Best CFD Broker
If you’re looking for the best CFD Broker out there, look no further!
CMC Markets definitely tops as the best CFD online brokers out there!
Read a Trader’s CMC Markets Review and justify it for yourself.
CMC Markets Review
Before I entered into CFD trading, I was trading real stocks – I had ownership of the actual company. ETrade was my online stock broker then. Over time, I begin to realize the transaction charges and fees were actually wiping out my little profits, especially since I only had a capital of about US$3,000. Just entering a position would cost me US$24.95 and exiting a position with cost me another US$24.95. That is nearly US$50! This is a huge disadvantage to any traders with a small trading capital like me. One time, I bought a particular stock and manage to profit a petty sum of $100 and ETrade just took half of the profits away! Not just that, there’s a penalty fee if you do not trade for a certain period of time.
I was complaining these issues to a friend of mine and that is when he introduced me to CMC Markets. He told me his brother was trading CFDs and had no issues with CMC Markets. At that time I had no idea what CFDs nor CFD Trading was all about. I research about it and became astounded by the huge amount of advantage it gives (the leverage power was the main key that enticed me).
I was hunting around for numerous online CFD brokers like IGMarkets and so forth. But some of their spreads were ridiculously wide, while some provided CFD trading software with limited features. And when I say limited, believe me… it is REALLY limited – very little technical analysis tools, .etc.
I decided to follow my friend’s brother and immediately signed up for a CMC Markets Trial Account (with virtual/fake money for you to trade to try it out) to see how its trading platform is like. During that time I was using the old generation platform – MarketMaker. You could run it via the web browser using Java or download the software application and run from your computer. Both provided the same benefits and don’t have much difference. But well, I prefer the software as it runs way faster than the browser’s (especially if your internet speed is slow).
Screenshot of MarketMaker (Click on Image To View Larger)
Here are the points that I was impressed with CMC Markets’ MarketMaker:
- Able to set the graph to display in:
- Line
- Bar
- Japanese Candlesticks
- Heiken-Ashi
- Scatter
- Step
- Mountain
- Invisible
- Point and Figure Chart
- Renko
- Kagi
- Line Break
- Show the chart in Bid prices or Offer/Ask or Mid prices.
- Time Frame of 1 min, 2min, 3min, 5min, 10min, 15min, 30min, 1 hour, 2 hour, 3 hour, 4 hour, daily, and weekly.
- Able to open multiple chart of a single stock/company. Very beneficial if you want to open a short time frame chart to find a good entering/exiting position and a long time frame chart to see where the trend is going.
- Show Axis in Linear, Percentage, or Logarithmic
- Chart pattern recognition – MarketMaker is able to detect chart patterns like:
- Double Tops, double bottoms, head and shoulders, inverse head and shoulders (or Head And Shoulders Reverse), triple top, triple bottom, wedges, channels, and atriangles (ascending or descending. If you hover over these patterns when it is formed in the chart, you can see its rating (5 being most reliable and 1 being least reliable) and whether is it bearish or bullish.
- Candlestick pattern recognition – Yes! It can analyze to see whether the candlestick(s) is showing the characteristics of:
- Abandoned Baby
- Belt Hold
- Counter Attack
- Dark Cloud Cover
- Doji Star
- Dragonfly Doji
- Engulfing
- Evening Star
- Gravestone Doji
- Hammer
- Hanging Man
- Harami
- Harami Cross
- Inverted Hammer
- Long Legged Doji
- Marubozu
- Morning Star
- Piercing
- Shooting Star
- 2 Crows
- 3 Inside
- 3 Black Crows
- 3 Line Strike
- 3 Outside
- 3 Stars In The South
- 3 White Soldiers
- Advance Block
- Breakaway
- Closing Marubozu
- Doji
- Evening Doji Star
- Gap 3 Mthods
- High Wave
- Hikkake
- Hikkake Modified
- Homing Pigeon
- Identical 3 Crows
- In Neck
- Kicking
- Ladder Bottom
- Long Line
- Matching Low
- Mat Hold
- Morning Doji Star
- On Neck
- Rickshaw Man
- Rise Fall 3 Methods
- Separating Lines
- Side By Side White
- Short Line
- Spinning Top
- Stalled Pattern
- StickSandwich
- Takuri
- Tasuki Gap
- Thrusting
- Tristar
- Unique 3 River
- Upside Gap 2 Crows
- Chart Studies – Simply tick and it will display them on the chart. Configure the settings if you wish to. Here are the list of chart study features MarketMaker has:
- Bollinger Bands
- EMA
- Ichi Moku
- Moving Average Envelopes
- Parabolic SAR
- SMA
- Triangular Moving Average
- WMA
- Chande Kroll Stop
- DEMA
- Donchian Channels
- Fibo-Gann Retracement
- Keltner Channels
- Linear Regression Channel 1
- Linear Regression Channel 5
- Linear Regression Var
- Linear Regression Trend
- Linear Regression
- Linear Regression Channel
- Pivot Points
- Standard Deviation Channel
- Standard Error Channel
- Supertrend
- TEMA
- Wilder’s Smoothing
- Wilder’s Volatility System
- Zig-Zag Price
- Zig-Zag %
- Chart Oscillators – It is quite surprising a free CFD Trading Software even has these:
- Fast Stochastic
- Slow Stochastic
- Stochastic
- MACD
- Momentum
- RSI
- RSI Classic
- Rate of Change
