Established in 1989, CMC Markets have been a leading player in the Forex and CFD trading industry for more than two decades. In 2014 alone, they have executed more than 33 million trades for their clients. No doubt their long history and experience have helped CMC Markets to build up an impressive level of trust among their clients in order for them to achieve this kind of trading volume.

Their level of unrivaled services and support provided to their clients is well known among the online trading community. With CMC Markets, traders can expect fast and efficient trading with spreads as low as 0.7 points.

Trading Platform

As for CMC Markets’ trading platform, they use a proprietary web based trading platform called the “Next Generation”. The platform is specially designed for active traders and was the culmination of more than 20 years of industry experience and the latest innovations in online trading software.

In fact, the platform was voted by Money AM as “Best Trading Platform” and “Best Online Charts” for 2013. The trading platform is fully customizable and showcases many impressive features such as multiple timeframe views, autosaves, Pattern Recognition Scanner and a fully integrated charting package. In addition, CMC Markets have also provided their clients with custom built trading apps for iPhone and iPad users.

Account Types

Featuring over 7000 products for their clients to trade on, CMC Markets’ traders can choose between two types of trading accounts, “Fixed Risk Account” or “Regular Account”. Compared to the regular account, fixed risk account holders have the advantage of guaranteed stops which they pay an extra premium for. In addition, trades can also choose between a joint or company account. There is no minimum deposit requirement at CMC Markets, but they recommend a minimum of $2000 deposit before traders start trading.

Commission & Spreads

Trading cost at CMC Markets vary with the type of products which the trader is trading in. For forex trading, the minimum transaction costs starts from 0.7 points for the EUR/USD currency pair. This is considerable lower than the typical spread that we find other brokers are quoting which is 0.999 points. As for CFD trading costs, traders have to pay a small commission charge for any trade executed by the broker. The commission varies from country to country but the typical rate is 0.09% of the volume traded.

Customer Support

For customer support services, traders can contact customer support through email, fax, live chat or the telephone. Depending on the location of the trader, there are also several localized telephone numbers provided by CMC Markets.  In terms of educational support, CMC Markets has been credited with providing traders with an extensive array of educational resources especially for beginner traders.

Reliability

With over 25 years of industry experiences, traders need not worry about the reliability of CMC Markets. In addition, they are also dealing with an internationally broker that is regulated in several jurisdictions.

Pros

• Advanced Award Winning Charting Package
• Attractive “Refer a Friend” Promotional Program
• Extensive Educational Resources
• Over 7000 products available for trading
• Reputable Broker with more than 25 years operational history
• Sophisticated Trading Platform
• Tight Spreads

Cons

• Confusing Site Layout
• Lack of bonus offers
• Need to maintain minimum balance in trading account

Conclusion

Apart from their quality services and award winning platform, CMC Markets is said to be second to none with it comes to traders’ education. They have made considerable investments in ensuring that their traders are properly educated to face the challenges of trading the financial markets. In this respect, we highly recommend beginner traders to sign up with them.