IG Share Trading Review

Our IG Share trading review focused on their share CFDs offering as they don’t offer conventional stock market buying and selling.
CFDs are the same as normal stock trading, except it involves leverage and is more short term. IG was key strengths in this area including:
– Low Commissions on Australian shares ($8 or 0.1%)
– Access to 8,000+ markets allowing trading on major stocks
– The ability to trade AUD-denominated CFDs
– A range of leading share trading platforms, including L2 trader

Share Trading Commissions Charged By IG Markets

IG share trading popularity is due to their low commissions, which for Australian share CFDs are 0.10% with a minimum amount of $8. There are also charges for holding share CFDs position(s) overnight, which should be considered if you plan to be in the market over several days. This overnight fee is based on the interbank rate and a small admin fee.

The margin rate differs by shares between 5% to 25%. In simple terms:
– 25% margin means you can trade four times the traders deposit. So, for example, a deposit of $1,000 can lead to $4,000 being traded on the market.
– 5% margin means you can borrow twenty times the deposit placed. So in the same example, a $1,000 deposit can lead to 20,000 in share value traded on the ASX or other approved markets.
It’s critical that margin involves risk, which can lead to losses exceeding deposits in turbulent markets, so it’s important to understand the risks and gain experience prior to trading with the full leverage available. We recommend signing up for a demo account until you have built up strong trading skills.

Some shares have the option of a limited risk premium (which differs by share) and the ability to go short.

IG Share Trading Market Range

IG trading on shares within the ASX/S&P 300 index and 250 additional stocks. Other regions share traders can trade include:

1) UK & Europe

IG share trading is available on all FTSE 350 index shares and most £10 million UK market capitalisation stocks. Options on most of the FTSE 100 shares are also available.

All the other European principle indices are also offered with contracts denominated in euros. Except for Swedish, Swiss, Norwegian and Danish shares, euro interest rates also apply.

2) USA & Canada

IG offers shares within both the NASDAQ 100 and S&P 500 index, as well as $500 million-plus market capitalisation shares. Like for European shares, these two index shares are denominated in the local currency (USD) with local interest rates applying.

Canadian shares of the top 60 companies (TXS60) are also offered denominated in Canadian dollars.

3) Asia & Africa

Key shares in Asia can be traded with IG, including the JSE Top 40,  Straits Times in Singapore, leading Japanese and Hong Kong shares. All contracts for each share are denominated in their local currencies, although USD is applicable for some Singapore stocks.

AUD denominated Share Trading

Most Australian traders don’t trade shares overseas due to the perceived complexity involved, especially when it comes to the need to change currencies and fees involved. Our IG trading review compared to Saxo Capital Markets found they have an excellent product that denominates all indices in AUD.

By trading overseas markets in Australian dollars, investors are not exposed to currency fluctuations or conversion fees. The stocks you can trade in AUD denominations include:

• China A50
• China H-Shares
• FTSE® 100
• Germany 30
• Hong Kong HS42
• India 50
• Japan 225
• US SPX500
• US Tech 100
• Wall Street

Spreads vary by indices, as do margins that start from 0.5% also known as 200:1. This effectively means you can trade 200x your initial deposit leading to large profits or losses from relatively small market movements. As such, the full leverage should only be considered by experienced traders who have a high-risk appetite.

There are other AUD IG trading options, including metals and energies. These include US Light Crude, Spot Gold, Spot Silver and Natural Gas.

IG Share Trading Platform Review

There are two platforms recommended for IG share trading, their core platform and the advanced L2 Dealer.

1) Core Platform

IG’s own platform is browser-based, which means users don’t need to download software to trade CFDs shares. While no downloading is required, there is the ability to customise and edit watch lists and layouts to suit your trading style.

You can place stops and limits on trades to close a position when your profit or loss limit is reached. You can also utilise the ‘tear-off’ prices, allowing you to close the browser yet still watch any key CFDs. You can even create trading alerts that will SMS or e-mail you when a price is reached, meaning you don’t need to watch the markets closely, even when you’re trading within it.

You can also trade other financial products such as IG index trading and currency trading. This has led to IG Australia’s popularity as an all-in-one share, CFDs and forex broker.

2)L2 Platform

This platform allows forex trading and shares trading with direct market access through a dedicated L2 dealer. It was designed for traders who want to participate directly with the share market and associated liquidity.

Some key features of L2 are:

i) Improved liquidity and pricing

• A range of exchanges can be accessed maximising share market depth for in Australia and overseas
• The ability to not only access primary exchanges but also market makers, brokers and dark pools
• An aggregated window or individual exchange can be displayed on the order book can be displayed with buy/sell prices
• The ability to access smart order routing, automatically sourcing the best price from a variety of trading venues

ii) Professional order control

• Traders can ‘drag & drop’ share trades into their order books and then link them to charts/new fees within the main window
• A plethora of order types including fill or kill, pegged, eliminate and execute as well as good for auction
• The ability to break larger share orders into tranches utilising an ‘iceberg’ facility’

iii) Optimised, efficient share trading

• Dealer-referred tickets with no re-quoting
• The ability to make basket IG share trading with excel compatible ‘watch-list pro’
• The ability to also utilise excel to make automatic trades utilising algorithms that traders create or share
• The ability to place limits on orders using ‘ladder trading’
• A customisable direct market access interface
• The ability to quickly ‘one-click’ trade with tools and market alerts
• New feeds directly from the market with live charts that highlight key events to alert traders or opportunities

L2 Dealer is free to download and use if you’re an active IG trader (they will rebate you for any fees associated with L2 Dealer). If you don’t actively trade though, there will be data usage fees that you will need to pay periodically. Our IG review found that beginner traders should consider the core platform while advanced share traders may prefer L2. This is also based on IG reviews from existing traders.

iv) Deposits and Withdrawals

IG offers 4 different methods to deposit funds into your account. These are Credit Card and Debit Cards, via Paypal and through the use of BPAY.  To add funds you need to login into your IG account and select ‘add funds’ and select the account that will receive the deposit. Deposits are limited to $50,000 per day if using a bank card. If you wish to make a larger deposit, then this can be done with a bank transfer. When registering your card for deposits, you cannot use a third-party account. This means you cannot use a business or corporate card or a card that is not in your name.

Regardless of the method used to enact transfer, execution time is instant when done via ‘My Account’ within the IG Markets platform however charges will vary. For example, a Debit card for Visa and Mastercard and BPAY incurs no charge but there will be a 1% charge when using a visa and a 0.5% charge for MasterCard for credit cards provided you are making AUD transactions.

When it comes to withdrawals, methods of withdrawal are limited to internet bank transfers or credit cards and $35,000 per 24 hours. To make a withdrawal, you need to select the ‘live accounts’ tab once logged into the ‘My IG’ account.  Bank Withdrawals should usually be the same day, but if using your card, it can take 5 days before your funds show in your bank account.

Overall

IG Group is the most popular share and CFDs trading platform in 2017 based on the ability to trade overseas markets with two leading platforms and their corresponding low spreads. The AUD denominated IG share trading was also a key positive, which is unique to the broker. Overall, these strengths combined with their strong IG trading forex product as discussed in our comparison with easyMarkets make the broker suitable for beginner to advanced CFDs traders looking to trade both domestically and abroad.