IG Markets Review

IG Offers Average Trading Spreads

A comparison of the leading forex brokers found the spread and commissions using Forex Direct (their ECN broker account) was in the ‘mid-range’ when it came to this trading brokerage.

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IG Spreads

1) IG Forex Spreads – Standard Trading Execution

When trading on the IG core platform, the standard spreads shown to the right will apply and will vary depending on the currency pairing and market conditions.

Standard trading execution is a spread only account, which means no commission costs. If you choose to use guaranteed stops (which ensure you can’t lose more on a trade than the amount set) then spreads will widen slightly.

2) MetaTrader 4 Forex Spreads

Those who choose to use the MetaTrader 4 platform have different spreads which are shown to the right. While minimum spreads are similar to the core platform, the average spreads are higher.

IG encourage you to use one of their native trading platforms so the client effectively pays a premium to use the  MetaTrader 4 platform.

3) Forex Direct Account (DMA)

If clients prefer to trade with no dealing desk, then IG offers direct market access trading execution. This type of trading means full market transparency and therefore tighter spreads.

This type of trading execution means commission fees are applied in place of a widened spread. IG uses tiered commissions which means the more you trade each month, the fewer clients will be charged each time their trade.  Unless you trade > 500 million, then commissions are high compared to Pepperstone and IC Markets.

The Forex direct account is also termed an ECN forex broker, as traders have direct market access with raw costs. This can help open up opportunities such as trading with FIX API.

So What IG Account Should I Choose?

Forex Direct has overall the lowest spreads, but commissions can be high for traders who have low volumes. For such traders, it’s recommended to view the Australian forex broker comparison table. Otherwise, IG offers good value for high-volume traders.

IG Offers The Largest Choice Of Forex Trading Platforms

IG offers a wide range of trading platform options that are superior to forex brokers across forex and CFDs.

Core Platform
Their most popular platform is their own ‘core platform’ which is browser-based spread betting and CFD web platform designed for on-the-go FX traders as no downloads are required. This is complemented with mobile apps (iOS and Android) for any device, including tablets, which integrate with the web-based platform.

There are several monitoring tools including the ability to set limits and stops to close out positions, the ability to ‘tear-off’ prices when you want to close the core platform and the option to have price alerts in the form of e-mails or an SMS when prices are reached. The platform is also complemented by an excellent suite of research tools and interactive charts equipped with a full range of technical indicators.

Several free tools and features are available with the core platform once you become an IG Markets client, including streaming of Reuters news which is fully integrated with no delays. Autochartist is another feature that can monitor CFDs and currency markets, alerting clients as to opportunities based on chart patterns. Trading central is also available as a technical analysis tool, providing charting and daily e-mail updates about the financial markets.

IG Markets Charts can be included for free to provide technical indicators and the ability to trade directly from charts. Another option is ProRealTime, which is an advanced charting tool, with a dedicated suite of features. This charting balance has monthly costs, but these are not charged when traders actively trade on the platform. Additionally, the IG platforms allow FX traders to create a watchlist with their preferred financial instruments to find them at their fingertips.

The most popular feature of the core platform is that it allows IG shares trading. This allows you to trade shares across stock exchanges in Australia, the USA, Ireland, Germany and the UK. The combined forex and share trading CFD accounts solution mean that IG customers can benefit from an all-in-one financial services solution.

Three Specialist Platforms
For those that prefer to use more popular platforms compared to IG’s platform, three of the most popular options are available for forex trading. The absence of trading Apps is the only major disadvantage that comes with IG’s specialist platforms.

1) L2 Dealer

This platform allows an ECN forex broker trader experience with direct access to markets through IG’s Forex Direct, which means the broker doesn’t add any additional spreads on currency pairings. Instead, prices are quoted directly with liquidity and major providers with a flat commission placed on volume by IG. This platform is ideal for those forex traders who also want to trade shares worldwide through a CFD broker. As discussed earlier, L2 Dealer is the advanced choice for those looking to trade CFDs and also share trade.

Note* There are no mobile trading apps supported by the L2 Dealer platform.

2) ProReal Time

This platform is ideal for forex traders who specialise in automated trading. The platform allows traders to build strategies using their development tools or you can code from scratch. Other options include functionality to import strategies from other traders or 3rd parties and back-test it across 30 years of data. There is no need to be active on the platform for the tool to trade on your behalf.

3) MetaTrader 4

This has been a new addition to IG based on the platform’s popularity and the fact most Australian forex brokers offer MT4. This platform’s popularity is due to the simplicity of the platform, the ability to customise it to your needs and its fast execution speeds. With the MetaTrader 4 platform, you have the advantage to trade forex currency pairs or spread betting on additional thousands of markets on the go with IG’s mobile trading applications.