- Stochastic RSI
- Accumulation Swing Index (ASI)
- Average Directional Index (ADX)
- Average Directional Movement Rating (ADXR)
- AverageTrueRange
- Aroon
- Aroon Oscillator
- Bollinger Band Width
- Commodity Channel Index (CCI)
- Chande Momentum
- Change
- Chaikin Volatility
- Directional Movement Index (DMI)
- Detrended Price Oscillator
- DeMarker
- Donchian Channel Width
- Elder Ray
- Fisher Transform
- Heikin Ashi Differences
- Historical Volatility
- Intraday Momentum Index
- Linear Regression Reversal
- Linear Regression Slope
- MACD Simplified
- MACD Histogram
- Mass Index
- Price Oscillator
- Price Action Indicator (PAIN)
- R Squared
- Relative Volatility Index
- Repulse
- RMI
- Stochastic Momentum Index
- TD REI
- TRIX
- TRIX Signal
- True Strength Index
- Trend Strength Index
- Trend Trigger Factor
- Ultimate Oscillator
- Williams %R
- Williams Accumulation Distribution (Acc/Dist)
- Chart Drawing Tools like:
- Lines/Trendlines
- Support/Resistance Line – if you want to draw a precise horizontal support or resistance line, then this tool does it for you.
- Fibonacci tools like Fibonacci Retracement, Fibonacci Fans, Fibonacci Arc, Fibonnaci Time Series
- Cycle
- Pitchfork (Andrew’s PitchFork)
- Raff Channels
- Gann Fans
- Gann Lines
- Notes/Text – Type anything you want and just drop it in the chart. Very useful for keeping track of notes that you want to remember.
- Channels
Yes, all these features are in the old generation MarketMaker CFD Trading Software/Platform. And best of all, it is FREE. As long as you have an account with CMC Markets, you are entitled to use this software to trade your CFDs professionally.
So without a doubt, I started an account with them immediately. Their staffs were professional and friendly. It took nearly less than a day and my account was activated and running. They even gave me a few freebies as a gift – free seminars and CDs teaching about trading psychology and technical analysis.
Here’s the thing CMC Markets has the offer:
- A leverage of 1:20 if you’re trading stocks. And a leverage of 1:100 if you’re trading forex/currency.
- Your losing positions will be automatically closed if it is making your capital in the red/loss (for other words, your capital is becoming a negative sum due to the losing positions).
- Very small spread between the bid and asking price.
- You can trade commodities, forex (currency exchange), companies (stocks), and indices.
- Very fast execution – orders are executed immediately majority of the time!
- Continued After-Sales Support. If you have any issues with their platform or a mistake in the accounting, simply email them and you will get a response from them in just 1 business day. Yes, they are responsive and quick.
- You can top up your account very easily (via credit card, cheque, or bank transfer) and it will take effect almost immediately.
- Trading seminars if they have one. You will be informed and cordially invited to attend them for free.
- Free trading lessons for you to read up and learn at their website.
- And many more.
So you might be wondering, “Old generation?”
Yes, in the year 2011, CMC Markets introduced a new CFD Trading Platform. It is called Next Generation. So what’s the difference? Well, heck lot of it! It has even more features:
Screenshot of New Generation Platform (Click On Image For Larger View)
- Trailing Stop-Loss – very useful if you want to maximize your profits and minimize your losses. Just set the amount or points and it will automatically follow the movement of the price to adjust.
- Take Profit – set the price you wish to exit the position and it will automatically execute it without your attention.
- Even smaller spread price of 0.7 points.
- A way shorter time frame to display your charts – 5 seconds, 10 seconds, and 30 seconds.
- A whole new interface. Believe me it will make you look like a professional trader should people see you using it. It is way more interactive and pleasing to the eye.
- Access to market insights and news – a very useful feature if you want to keep track of the market announcements or market news as you trade. They are summarized and straight to the point.
- Calender – Yes, this is my favourite feature of all. As you know there’s such thing as stock market almanac, which are key event dates that could affect the stock’s volatility and market’s sentiment. This little useful feature will list you all the events that will happen in any month, telling you the forecast and expected results for events such as Non-farm payroll, unemployment rate (in the U.S, Japan, .etc), and such. Very useful feature that other CFD Brokers usually don’t provide in their platforms!
- And a whole lot more.
You have to try it out for yourself to know what I’m talking about.
Simply sign up for a trial account and see for yourself! Be amazed, be enticed. And also, it has come to my attention that there are several other sites that rate CMC Markets terribly like 1 out of 5 stars and so forth. These reviews were written BEFORE the release of CMC Next Generation which had a huge change to everything.
You can sign up here: CMC Markets – Lead Generation
I hope this CMC Markets Review has helped and provided you the information you’re looking for.
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