Overview


IC Markets Review 2024

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What is IC Markets?

Founded in 2007 in Sydney, Australia, as International Capital Markets Pty Ltd (ABN 12 123 289 109), it is known as IC Markets. Since its formation, IC Markets has established itself as one of the handful of true ECN Forex brokers in the world. Especially, in the Australian forex market, IC Markets and Pepperstone are leading ECN Forex brokerage service providers.

IC Market was founded by people with significant experience in the Forex, CFD and Equity markets in Asia, Europe and North America. The experienced management was the key behind IC Markets’ success over the years as they ensured the best possible technology solutions are used and handpick the best liquidity available in the market in order to provide the best in class brokerage service to the Australian, as well as the global retail Forex market.

How does IC Markets work?

With ICMarkets can choose between Metatrader (MT4&MT5) and cTrader to trade over 230 instruments with a leverage of 1:500 and low spreads.

IC Markets Australia - Homepage

IC Markets Australia – Homepage

IC Markets in Chinese

IC Markets in Chinese

Regulation & Trust

Is IC Markets a good and regulated broker?

Yes, they are regulated by ASIC, CySEC and FSA.   As an Australian registered trading broker, IC Markets Australia ( International Capital Markets Pty Ltd)  is licensed and regulated by the Australian Securities and Investments Commission (ASIC – AFSL registration number 335692), making it subjected to one of the strictest regulators in the world. Also, in addition to ASIC regulation, this brokerage has CySEC ( IC MARKETS (EU) LTD, Licence No 362/18, Cyprus)  and FSA (IC Markets SC, Seychelles) regulations.

 

Trading Platforms & Tools

IC Markets cTrader Platform

IC Markets cTrader Platform

Does IC Markets use MetaTrader?

While the Standard and Raw Spread accounts support only MetaTrader and its mobile trading platforms, the cTrader account is only accessible from cTrader and cTrader mobile.

MetaTrader is the most popular Forex trading platform in the world, but IC Markets has modified it to make it even better! Both the desktop, iPhone and Android Metatrader software are directly connected to IC Markets’ liquidity providers. Hence, it offers unmatched True ECN connectivity to retail traders.

On the other hand, the cTrader platform is relatively new but has some distinct features that make it the choice of professional and institutional traders. For example, Level II market depth is very useful for traders who trade large enough accounts to move the market price. In addition, IC Markets cTrader also supports all 64 major and minor currency pairs offered to other account holders.

Based on our research regarding the major Forex brokers around the world, we have found the speed of trade execution of IC Markets to be at 90 percentile rank. Which means IC Markets’ speed of trade execution is better than 90 per cent of the Forex brokers.

Instruments

How many assets can be traded at IC Markets?

We found that ICMarkets don’t offer a big number of assets to trade. The company claims that there are over 230 forex and CFD financial instruments, including stocks CFDs, Forex CFDs, Indices CFDs, Crypto CFDs, Commodities CFDs, Bonds CFDs and Futures CFDs for traders to choose from.

You can trade the following CFD trading instruments:

  • Crypto CFDs: 10 ( Bitcoin, Ethereum, Dash, Bitcoin Cash, NEO, Ripple, EOS, Emercoin, Namecoin and Peercoin).
  • Forex CFDs: 60+ ( EUR/USD, EUR/GBP, EUR/AUD, EUR/NZD, AUD/USD, GBP/USD,…).
  • Indices CFDs: 23  ( S&P 200, FTSE 100, S&P 500, Xetra DAX,…).
  • Stocks CFDs: 100+ ( Apple, Facebook, McDonald’s, Nike, Oracle, BHP Billiton,….).
  • Commodities CFDs: 19 ( Coffee, Oil, Cocoa, Soybean,..).
  • Futures CFDs: 4 ( Brent crude oil, WTI crude oil, CBOE VIX Index and ICE Dollar Index).
  • Bonds CFDs: 6.

Trading Conditions

What are the IC Markets Spreads?

They offer variable spreads on their trading platforms. Their average spreads for the Raw Spread account is 0.1 pips (EUR/USD), 0.4 (GBP/USD) and 0.2 pips (AUDUSD), with AUD$7 commission per lot round turn.

By contrast, the Standard account has an average spreads of 1.1 pips  ( EUR/USD pair), with no commissions.

What are their fees and commissions?

They don’t charge commissions on Standard accounts, but there is a $7 per standard lot round turn in the Raw Spread accounts.

What is their max leverage with ICMarkets?

IC Markets accounts come with a maximum 500:1 ( ASIC regulation), and 30:1 ( CySEC regulation).

Research & Education 

They provide a wide range of online educational tools including video tutorials, web TV, forex lessons, daily market analysis, economic calendar and webinars.