The three advanced platforms and the core platform offer free demo accounts. This allows forex traders to try the platforms risk-free and test out IG’s customer service to make sure it suits their needs before trading with real money. You can read more on the comprehensive platform guide.

Trading Platform Execution Speed

IG’s technology focuses on stability, speed, and achieving improved pricing within the forex trading market. IG’s pricing model is also able to fill 98.3% of their market orders within 0.014 seconds across all trading platforms, including the spread bets. At IG, retail investors can profit from consistent liquidity and advanced dealing options that ensure forex traders will always get the desired exchange rate with zero slippage on 89% of their trades.

The table below gives an in-depth view of IG’s slippage performance (based on data from Nov 2019).

To minimise slippage caused by delays, their systems have been built at scale achieving:

1. 25+ million orders
2. 40,000 daily users from desktop devices
3. 43,000 daily users from mobile devices

IG markets also source their forex market quotes directly from the world’s largest global exchanges and banks. In turbulent markets, their price improvement technology may give you a superior price to that quoted when available. This has resulted in 1.8 million points of positive slippage to clients, which is equivalent to nearly £3.3 million that were passed on to IG traders.

A real positive of IG is that, unlike many other forex online brokers, all their client’s funds are not used for hedging. This means that all funds which include net running, unrealised profits are held for their clients in the major banks which is above and beyond AFSL requirements. This combined with their technology has led them to win several awards, including the Online Personal Wealth Awards in 2015.

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IG Customer Service Is Not Award Winning

IG markets Australia offer locally based customer service 24 hours a day from Monday to Friday. The IG Group also supports customer service if a trader is overseas. IG offer support over the phone, via e-mail, or even through their handle on Twitter. An investment trends report found IG has strong customer support but awarded the winner in 2015, 2016 and 2017 to Pepperstone. To reach the full Pepperstone report including these awards click here.

Training

While customer service may not be the best in the industry, they do have a solid training offering. This includes free in-person seminar which is also held live through webinars. They also have an IG academy app which is free for traders with information on forex, shares, commodities and indices and how traders can capitalise from both rises and falls in financial markets. The app also helps develop a trading plan, explains leverage and ways to manage risks.

Additionally, the IG community offers an open social trading network that allows retail traders to interact with each other and learn from experienced traders.

IG Has Account Opening Deposit But Has Minimum Deposits

IG doesn’t have any minimum requirements to open an account however there are minimum deposit requirements to fund your account. Most regions give you a choice of a debit card, credit card, PayPal or Bank Wire for deposits.

Shares CFD (all clients) and Share Trading (Australian and UK clients only)

IG is one of the few forex brokers that offer a full range of markets including domestic and international share trading. What is unique about IG share trading is that a trader can use the same platform for both currency and stockbroking services. Below highlights a few key features of IG share trading.

When trading in shares, IG clients can trade shares the following way

• Shares CFD
• Shares Spread Betting (UK clients only)
• Share Trading (the UK and Australian clients only)

When trading shares CFD and spread betting, clients can profit off the stock’s price movements with a small margin invested. With this type of trading, clients do not take actual ownership of the stocks. Australia and clients in the UK have the option of Share trading, which gives them shareholders rights as they have ownership of the company’s stocks, which they can later sell for profit.  Australian’s and UK traders wanting to trade shares will need a Share dealing account.

1) Stock Exchanges Available

IG share trading gives access to 12,000+ shares from global stock exchanges including the ASX, DOW, NASDAQ and London Stock Exchange. Across these major exchanges, you can start trading not only large companies such as those listed on the S&P 500 can be traded but also many small caps. An IG share trading account has some limitations on stock exchanges such as Germany and Ireland, where only large companies can be traded.

2) Share Trading Fees

Brokerage will depend on if you are trading CFDs or Stocks along with the stock exchange traded as shown in the table below.

Shares CFD fees

CFD trading of stocks requires less upfront capital than Stock trading. CFDs are a leveraged instrument, so only the margin needs to be invested to gain full exposure to the trade.  Over 17000 markets are available for trade. Below lists the costs when CFD trading.

Share Trading

IG’s client’s clients can choose from the following markets

• UK: FTSE 100, FTSE 250 and more
• US: S&P 500, NASDAQ 100 and more
• Australia: ASX, S&P 300
• Germany: DAX, HDAX, MDAX
• Austria: ATX, WBI
• Ireland: ISEQ
• Belgium: BEL 20
• Netherlands: AEX

One unusual feature available to UK traders is the ability to buy US stocks out of hours.

Below lists the costs when trading stocks

Note: Fees are higher when trading by phone, and there are also currency conversion fees for overseas share trading. IG will convert the currency at the time of trade based on the best available exchange rate, plus a spread of 0.5% for UK traders and 0.7% for Australian traders.

