City Index Review 2025

Markets Covered

Wide range of markets, about 12,000 different markets are covered spanning stock indices, individual stocks (FTSE350, DAX30, CAC40 plus numerous US), many UK sectors, currencies, commodities, interest rates, options, bonds, volatility, ‘specials’ and binary betting.

Training Facilities

A demo account with £10,000 virtual cash to trade with is available. For four weeks after registering for a real account you can also choose to spread bet from just 25 pence per point in the Trading Academy. Free seminars are also hosted on a regular basis.

Typical Spreads

Dealing Commissions and Fees

Credit card transactions will incur a fee of 1.5%. Other ways to deposit without incurring fees consist of Maestro Cards, BACS, CHAPS, or cheques.

What is the financing charge for spread bets and CFDs?

The financing rates are:

Financing Charges

Financing is paid on the value of the holding of the underlying financial instrument, minus margin requirement.

Accounts Available and Credit Facilities

CityIndex is unique in that you can trade both CFDs and spread bets on the same platform. No Credit Facilities. Guaranteed Stops are available on FTSE 100 blue-chip stocks and indices.

Minimum Stake and Deposit

Varies by product for instance – Daily FTSE Index – £0.50 per point, UK stocks £0.50 per point, forex pairs £1 per point. Minimum first-time deposit is £100

Rolling Policy

City Index recently changed all their daily cash bets to DFBs (Daily Funded Bets) which automatically rollover (for a charge) similar to forex markets. This means that the daily rolling trades are rolled over from day to day with no P+L being crystalised although a financing fee will be incurred for overnight positions.

Dividend Policy

UK long positions will receive a adjustment of 90% of the gross dividend, UK short positions pay an adjustment of 90% of the gross dividend.

Futures

When you roll over a position at CityIndex you will be closed at the mid-point and re-entered at the prevailing buy price.

Stop and Limit Orders Available

Stop Loss, Limit Orders, If Done, and OCO Available. Orders can bet set ‘Good until End of day (GFD)’, ‘Good until Cancelled (GTC)’ or ‘Good until Time (GTT)’. Guaranteed Stops on UK 100 stocks and indices are also available for an additional fee.

Your trades will not have an automatic stop loss, but you would be able to add one to your trade or order either before or after opening of the spread bet.

Opening Hours

The FTSE and Dow are quoted 24 hours.

Research and Charting

Professional charting systems are provided by ‘Pro-Realtime’ – 3 different levels of charts are offered from dead simple to dead not-simple, charts come with indicator builder/creator too, all free. You can trade/manage trades right off the charts too… Technical detailed useful commentary research covering shares, indices, forex, commodities and fixed income is also freely available to clients (provided by Trading Central and Investors Intelligence).

Comparing some Popular Market Spreads at CityIndex

General Points (we will strive to keep this review up-to-date)

1. Access to more than 12,000 UK, European, US and Asian shares. City Index’s trading platform is browser-based with no software to download to your pc, allowing you to access the account from anywhere.
2. It is interesting to note that Credit Betting has been discontinued and only Deposit Accounts are now accepted at CityIndex. City Index also offers limited risk accounts which come with linked guaranteed stop loss orders on all executed trades. There is also a telephone dealing desk for those who want it.
3. A trading simulator allows users to get the hand of spread bets without risking real money. This is decent enough to get used to their platform but remember it’s nothing like spread betting using real money.
4. Newsflow and research are available (powered by Interactive Data). These include heatmaps which show a visual presentation of the market with the shares colour coded to indicate the top risers and fallers, support of watchlists, market reports, economic updates, press tips and broker upgrades.
5. Charting includes some of the 42 of the more popular technical indicators. The software includes the functionality to save a template and apply it to different assets.
6. City Index is unique in that it combines CFDs and spread betting on the same platform so both options are cross-margined and available at the same time which makes them easier to understand.
7. City Index recently changed all their daily cash bets to DFBs (Daily Funded Bets) which automatically rollover (for a charge) similar to forex markets.
8. Further, you may open multiple positions in the same underlying market at various times and subsequently varying prices. However you cannot go long and short in the same market. You may wish to hedge your position by placing a long in the futures and a short in the rolling as an alternative.
9. Stop and limit orders can be stipulated to be triggered either in terms of the spread betting quote or the underlying market.
10. Debit or credit transactions are accepted. Payments can be made via Switch, Delta, Mastercard and Visa (although there is a 1.5 per cent commission charge on the latter pair).
11. Small trades by telephone are still permitted. Minimum stake varies according to the market but in general is £0.50.
12. Available companies on offer to trade need to have a minimum market cap of £200 Million. A USA stock requires a market capitalisation of USD1b for CityIndex to trade it.
13. City Index have also launched a specialised product for day traders; the product called ‘Day Trades’ has 50% lower margins and 20% tighter spreads than CityIndex’s standard spread bets on its 20 leading UK listed shares. ‘Day trades’ are intended for clients who dip in and out of the markets on an intraday basis – they are available to trade throughout the day (trade from 08:00 to 16:28) with spreadbets closing out at market levels at 16:28pm without the option to roll positions over to the next day.
14. Mobile dealing services are freely provided. Note that the cost of getting a getting a data subscription can be expensive on some networks – but T-mobile, for example, offers unlimited data downloads for £7.50 a month.
15. City Index also offers a four-week ‘Learn to Trade’ programme (which is similar to IG Index’s TradeSense Module) designed to help new clients build their confidence in a controlled environment where they aren’t exposed to risking too much capital. During this period they can deal in smaller sizes starting at 25p per point while also benefiting from the reduced spreads.
16. Research tools include live streaming news from Dow Jones. The company also makes available summaries of the main stories throughout the day and produces a useful video presentation that notes possible trades in the week ahead.
17. Free seminars covering the basics of spread betting, technical analysis, and risk management are available throughout the year. The seminars are usually held at CityIndex’s London office (in an auditorium with a big screen) in Finsbury Circus with one being held almost each week.

