# Which CFD broker is better - CMC Markets, IG, FPM or City Index?



## australiansurfer (13 April 2014)

Hello everyone!
I want to open a CFDs trading account and am considering the following brokers - CMC Market, IG, FPM and City Index - which one would you recommend? I'd appreciate if you can also share your experience, good or bad, with any of them. Thanks.

Sam (aka Australian Surfer)


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## AdventureAllways (2 May 2014)

Hello Australian Surfer,

I have been Trading CFD's since 2004. I use the Saxo platform, albeit not through Saxo in Syd - The Sales mgr and I do not get along. I use Halifax Online which are based on the Gold Coast, they are professional, provide great service which is sometimes lacking in this environment. Halifax are a White Label Partner of Saxo and have been around for a long time.

This is a simple to use plaftomr which is highly functional, you can trade equities & CFD's on around 21 exchanges, Options, Futures & Forex off the 1 platform, with a single account.

The thing that led me to the Saxo Platform is that the positions are hedged and therefore they are only making money off the brokerage and interest, unlike some of the Bookmakers out there who also make money on your losses because they do not hedge their exposure.

Happy to chat further if this is of interest to you.

AdventureAlways


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## skyQuake (2 May 2014)

IG and CMC are the more 'decent' ones out of the bunch. Its pretty easy to get stung but its getting better.

Personally, I'm with IG still. They've cleaned up their act respectably.


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## padman (6 May 2014)

What do you think about Commsec?

https://www2.commsec.com.au/Public/Trading/CommsecCFDs.aspx#

Seems like they offer OTC CFDs now, with DMA and guaranteed stop loss. Commissions are $10 i think. 

Tossing up between this and IG at the moment..


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## sinic (6 May 2014)

Also Commsec CFDs is just a rebadged IG Markets platform but you can have instant fund transfers from your linked Commsec CDIA account. It is reasonable, particularly if you activate the DMA option.


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## cynic (18 September 2014)

cynic said:


> ...From July 2006 through to June 2010 I remained loyal to a different broker and my overall trading experiences of this other broker (whom shall remain nameless) were largely frustrating and unprofitable. (In fairness to that other broker I should mention that some of those unsavoury experiences might be attributable to the extreme market conditions that arose during the GFC).
> 
> I currently wish I'd changed over to City Index sooner!
> 
> Given that I've been recommending City Index to fellow traders, I'd be very interested to hear from any other traders who've had recent trading experience with them (good,bad or otherwise).




Whilst my experience of City Index has continued to be largely favourable, there have been just one or two occasions over the years where changes had been effected to the operation of their trading platform which have caused me some annoyance.

Usually, I was informed in a timely manner which enabled me to make the requisite logistical adjustments to my trading methodology and funding arrangements.

This evening, however, I suddenly discovered, much to my dismay, that I was no longer able to fund my Euro based account via my Australian Credit Card. 

Upon contacting their London office I was initially misinformed about the cause, and was even told (incorrectly) that there was an issue with my card, and led to believe that I should be raising the matter with my bank! 

Further to this, and despite my protestations to the contrary, the operator told me there was nothing that he was able to do to avert the possibility of automatic closure of my existing positions in the event of a margin call. 

He also insisted that he was unable to accede to my request to speak with someone of senior authority, claiming that such person/s were not available at that time.

Eventually the matter was circumvented via a temporary workaround (my trading account base currency was temporarily converted to AUD, funds transacted from my credit card, and then the trading account base curreny changed back to EUR). However, I was further advised that I would need to liasise with the Australian office, in relation to this matter, in order to ensure that the issue is more permanently resolved.

Over my years of actively trading with City Index, I was sufficiently content with the quality of products and services to willingly recommend them to others.

I can now only say that I am extremely disappointed by this recent event and the unprofessional manner in which it was handled by the initial operator. I sincerely hope that this situation (which has me totally incensed and tempted to consider changing providers) proves to be an isolated instance.

Not only will I be liaising with City Index further on this matter, I will also be actively investigating alternative providers from amongst City's industry competitors.

City Index, if you happen to be reading this, I'd like to remind you that many in this industry go to a lot of expense marketing themselves in the hope of increasing their client base. 

If you take the time to examine my nine trading accounts, you'll see that five of them have been very actively traded over these past years. 

City Index, please be aware that another unsavoury experience (like the one I had tonight) should be sufficient to have me promptly taking my business elsewhere!


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## burglar (18 September 2014)

cynic said:


> ... City Index, please be aware that another unsavoury experience (like the one I had tonight) should be sufficient to have me promptly taking my business elsewhere!




Sad to hear that you had an unsavoury experience with a broker.
They can be so obtuse when it suits them.

I recently had an experience which was laughable.
Trouble is, they think I cannot find a better broker.
Truth is, they're probably right!


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## cynic (18 September 2014)

burglar said:


> Sad to hear that you had an unsavoury experience with a broker.
> They can be so obtuse when it suits them.
> 
> I recently had an experience which was laughable.
> ...




Approximately five years ago the customer service operator with another provider (one of the industry leaders) gave me the same line. At the time I even feared it might've been true! My reply at the time was that if such claim were true, then I would cease to avail myself of the services of that industry, as the poor quality of service was quite simply unacceptable.

Fortunately, I was subsequently delighted to discover that the operator's claims were unfounded on a number of critical metrics.