Type of Accounts 

ICMarkets accounts

ICMarkets accounts

ICMarkets currently offers three types of Forex trading accounts, the Standard, Raw Spread, and cTrader.

The Standard account of IC Markets offers MetaTrader trading platform retail traders can open this account with only $200 initial deposit. IC Markets mostly targets “discretionary traders” with this account, who usually makes only a handful of trades based on technical and/or fundamental trading strategies.

Although ICMarkets has an account name called “Raw Spread,” their Standard account is also based on ECN technology that does not involve any dealing desk. The only major difference between the Raw Spread and the Standard account is how this financial firm charges their fees.

On the Standard account, they charge a 1 pip spread and retail customers do not have to pay any commissions. However, on the Raw Spread account, traders are charged $3.5 commission per standard lot, but this account virtually has no spreads.

Besides this, all other features of the Standard and Raw Spread accounts are the same, which includes 500:1 leverage, 64 currency pairs to trade with, and a minimum initial deposit of $200. Both of these account types support all trading styles, including scalping.

The third account type offered by them is the cTrader account. cTrader is a cloud-based trading platform. Unlike the MetaTrader platform, retail traders can log in to the cTrader Web from any modern browser that does not require downloading, installing and/or maintaining the software platform on their desktop. However, there is a cTrader desktop application for professional traders who prefer the speed of order execution over convenience.

While IC Markets’ cTrader account comes with the same 500:1 leverage, it does offer some additional benefits, such as Level II pricing that shows full market depth, no order or trade restrictions, and multiple order types. cTrader account holders can also participate in automated trading via the cTrader Algo interface, which is used to build and customize algorithmic trading strategies. The cTrader Algo is based on the popular C# programming language.

Forex Islamic Accounts: They provide Swap-Free Accounts?

They provide Islamic forex accounts, or swap-free accounts, to those Muslim-minded customers who can not receive o pay swaps. Their Islamic account complies with Sharia law 100 per cent.

ICMarkets Demo Account

All of these three accounts come with a free demo version that traders can use to familiarize themselves with the IC Markets true ECN trading environment.

How to Open an IC Markets  Live Account?

You can open an account very fast. You need to fill up a form with your email and first name/last name and phone nr (you can signup with Paypal). in the next step, you will be asked to fill up more details about yourself. Next steps it will be the trading account configuration, declaration and funding options.

They require to check your identity, residential address, and the source of funds. Once verified, your live account will ready to go.

IC Markets- Open Live account

IC Markets- Open Live account

Deposit & Withdrawal Options

IC Markets- Deposit Options

IC Markets- Deposit Options

Currently, you can deposit using any major debit and credit cards, including Visa, Mastercard and UnionPay. Also, the most popular e-wallet providers, PayPal, Neteller and Skrill, are available.

They also accept Wire transfers, but 2-5 business days is the usual processing time.

Others funding options are Bpay, FasaPay, broker to broker, POLI, Thai internet banking, Rapidpay, Klarna and Vietnamese internet banking.

For crypto fans, you can use Bitcoin wallet to fund your account.

For withdrawals, they don’t charge extra fees, however, its bank charge a fee of 20 AUD or equivalent for international wire transfers.

What is the minimum deposit on IC Markets?

Traders can open this Standard, Raw and cTrader account with only $200 initial deposit.

Client Support

ICMarkets has a dedicated knowledge bank that offers answers to most commonly asked questions. Customers who are not satisfied with the answers can reach IC Market’s support staffs via the live chat option on their website.

Besides the live chat option, IC Markets also has a dedicated support email address (support@icmarkets.com), where customers can send their queries.

They also lists several phone numbers for their Australian office (+61 02 8014 4280) and dedicated hotline in Shanghai, China (+86 21 51851798), where customers can talk in Chinese.

During the research for this review, we called the Australian general enquiry line and found IC Markets support staff to be very helpful.

Languages

ICMarkets is offered in English, Chinese, Thai, Indonesian, Korean, German, French, Portuguese, Spanish, Vietnamese, Russian, Arabic, Malay, Italian, Bulgarian, Croatian and Czech.

Conclusion

The ICMarkets servers are located in the NY4 IBX Equinix Data Centre in New York. As a major international financial hub, New York is home to a large number of brokers and dealers. The NY4 IBX data centre is known for hosting servers of around 600 buy and sell-side firms in New York, which puts IC Markets right in the middle of the global financial ecosystem.

As the servers are located in the same place, order execution of them is very fast compared to other Australian brokers, who host their trading server in Australia.

IC Markets has been operating its Forex brokerage business with distinction for close to 10 years and earned the trust of major retail trading firms. If you want to trade Forex with a solid broker, give IC Markets a try.

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