Comments on: CMC Markets

By: Margo

Margo — Sun, 05 Feb 2012 21:12:59 +0000

CMC provide a reasonably good trading platform with many features that lack with others – however I find the platform very unreliable as it constantly and frequently has the habit of automatically disconnecting me or loggin me out. It does no make any difference if I am using my mac book or the laptop – this can get very frustrating when monitoring a trade or trades. I have read that many other traders have also encountered this issue, I was hoping they would fix it – if not I would just have to stop using them altogether.

By: Mick Duffy

Mick Duffy — Wed, 16 Mar 2011 18:29:06 +0000

Opened account couple years ago and didnt like it. Lost most of my money through bad trading and the fact that when i tried to close position on large movements price would get constant requotes lossing more money. Plus when closes position it did not closes my limits and would buy/sell unknown to me.

Now they have a NEW PLATFORM which I LOVE. Instant quotes and when you click close, the price you see when closing is the price you get. Costumer services seems to be good also. My only dislike of new platform is the axis are never at even numbers like neither is the time. Tried changing all settings but nothing seems to work.

Overall top marks

By: hoffman

hoffman — Mon, 09 Aug 2010 20:39:42 +0000

CMC markets new platform look and feel is awesome. Charting features need to be worked on and screen optimisation is not great. I asked them about this and they said they were improving it. The cash commodity concept is interesting I want to have some more information about it before I make up my mind. It may not be the apple to microsoft yet but this has the potential to really change the digital derivative marketplace. Work to go but I’m watching this space. Spreads are good, margins reasonable, pricing is reliable, there’s an overiding portfolio based stop loss which although does not guarantee stops is a pretty good cushion from volatile movements. Saved my shirt last week when wheat went through the roof.

By: Henry

Henry — Thu, 13 May 2010 17:33:37 +0000

I have an account with CMC which I only use for back up. I found that when I compared the spreads with IG Index they were more or less the same until the market reversed. At that point CMC’s spread would widen greater than IG on the sell side. This caught me out to the tune of of about 5-10 points on some trades that I monitored. I think CMC have the best education videos available on CMC PLUS but for trading IG is head and shoulders in front of them. The only downside of IG is that their forex spreads can be bettered on other sites but that’s not an unsolvable problem. Oh, another downside of CMC is that all of their trades go through a dealer so you can get slippage and re quotes when the markets are at there most active – useless if you are day trade scalping.

By: craig

craig — Mon, 05 Apr 2010 23:43:19 +0000

I’ve used both CMC and IG Index. The one thing i didn’t like about the CMC platform was, if you manually close a position that had a stop and limit attached to it, the stop and limit are not cancelled with the manual close. They are still in the system and if you don’t cancel them, you find trades opening as if by magic. Be aware, caught me out a couple of times….

By: gertrude

gertrude — Sat, 12 Sep 2009 17:10:08 +0000

A few people moan about CMC Markets but really I think they are quite good – one of the things I like is that they always show a warning box ten minutes before major events. For margin leverage, they vary between 2% and 50%. The margins vary according to risk and liquidity of the underlying asset. I also like the fact that they are big enough that it ought to be safe dealing with them.

Their web platform, although useless for charts, is one of the best I’ve found for ‘effectiveness’ and although their desktop client isn’t up to my liking, the interactive chat with their customer service has proved invaluable. Perhaps the only problem I’ve noticed is that instead of support they seem to employ sales people…

By: dave summers

dave summers — Mon, 10 Aug 2009 00:34:39 +0000

IMO CMC requote all the time compared to other spreadbetting firms, and i always seem to get slippage on exit too. The customer service isn’t great either. The only reason I’m still here is because the leverage is great, the liquidity is good on most things, the spreads aren’t too bad for forex and indexes (silver is a shocker, gold is bearable). They are OK for swing/position trading, but i wouldn’t use them if you want instant accurate fills. They gave me £200 so i shouldn’t really grumble about them too much!

By: Norbert

Norbert — Fri, 10 Jul 2009 23:45:13 +0000

I spread bet with CMC. No complaints other than CMC give a fair number of requotes. I use both IG and CMC so that if one goes down whilst I’m trading I can hedge any open position with the other. I also run ftse 1 min chart on trading IG with the 5 minute chart running on cmc or ftse on IG and DAX on cmc.

Something worth pointing on shares trading is that IG Index have auto rollover which closes and immediately opens the bet at the end of the day. However because they actually close it and then re-open it, it means that any loss/profit becomes a real and not a paper loss/profit even if after a day or 2 the share becomes completely profitable. CMC on the hand have a rolling daily bet that does NOT actually close the bet but rolls it over with the supposed advantage that losses/profits on any day prior to the actual close are paper and not actual ones. This gives some of the advantage of a CFD but with a spread bet with obvious tax advantages.

By: jun

jun — Tue, 03 Feb 2009 20:29:14 +0000

Good
-> Good spreads and margins.
-> Requotes in fast moving markets means you can exit with a market order.
-> Can trade really small parcels which is useful if you like to scale in and out.

Bad
-> FX spreads can [and do regularly] widen up to 50-60pips during periods of low liquidity so you can’t really use stops with FX.
-> One point against cmc is that once a position is open, you have to watch it – some sb co’s have a button to close your position I believe and that will automatically cancel the stops – cmc is a little more complicated and you usually need to manually cancel the stops once you’ve closed a position.

By: CHEDDAR

CHEDDAR — Tue, 11 Nov 2008 17:13:49 +0000

Charting is now changed. ProRealtime was great and now they created their own, very limited and buggy version. No more backtesting or creating own indicators. Software is really limiting trading. It will consume your computers resources and freeze if you do not know how to change the Java that comes with the platform to more robust version. You can have only a very limited number of indicators to charts or you need a supercomputer. Stops will be hit if price is close enough (a few pips). Market price normally fair, sometimes 1 pip slippage. Help desk provides standard answers but normally do not answer the question or solve problems. Normally they have not even heard about similar issues (ie. software freeze and memory leak) or they are working to solve the problem (year after year). CMC Plus is not open for everyone. They do not even tell the criteria who will get that service (that is bad marketing). I use CMC Markets until I find more reliable company. They have all the potential to be number one, but somehow I have a feeling that they only wait to get your money so why put any money to make a more realible platform and service as most people will loose anyway?