However, I've been noticing that standards are indeed slipping across a broad spectrum of industries. 

It seems that business policy of the new millenium has become:

 "The customer is always wrong" (irrespective of all evidence to the contrary!)


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## skc (18 September 2014)

cynic said:


> If you take the time to examine my nine trading accounts, you'll see that five of them have been very actively traded over these past years.




Why do you have 9 accounts? And how to you trade with 9 accounts? Would that not be quite cumbersome operationally (e.g. Constantly logging in and out to place orders etc)?


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## cynic (18 September 2014)

skc said:


> Why do you have 9 accounts? And how to you trade with 9 accounts? Would that not be quite cumbersome operationally (e.g. Constantly logging in and out to place orders etc)?




One is an FX account. 

As for the eight CFD accounts, up until a few years ago, I used to be able to operate very effectively with just two.

Back in those ('good ole') days, transactions realised in other currencies weren't automatically converted to the base currency of the account. 
When the policy changed to automatic back to base currency conversion, I needed pairs of accounts in each base currency for the different instruments I was trading (i.e. GBP for FTSE, EURO for DAX, US for metals etc.). 

To do otherwise would result in significant erosion to my system/s' overall performance( ie. instead of incurring currency spread on the net profit, or some cases loss, over a sequence of winning and losing trades, I would be incurring currency spread on the entire win or loss from each individual trade.)

If every single trade resulted in profit, it would not be as much of a problem, however my systems aren't quite at such an enviable level of accuracy!

I am able to have multiple accounts open on one pc, although I usually have both my ADSL and mobile broadband going simultaneously and split the accounts between the two pcs when I'm actively trading them.


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## skc (19 September 2014)

cynic said:


> One is an FX account.
> 
> As for the eight CFD accounts, up until a few years ago, I used to be able to operate very effectively with just two.
> 
> ...




I see. So you really want a multi currency account that let's you convert at a time of your own choosing...


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## Trembling Hand (19 September 2014)

skc said:


> I see. So you really want a multi currency account that let's you convert at a time of your own choosing...




Yeah. Just don't use bucket shops.


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## cynic (19 September 2014)

skc said:


> I see. So you really want a multi currency account that let's you convert at a time of your own choosing...



Correct!



Trembling Hand said:


> Yeah. Just don't use bucket shops.




Situations like this recent one are increasingly inclining me to agree!

My reason for choosing OTC providers is primarily driven by the desire to trade smaller contracts on futures and options (or derivatives thereof).

If either yourself or skc (or any other forum member for that matter) is aware of any non "bucket shops" that offer such facility for retail traders , please, please, please let me know! 

I'm definitely in the market for another broker/provider!


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## Trembling Hand (19 September 2014)

cynic said:


> Situations like this recent one are increasingly inclining me to agree!
> 
> My reason for choosing OTC providers is primarily driven by the desire to trade smaller contracts on futures and options (or derivatives thereof).
> 
> ...




What size are you talking. IB you only need to be doing 20K.


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## cynic (19 September 2014)

Trembling Hand said:


> What size are you talking. IB you only need to be doing 20K.




My concern is largely unrelated to the total amount of capital required. 

At the moment I am able to trade position sizes as small as 2 Euros per point on DAX index futures/options and 2 GBP on the FTSE.

P.S. Is the recent ASIC licensing issue likely to be a problem with IB, or is that unrelated to futures and options trading.


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## Trembling Hand (19 September 2014)

cynic said:


> My concern is largely unrelated to the total amount of capital required.
> 
> At the moment I am able to trade position sizes as small as 2 Euros per point on DAX index futures/options and 2 GBP on the FTSE.
> 
> P.S. Is the recent ASIC licensing issue likely to be a problem with IB, or is that unrelated to futures and options trading.




OK. I thought you were talking about FX trades. But is anything worth trading at $2 a tick?


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## cynic (19 September 2014)

Trembling Hand said:


> OK. I thought you were talking about FX trades. But is anything worth trading at $2 a tick?




Thanks for taking an interest in this T/H.

My systems achieve very good expectancy across multiple trades. At times I'll have anything from dozens to hundreds of positions open concurrently.

At 2 Euros per tick per individual trade, the typical drawdowns encountered when trading multiple positions are quite manageable for a cynic of my humble means. 

However, at 10 Euros per tick, the risk of failure due to drawdown becomes unacceptably high!


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## Trembling Hand (19 September 2014)

cynic said:


> . At times I'll have anything from dozens to hundreds of positions open concurrently.




Gee! Ok that makes sense.


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## ThingyMajiggy (19 September 2014)

cynic said:


> At times I'll have anything from dozens to hundreds of positions open concurrently.




You must be part octopus managing hundreds of positions!


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## grah33 (4 May 2015)

*CMC or IB, for short term trading of US shares?*

I'm interested in exploring the trading (short term) of US shares (they have a nice bull market), but with CMC it is done through CFDs.  just wondering, is CMC still good for trading US shares?  the CMC software looks easy to use as well, which is great for someone who wants to get into it soon. although  i don't like the idea of having to deposit 10,000USD right from the beginning into an IB account.
i know CFDs allow crazy amounts of leveraging but i could just use them in  a strict and safe way to not put myself in any dangerous situations, trading the amounts that i'm comftorable with.


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