Good Points

1. Revamped trading platform is very simple and easy-to-use. Minimum stake is now just £0.50.
2. City Index sends out a good start pack with full info on all their products.
3. Demo platform with £2,500 in virtual cash is available for a 2-week trial. For the initial 4 weeks you can also spread bet at just 25 pence per point.
4. Very wide choice of markets, though better commodity range found elsewhere. Access to new markets including Australian stocks plus wider coverage of Asian markets with more stocks recently added.
5. Offers spreads on the iShares market (margin is 10%). Spreads are also available on the China, Japan, Korea and Taiwan markets.
6. A wide range of order types including stops, linked contingent orders and Guaranteed Stop Loss tools are available and allow sophisticated risk management. Advanced tools for trade closure and auto-rollover offer trading flexibility.
7. City Index are one of the cheapest for controlled risk trades, with the premium for a guaranteed stop of just 1 pip. Also, guaranteed stops can be set when you open your position or at a later date for better flexibility although these are not available on all markets (GSL are limited to FTSE 100 stocks and indices).
8. CityIndex sends you a daily statement that I rarely look at however they also send you a monthly statement that summarizes all the various interests – much easier than doing it daily.
9. City Index have an execution policy which claims bar a few exceptions, everything below ‘their size*’ (usually up to £20 per pt = 2000 shares) goes straight through at the price you see on the screen. This provides execution certainty for all deals up to this size unlike DMA platforms. Also, you are not limited by the order flow as on a DMA platform. If there are only 10 shares available at the price you want on a DMA platform you can only buy 10 shares. On a synthetic model like City Index you could go long so as to control 100,000 shares and because it’s a quote-driven platform you can sell the 100,000 holdings immediately (unlike having to wait until there are enough people wanting to buy the shares to get out).
10. Moreover the upgraded CityIndex platform includes streaming tradeable prices, enhanced research and ‘firm quotes’ meaning that the price you see on the screen is the price at which their trades will be executed.
11. Overnight financing charges on long positions now only apply to the proportion of your position not supported by margin which reduces trading costs. Previously overnight financing was charged on the full value of open positions. As an example, if you hold a long equity position that is supported by a margin of 20 per cent, overnight financing will be reduced by this amount, so a £20,000 position will now require about £280 less per year in financing. There is no change in the way that financing is paid on short positions.
12. Interest: City Index offers Libor minus 1 per cent over £50k.

Bad Points

1. No trading in Small Cap Stocks (UK stocks must have a market capitalization of £50 million or more).
2. Spreads are very competitive for trading main Index markets and FTSE 100 shares but they are not the best for FTSE 350 stocks. City Index does not provide details of it’s spreads online which scores a negative with me as I expect this information to be readily available (you need to have an account at City Index to check spreads / bet sizes or margins – other providers do not shy away from publishing this information).
3. Reports of occasional downtimes – ‘telephone trades only right now’. Connection time-outs still appear to be a problem…
4. City Index have a 1 point rolling cash FTSE spread, offer OCO and If Done orders, and endeavour to always be 1 point either side of the underlying cash price from 0800 onwards (according to their salesman). They also deal in .10 point increments. However, if you want to close the trade at 1630, you have to call them or close it online. Otherwise it is rolled over. This is the only aspect they seem to be lacking in, in terms of functionality. If you have a job, you don’t want the hassle of having to phone them every day telling them not to roll a bet over.
5. City Index UK employs an automatic close-out margin system.  If the margin drops below 100% of the total requirement, positions are at risk of being closed. The system will typically start closing trades automatically when the margin hits 50% of the total requirement. The margin level indicator is calculated by dividing the net equity in the account by the total margin requirement and multiplying by 100.
6. Customer Support is not the best – it is useless to have live chat support if there is no person on the other end to take your call.