CMC Markets

CMC Markets

Customer Service is top notch!

I've been a customer with CMC Markets for 6 years and used to Spread Bet on their Market Maker platform. Once they moved me across to the NextGen platform I was unsure and wasnt best pleased. But once the account was open and I got used to it, I must say I was wrong and ate my words of discontent. I trade mainly FX and have benefited from all NextGen has to offer.

The charting package is like no other, the app is brilliant, spreads are as tight as you like......customer service team treat you amazingly well and respond to emails and calls straightaway

Happy customer sharing my experience with any platform shoppers out there!
Fantastic trading platform - intuitive and easy to use.

Have been using their new spreadbet platform, both for web and iPhone and its been a very good experience so far. The spreads are narrow and pretty consistent. I love the iPhone app - its the best mobile trading app i have ever used. i'd like them to add trailing stops and better charting. Perhaps a news ticker as well. But very pleased so far.

Very spooky - I just logged in today and they have added trailing stops and the charts have additional functionality.
Mystry Trade

On my account there were 2 separate trades executed (Forex) same time for the same currency pair. These are 2 separate trades and it is not possible to execute 2 sames trades at the same time in MM. Any way CMC is not helpfull as usuall and couldnt give any explanation. I ended up loosing money and closed the account long time ago.
Was better in the old "deal 4 free" days

Used to be great a few years back. Now with all the updates it has got a little complicated and suggish. However, it still has it good looks. I guess it will take some time getting used to it compared to IGIndex.
They behave like gangsters

I got given a version of a company report NuSep Ltd he completelly left out the fact that the company had just made a new issue of shares about eight times the size of current shares on issue at way below the price that he took a bid from me at I didnt ring to buy but his version of the report made me think the shares fell heavilly for nothing he also didnt tell me the directors were doing a debt for equity swap In another case with a mining share I had the advisor telling me even though the option exercise price is way above current price theyll get there if I think that they will he then kept badgering me to raise my bid higher I just lost it and went with him and lost most of my money but would of soon lost lot had I stayed in in another case with another share I was panicing as the advisor knew over the shares continual fall and I placed an order he got held up by something he then got back onto me andd told me I got sold but his answer made it obvious the stock had started turning up while he was held up but he didnt bother to tell me The Matter went to this FOS in Australia and they lied all the way into this dispute unfortunatelly FOS it seems ussually go with the lies of brokers and if you can prove it after the event they just say your too late our decision is final its abit like the judge in the old classic movie Oliver where a new witness arrives just after the judge sentences Oliver to say he saw who did it and it wasnt Oliver the judge just says "havnt I( made my decision" Naturally CMC are over the moon about such I then took them to anti discrimination board still trying to get all the recordings they hold they lied there too yet again Im told Im too late
They prey on customers with tight stops and simply run the quote against you.

Absolutely awful experiences trading with CMC Markets.

They prey on customers with tight stops and simply run the quote against you....Even if the real market is going the way that you anticipated.

Stay Away.
Plain speech: This is fraud.

Charts that defy the market. Regardless of what stock prices are doing, the CMC platform will regularly decide to spike in the opposite direction, running stops, executing bogus orders, and generally doing what it can to put you in the red. Case in point - 'Black Monday', when the DAX dropped over 600 points during the day: CMC actually opened late, 30 points below the market, grabbing as many orders as it could before skyrocketing 100 points over the next five minutes, while the DAX was in freefall, losing 50 points in the same time frame. A nice touch was ignoring the stop loss entirely.

Don't be taken in by these fraudsters.
D4F

For UK stocks I think D4F are excellent. I wouldn't personally use any SB company for index trading now I have a real futures account.
D4F Spreadbet (and CFD)

Uses the almost the same quotes as D4F CFD, with spreads just 1 point wider in some instances. No bias although all index prices are based on futures prices so it might seem like there is if you are watching the actual index prices. Both have reasonable real-time charts but CFD charts are better.

Foreign Exchange prices are competitive with the open market (better at times) so a good choice for tax free FX dealing.

Index spreads are easily the best in the S B market (but still about twice what you'd find for true Futures). Fills can be very fast if you get automated service (about 1 second). In my experience auto-fills were usualy available during market hours on the major indexes on reasonably small bets, but sometimes very slow (30 secs?) outside of these times and on lesser indexes like the Spanish IBEX leading to re-quotes.

Trading Platform loads in 30 secs or so after initial downloading, is stable, allows limit/stops/oco. Account status is always 10 odd minutes out of date, irritatingly.

Customer Service is good

Due to the taxfree benefits I would reccommend them for FX trading; and Index trading if your time horizon is over 1 or 2 hours on open positions. For shorter term trades get a futures account as the spread will kill you!

Individual shares - can't comment, no experience
D4F

All peto has said plus:

Good for smaller bets (<£10/point) on UK FTSE100 shares because most of the time, there is no extra spread added on.

US share bets not so good: minimum spread is 5 and they frequently increase to 10 or 15 in volatile conditions. I have seen the spread jump to 100 e.g. EBAY and remain there for a minute or so.

And to repeat peto: scalping indices for < say 20 points will kill you.
Not Keen

Ok for the smaller trader, but on large trades it is better to go with a broker rather than a bookie, feel uneasy knowing that when I win they lose...it is not in their interest for client sto do well.

Prefer being GNI Touch as I can use the order book for the auctions.
Deal4Free

As a relative newcomer to D4F I initially found it quite cumbersome. However their back-up is good, although it does take some time to trade, then further time to enter a stop.

One big drawback I find is that if you close a trade you have to remember to cancel the stop, otherwise you finish up with a trade you didn't want.

Would not want to trade the Dow dailies on it, blink and you've missed several moves, I am too much of a novice as of yet.

