professional | |
|---|---|---|
| Forex Majors | 30:1 | 500:1 |
| Forex Minors and Exotics | 20:1 | 500:1 |
| Major Indices | 20:1 | 500:1 |
| Other Indices | 10:1 | 500:1 |
| Gold | 20:1 | 200:1 |
| Commodities (excluding gold) | 10:1 | 133.33:1 |
| Cryptocurrencies | 2:1 | 20:1 |
| Shares CFD | 5:1 | 20:1 |
| Treasuries / Bonds | 30:1 | |
| Treasury Rates - Cash | 5:1 | |
| Share Baskets | 5:1 |
The FCA requires CMC to limit leverage to retail traders so they are less exposed to the risk leverage trading can bring. Leverage for professional traders is more relaxed as they are considered to have the expertise and capital to manage margin risks.
To qualify for a professional account, traders will need to satisfy 2 of the following 3 requirements
It is important to be aware that with increased leverage, professional traders will no longer have guaranteed negative balance protection. This is because the expectation is that professional traders understand the risks of high leverage.
Professional traders will also get access to their own account manager and priority to new CMC products.
Professional traders have the option of trading countdowns, which is not available to retail traders. This is a method of binary trading where you have a 50/50 chance the product products price will be above or below the current level at the end of the timeframe. This can range from 30 seconds to 1 hour.
27 products are available including 15 Forex pairs, selected indices, and commodities such as gold, oil, and silver.
CMC Markets offers spread betting exclusively for traders within the United Kingdom. Like CFD trading, in spread betting you speculate on the price movement of forex pairs and other financial assets. Unlike CFDs however, where traders buy or sell contracts of the underlying asset, traders using spread betting are just speculating on the price movement of the financial instruments like forex pairs, cryptocurrencies, commodities, shares, or bonds.
A notable difference between CFDs and spread betting is that CFDs are quoted in pips whereas spread bets are in points. For all intents and purposes, they are the same thing. Another difference is that spread betting does not have capital gains taxes, making it an attractive proposition compared to trading with CFDs where you will need to declare your earnings. On the flip side, unlike with trading CFDs, you can’t declare your tax losses.
A second factor that may help you save is that betting is always done in GBP. This means you will not need to concern yourself with currency conversion cost fees.
Spread betting with CMC Markets has no commission costs, so you will only pay for the spread. Spreads start from 0.7 points for EUR/USD and AUD/USD. CMC Markets allows you to spread bet using the same financial instruments available for CFD trading. This means you can bet on over 11,000 financial markets including 338 forex pairs, 9,000 stocks, 82 indices, 124 commodities, 55 bonds, and over 900 ETFs. Some indices are even available 24 hour a day, 5 days a week.
And like with CFD trading, you can bet using the same margin or leverage. So if betting with forex, you can bet using 30:1 for major forex pairs and 20:1 for minor pairs.
Additionally, the spreads found on CMC Markets’ spread betting accounts are the same as those on their CFD accounts. Our Chief Technology Researcher at CompareForexBrokers, Ross Collins, did spread testing for no-commission style accounts using 20 Forex brokers to find out which brokers have the best spreads. He used CMC Markets along with other brokers who offer spread betting like Pepperstone, Admiral Markets, OANDA, FxPro, FXCM and City Index to see who has the best forex spreads for spread betting.
To test, Ross captured the spreads for 6 of the major currency pairs over a 24-hour period for 2 consecutive weeks. Spreads for each Forex pair were then averaged over this 24-hour period and then averaged across the pairs. We found that CMC Markets is the best choice for spread betting when using major forex pairs when it comes to low spreads. CMC Markets averaged 1.11 pip which means you would average about $10.10 per lot. Second was Admiral Markets with 1.31 pips on average with FXPro finishing last with 2.22 pips.
| Broker | Average Spread | Average Spread Cost (USD) |
|---|---|---|
| CMC Markets | 1.11 | $10.10 |
| Admiral Markets | 1.31 | $11.96 |
| FXCM | 1.47 | $13.49 |
| Pepperstone | 1.46 | $13.52 |
| OandA | 1.54 | $14.23 |
| City Index | 1.79 | $16.52 |
| FXPro | 2.22 | $20.83 |
When spread betting with CMC Markets, you will use CMC Markets’ proprietary trading platform, NGEN, as MetaTrader (MT4) is not available for spread betting with this broker. Before you allow this to deter you, NGEN does have a guaranteed stop-loss order for better risk management and a pattern recognition scanner to help you better identify chart patterns.
Yes, CMC Markets is considered a safe forex broker by all industry standards. CMC Markets is regulated across 4 continents and has over 30 years of experience in the forex space. Regulators like FCA, ASIC, BaFin or IIROC ensures the broker complies with strict financial rules. The forex broker has been honoured with numerous awards (+50 industry awards) for the quality of its service.
CMC Markets is a good fit for beginners as it offers the beginner-friendly MetaTrader 4 platform, low entry barrier, extensive educational material and average spreads. For lower spreads, beginner traders are better off with Pepperstone or IC Markets, but for copy-trading features, beginners are better served at eToro.
USD 0 is the minimum deposit requirement at CMC Markets. While the broker doesn’t enforce any minimum deposit policy, clients need to deposit funds into their account to start trading. As for the funding methods, CMC Markets supports the traditional payment options credit/debit card and bank transfers with no additional deposit fees.
Our CMC Markets review found it was the Top forex broker for intermediate forex traders. This is because of the high leverage offered, a strong trading platform, and guaranteed stop-loss orders.
The company has also stood the test of time, having been founded way back in 1989. With the ever-increasing rate of FX and CFDs brokers going out of business, CMC’s 25 years’ experience is reassuring. While it shouldn’t be THE determining factor when selecting a reliable broker, knowing client funds are in safe hands provides traders with confidence.
The only reason that CMC Markets in our best forex broker comparison was voted higher for experienced forex traders was due to that broker’s marginally lower spreads, which is noticeable when day-trading or adopting automation trading techniques. There were also improved execution speeds for both IC Markets and Pepperstone, reducing issues such as slippage.
Furthermore, the other weaknesses of average security and lack of platform diversity can be concerning to potential clients, detracting slightly from the CMC Market’s experience.
Overall, this broker should be considered by those traders looking for high leverage. But remember, Forex & CFDs are a risky asset class, so be sure to do everything to reduce your risk exposure.
Open a demo accountVisit CMC Markets
CMC is listed on the London Stock Exchange (LSE) and has been providing financial services since it was founded in 1989. It’s one of the largest forex brokers and CFDs brokers in the world with a presence in markets like Australia, Canada, New Zealand, and the United Kingdom. In Australia, it’s regulated by ASIC, while in the UK the local regulator is the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA). The registration number under the FCA is 173730. The most similar broker with worldwide regulation is OANDA.
CMC offers a wide range of educational resources. This ranges from technical indicators to platform guides. These educational resources range from video tutorials, online guides to webinars. This comes from their Sydney staff, who is rated at 64% according to Glassdoor. The Sydney office also assists in their customer support across e-mail, live-chat to the phone. This support is designed for all market conditions and times of the day and night.
Account Types
Spreads
Trading Platforms
Customer Support
Minimum Deposit
Forex Pairs + CFDs
Leverage
Regulation
Ask an Expert
Does CMC Markets really have over 300 Forex Pairs?
Yes but many of these 300 are reversed cross pairs for example AUD/USD. USD/AUD
does CMC allow scalping?
Yes, CMC Markets do allow scalping