CMCMarkets Review

CMC Markets is a private company founded by its chief executive, Peter Cruddas, and he and his family still control approximately 85 per cent of the business. The flagship 'Market Maker' platform has now been superseded by a newly launched platform; 'Next Generation Platform' although at the time of writing both the NextGen and Market Maker platform are supported and you can even have them both open at the same time.

A market maker in online retail financial services, CMCMarkets is both a global leader in the provision of Contracts for Difference (CFD's) and one of the largest Financial Spread Betting service providers in the UK. Its' global offices now house over 1000 CMC Markets staff following a 47% growth in staff numbers in 07/08, delivering a localised service to clients in 85+ countries. The trading service allows clients to access twenty-three International financial markets offering over 3,000 individual trading instruments distributed over 30 markets covering Equity, Indices, Commodities and Foreign Exchange all via the MarketMaker® trading platform.

What they say

Spread Betting - New Precision Pricing Platform Will Save Money For Betters - Image by Luigi Rosa via Flickr

Marketmaker was first launched in 1996 in the UK when CMC Markets transacted the first ever FX trade online - in fact Peter Cruddas who is the owner of CMC claims to have launched the world's first online forex retail broking service. January 2000 saw CMC Markets become the first company to offer online commission free CFDs after the company gained a Financial Services Authority licence to trade futures. Following the success of the CFD service, CMCMarkets re-invented spreadbetting and launched Rolling Cash Bets in 2001. By combining our commitment to tight spreads and the intrinsic tax benefits of spread betting, we believe spreads are the pinnacle of our efforts to reduce the financing cost of trading for retail/personal/private investors."

CMC Markets handled over 20 million trades during financial year 2007-2008 with the trades executed having a total value of $1.4 trillion across the full CFD product range (including Foreign Exchange and Financial Spread Betting). Today the trading platform is used by clients in more than 70 countries with over 98% of global trades with CMC Markets conducted online.

Here's some bold claims from CMC Market's owner and chairman Peter Cruddas about their new Next Generation trading platform: 'Firstly when you spread bet with us on next generation technology all prices and spreads are calculated electronically using algorithm software. No dealer is quoting the prices or executing trades. Secondly all spread bet deals are executed electronically one hundred percent of the time. In other words we have taken the human element out of the process and just process everything electronically. There are no re-quotes, no fill or kill policy that cancels a ticket when the market moves. we execute every time, electronically. The system does not read you as a buyer or seller because it doesn't know your position before it quotes. It quotes independently every time regardless of whether you are buyer or seller. In effect when you trade on Next Gen technology you are trading directly with a computer that is executing the trades. Next Gen dealers at CMC Markets manage net risk not execute or quote trades.'

Regulation

CMCMarkets is regulated by NFA(USA), FSA(UK), ASIC(AU), BAFIN(DE), OSC(CA) and CBRC(China).

Verdict: CMC offer a wide array of betting opportunities. The leverage is great, the liquidity is good on most markets, the spreads aren't too bad for forex, stocks and indexes (silver is a shocker, gold is bearable) but their charts need improving. Overall I would say CMC Markets offer a good backup platform. Avoid if you are a beginner. Best for swing traders. Not suitable for scalpers.

List of Markets offered by CMC (pdf).

More information on CMC Markets here

If you are located in the UK you can request a free no obligations brochure about CMC Markets and the latest products and services they offer by clicking here

Read and Write Customer Reviews about CMC Markets here

Please note that here we are only giving an account of our experiences and readers comments/contributions, please do not take this as advice to open/close/avoid any firms - your experience might be different! Comments of different experiences are welcome though.