Overall, service not bad. Their statements were confusing to someone not used to rolling bets, but once sorted out are very clear.
Market Maker 5

10th Feb - Deal4Free release a new version of their software called MarketMaker 5.

Key differences and upgrades

1. The whole thing has Windows XP look and feel.

2. The product is much more flexible in the way it lets you organise data. e.g. you can now have individual prices, groups of prices, charts, and your realtime position all up and scattered around the screen in various different windows.

3. They have got their layouts working. So I can save an array of charts and prices in the exact place on the screen and get everything back exactly as I want it every time. e.g. I have a morning layout for European markets, an afternoon layout layout for the US, and a laptop layout for my laptops little screen. I can switch between the three layouts at the click of a button.

4. They've included stochastics in their charting. I've asked them to include CCI so hopefully that will come later. They've told me that they have a full time developer working on charts now so hopefully more improvements to come in the future.
re-cuoting

you have to be cerefull when they re-quote you .

you might see the spreads up-to 100 points for a stock of £8
Deal4Free

I used this firm for a short time, their quoted prices can leave a lot to be desired, then they may re-quote which takes even more time. If you are trading inter-day by the time all of this nonsense is completed you may well have missed your trade and indeed find yourself very quickly testing your stop.

I found the trading platform to be very poor indeed with frequent loss of data.

The spreads are not as tight as you may think 4pts on each end plus 4pts for a CRB
really?

deal4free maybe their name, but dealing for free you're definitely not.

their trading platform is simple and the tools they supply for analysis are useless along with their mediocre support, but hey! it's not about their support, it's about making a s*** load of money and driving your ferrari 360 spider in a year's time and living in the swankiest part of town where every one has a porter and a cook!

just as quickly as i've excited and made you stain yourself i'll have to knock you off your high horse to the real world. it's betting. they are a bookie. they rig the prices so you don't win. if you have balls of steel and go around saying: 'i'll be back.' you can take on a position over a long period of time to really capitalise because thats the kind of person that deal4free are aiming at; your balls have been replaced because you have been kicked in them so much yet you still keep coming back for more.

what does toilet paper in public toilets and arnold schwarzenegger have in common?

they're rough, they're tough, and they take no s***!

don't be a fool as you could end up cleaning public toilets when you're broke.
Take a gamble

"we have the tightest spreads around"....what they fail to mention is how far their entire spread is out the market! Spreadbetting is a gamblers game and deal4free will manage to consistently price you out of the market. Forget TA if you want to spread bet, because by the time your system has generated a long signal, you probably need to go short to work the spread.

If you have a query D4F will be there ready to answer with their online chat service .... unless it looks like answering it will make you loose less money - bast**ds.

This is a quick way of loosing money. Their CFD service is no better - they use practically the same spreads. STAY AWAY.
CFD ftse100 spreads

I don't understand this critisism. I have compared D4F's prices with those supplied by Esignal and MyTrack, and the bid and offer prices were identical.

The above statement is based on watching CFD Single Price Windows in MarketMaker v5 of FTSE100 stocks. I haven't actually traded with D4F yet. The prices supplied by D4F were about a second behind Esignals/Mytrack but were always the same. D4F say the SB prices are the same as CFD ones, I haven't verified this.

What you say might be true for other stocks, as I have only checked some FTSE100 ones. I was talking to someone at the CMC seminar on Thursday and he said to ONLY trade FTSE 100 stocks as D4F is uncompetitive elsewhere. How can you justify what you say for FTSE100 stocks, given what I've seen? I'm planning to only trade FTSE100 stocks, so the fact that the outer-mongolian stocks' spreads are loose, doesn't bother me. Are orders actually filled at completely different prices than are shown in the Single Price Windows?
Deal4Free Spreadbet

I have used Deal4Free for couple of years and cannot understand all the problems reported about spreads and requotes. Apart from a period where I became a bad boy for trading too frequently and ended up with all my trades via a dealer, they are extremely fair. For UK FTSE 100 stocks their cash prices are generally identical to those shown on Level 2. Smaller amounts (£5 on RBS, GSK, AZN or £10 on HBOS, BARC etc) go straight through instantly on the automatic system at exactly the price shown. So, you can Buy (and Sell) at exactly the Level 2 price, with no costs or Stamp Duty - forgive my stupidity but what can be wrong with that ? Their software is 95% reliable, phones are answered quickly and pleasantly, they usually stand by the price you try to get on the very odd occasion you are held for a requote. I strongly suspect that anybody who feels they are less than excellent has never tried some of the alternatives, who manipulate prices, requote almost every time, have system problems constantly etc. With D4F I at least feel that they want my business and treat me accordingly, whereas my other experiences left me feeling that emptying my account as fast as possible was their sole mission.
CMC / Deal4Free

Not a regular poster on these kind of boards, but felt I just had to stand up for CMC, who I have used for just over a year now on a daily basis.

I think they run an excellent business - and although I use other spreadbet companies for options etc, I wouldn't dream of putting any FTSE100 or currency bets anywhere else.

The spreads are superb. Anyone whingeing about requotes should run a level 2 screen alongside the CMC screen to see why they won't offer you say RBS at 1610 in £50 when they are only offered in say 10 shares in the market ... they are not a charity! Take a look at their spreads in cash gold, where they are half a dollar compared to up to one and a half dollars elsewhere !

The new software is a big step forward - ok the charting package is not going to win any awards - but for pure speed and flexibility (especially over multiple monitors), you're not going to find better. One word of warning: do check the financing adjustments made on your rolling cash bets - they do make the odd mistake - but everytime I have pointed it out they have been very quick to put it right.

I sound like I work at the place - but I can assure you I don't ... just wanted to balance some of the negative comments out there, which I think are just ignorant.
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