Reasons to switch

Whilst minimum spreads can grab the headlines, they don't tell the whole story. Markets can be volatile and the underlying market spreads can fluctuate and widen throughout the day. At CMC Markets we believe it is important that CFD providers should be more transparent by publishing their daily typical spreads as well as their minimum spreads. Consistent typical spreads are a reflection of pricing consistency throughout the day. Click here to see two tables showing typical spreads for CMC Markets’ most popular index CFDs, over the last week. If your CFD provider does not show this information you should ask them why.

With CMC Markets, all trade executions are 100% automated on our CMC Tracker platform, which means no dealer intervention and much faster processing times. With multiple price streams from top-tier institutions and exchanges, we offer highly competitive prices and, with our 100% automated execution, you have none of the hassles or restrictions that come when trying to trade quickly on news events or economic announcements.

Index CFDs are usually quoted to just 1 decimal place (two decimals when trading the SPX500). However, the underlying market offers additional precision within their price quotes, meaning many providers round these to the nearest pip, widening the spread in the process. CMC Markets offers precision pricing and quotes an additional decimal place on all our index CFDs enabling us to offer tighter spreads.

Precision pricing can increase your trading opportunities, prevent unnecessary stop loss execution and help you save money.

Traditionally, the minimum trade size for any index CFD trade is 1 CFD contract. With a CFD account on the CMC Tracker platform, you can now trade from as little as one 10,000th of a pip on index CFDs, using our fractional trading feature. For new traders, this gives you the ability to trade index CFDs with smaller trade sizes so you can get used to this exciting market before placing larger trades.

CMC Markets started as a broker in the U.K. back in 1989 with an ambition to offer wholesale trading to the retail market. In 1996 we developed the world’s first online retail foreign exchange trading platform and have been one of the market leaders ever since. With our new lower spreads and margins we believe we now take this evolution to the next level, offering some of the tightest spreads to the retail index market.

As one of the bigger and more established providers, we have access to some of the best prices and execution from the large institutions that deal directly on the exchanges where the majority of index trading is performed. We pass on this benefit to our customers in the form of some of the tightest spreads in the market.

Many CFDs traders are forced to use fixed leverage, often with expensive overnight financing rates to pay. With CMC Markets you have ultimate flexibility in that you can choose your index CFD margin requirements and only pay overnight financing on what you ‘borrow’, rather than on the full value of the position, as with traditional CFD providers. You can even choose to put forward the whole value of the position yourself, thereby gaining exposure to global indices with minimal costs, even for long term investments.

CMC Markets has introduced a whole new level of control when trading index CFDs, through our fractional trading feature. You can now trade index CFDs in foreign markets, such as the US or Europe, using round amounts in Australian dollar ($). Our CMC Tracker platform will automatically convert your AUD trade into a number of units using our live spot rates. Your profit and loss will always be reflected in AUD giving you greater transparency on how your position is fairing.

We are available 24 hours a day from Monday 8am through to Saturday 8am. We take great pride in our standards of service, yet we are constantly working to improve them to make sure they match your expectations and reflect a world-class offering.

Trading index CFDs on low margins can be risky in volatile markets, and you could lose more than your initial deposit more rapidly. To help you manage some of these risks CMC Markets offers a wide range of risk management initiatives.

Our order tickets automatically suggest a stop loss roughly equal to your margin requirement for each trade (this feature can be turned off in the Preferences section). This feature is known as transaction based stop loss, and it can help to limit the downside risk associated with a trade. There are order types to enter the market, including limit and market order, as well as trailing stops and take profit orders that can be used to exit. CMC Markets offers a full range of order execution tools.

The CMC Tracker platform will attempt to notify you when your CFD account value falls to 50% of your margin requirement and suggests you might want to deposit additional funds or close out some of your trades. This notification is provided as a courtesy only and you must not rely on it as it is your obligation to monitor your CFD account.

The CMC Tracker platform may liquidate your positions at the close out level to protect both you and CMC Markets and to help prevent your account falling into a debit balance. It's up to you to monitor your positions. To prevent the liquidation of your positions, make sure you've deposited enough funds to keep your account value above the close out level. If your trade doesn't go as you expect, you may be required to deposit additional funds with CMC Markets in order to hold your position.