Shares Spread betting

If you choose to spread bet, then you should expect a minimum spread of 010%. Spread betting has the lowest costs of CFD, Shares, however, is the riskiest method of investment.

Share Trading Accounts

To enable stockbroking, it’s important to pick a suitable platform when selecting the share trading account. This is discussed trading platforms section, but in summary, there are two options:

1. Core Platform
2. L2 Dealer

Selecting either platform during the share trading account sign-up will allow a combination of stockbroking and CFD trading with IG. There is also a market access DMA account to gain direct market prices while paying an extra commission. Overall, most Australian forex brokers do not offer stockbroking services and rather focus on CFD trading. The IG share trading and CMC Markets are presently the larger retail foreign exchange brokers offering these range-of-markets which has led to their popularity over the past decade.

IG Offers Poor Leverage Levels

In Australia, IG markets offer retail traders maximum leverage of 200:1 or 250:1 for professional traders, which is one of the lowest levels of all brokers with ASIC regulation.

Traders in the UK, Europe, South Africa can trade a maximum of 20:1 which is lower than the maximum allowable leverage by the ESMA compliant regulators. Professional traders that meet strict qualifying conditions can trade a maximum of 222:1.  IG clients from Dubai and USA can trade 50:1.

What this highlights is that IG doesn’t want its traders to have leveraged currency positions which can lead to magnified profits or losses. They even offer guaranteed stops to further help reduce risk in volatile markets.

While lower spreads and guaranteed stops may be great for many beginner and intermediate traders, some more sophisticated traders may require higher leverage. These traders may wish to consider other fx brokers shown on our Australian forex broker comparison table.

It should be noticed that leverage products can result in losses that exceed your initial deposit. Losing your money is a real possibility due to leverage, so it’s critical to understand the risks and consider a demo account before trading real money. Once trading features like stop losses should be considered to help contain risk elements leverage exposes a trader to.

IG Markets Review – License and Regulation

Established in 1974, IG Markets is trusted by over 178,500 worldwide retail investors. IG Group is subject to strict standards and operates under the norms imposed by tire-one regulatory bodies, including:

• Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) in the UK
• Australian Securities and Investments Commission (ASIC) in Australia
• Financial Sector Conduct Authority (FSCA) in South Africa
• Financial Markets Authority (FMA) in New Zealand
• National Futures Association (NFA) in the USA
• Federal Financial Supervisory Authority (BaFin) in Europe (Germany/Austria)
• Swiss Financial Market Supervisory Authority (FINMA) in Switzerland

The table below outlines all the regulatory bodies that supervise IG trading activities.

Additionally, trading CFDs on IG.com come with extra peace of mind as IG Markets also abides by the leading principles of the FX Global Code of Conduct. The online brokers that have signed the FX code created by the Bank of International Settlements (BIS) are required to offer a fair trading environment.

There are many locations such as Nigeria which are not covered by the regulator regions above. A trader can choose the entity they trade with (eg FSCA in South Africa) which determines factors such as the leverage available when forex trading.

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Differences for IG Markets clients in the United Kingdom

In the United Kingdom, IG Markets has 2 entities. These are:

• IG Markets Ltd (Register number 195355) and operates under FCA Register number 195355. This entity manages CFD trading, share trading.
• IG Index Ltd (Register number 114059) and operated with FCA Register number 114059. This entity manages spread betting.

Both entities are registered at which Cannon Bridge House, 25 Dowgate Hill, London EC4R 2YA. IG can be contacted with the following numbers:

• New client: 0800 1953100
• Clients: 0800 4096789

IG Markets has a few differences for IG clients in the UK due to FCA regulations which need to follow the rules set by ESMA under MiFID II. FCA has different requirements for Retail traders and Professional Traders.

Retail Traders vs Professional Traders

If you qualify as a professional trader, then you will be able to trade with more relaxed leverage however you will lose negative balance protection and automotive margin closeout when your maintenance margin falls below 50%

To qualify as a professional trader, clients will need to show IG they satisfy the following conditions:

Digital 100s

If you wish to binary trade, then IG Markets offers Digital 100s. With digital 100s, you speculate on a true or false event in the market taking place. If you predict the result, then you will gain a profit and if the outcome is false you will lose your stake. IG call this trading Digital 100s as the price ranges from 0 to 100. In other words, you can bet up to 100 that the probability that your prediction will occur.

Digital 100s is only available to Professional traders due to FCA regulations and can be done in the form of spread betting or CFDs trading.  Products available for speculation include indices, commodities, forex and sectors.

Other Features of IG Markets in the United Kingdom

Traders in the United Kingdom also have Spread Betting and Share trading options (which have previously been discussed).