IG Markets Review
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IG Markets is a regulated online broker that offers Spread betting and CFD in UK, FX & CFD in Australia, and Forex in the USA. IG Forex fees are low and very reasonable but their Stock CFD fees are high.
IG Markets Pros & Cons at a Glance
- 17,000 Markets & 95 Currency Pairs
- Low spreads from 0.8 pips on EUR/USD & USD/JPY
- No Fee Deposit & Withdrawal
- 70 indicators for Analysis
- Well Regulated in Top-tier Financial Markets
- IG might charge you inactivity fees
- Stock CFD fees are high
- Portfolio may vary from country to country
Is IG a Regulated Stocks CFD Platform?
IG Markets that was established in 1974 is one of the most popular brokers in the world. IG offers different portfolio and products in different countries. For example, if you come from UK you will be offered spread betting & CFDs, In Australia its trading portfolio is more on Forex, Indices, and Cryptocurrencies.
From regulation point of view, IG is definitely one of top regulated brokerage companies. Here is a list of financial authorities:
Europe:
(FCA): Financial Conduct Authority in the UK.
Federal Financial Supervisory Authority (BaFin) in Europe.
Swiss Financial Market Supervisory Authority (FINMA).
Oceania:
Australian Securities and Investment Commission (ASIC).
Singapore Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS).
Japanese Financial Services Authority (FSA).
Financial Markets Authority (FMA) of New Zealand.
Middle East:
South Africa & Dubai (Financial Services Authority (DFSA)
(FSCA), Financial Sector Conduct Authority)
This way IG is regulated literally everywhere. As a result, traders will be entitled for investor protection of £85,000 for UK residents, Swiss 100,000 CHF, and €20,000 for Europe,
We have analysed over 130+ Tier-1 online brokers & online trading platforms, our editorial team decided to rank IG as a decent trading option for:
- Top 5 forex broker in the USA
- The best CFD brokers in Australia
The best CFD brokers list in 2021 helps you open your trading account with a regulated cfd platform. We've reviewed over 1800 brokers and blacklisted all CFD Scams. P.S. Reviews are written by trading experts | We are 100% Independent
How much is IG Market’s Commission?
When it comes to CFD trading, we often receive questions such as:
“Is IG a good broker for beginners?” or
“How much is IG fees?”.
Well, it all depends on your trading and investment strategy and services that you use. Let’s have a look at IG’s business model and how they make money. These are different costs that you might incur when trading with IG.
- Spreads or Commissions
- Share CFD commission
- FX conversion
- Guaranteed stop premium
- Margin
- Slippage
- Volume-based rebates
- Overnight fees
- Inactivity fees
- hedging strategies*
Generally, being able to change the default leverage is an advantage. Unfortunately when trading with IG platform, You Are NOT Allowed to change the default leverage.
IG’s fees for S&P 500 CFD, Europe 50 CFD, EUR USD are built into spread:
✓ For S&P 500 CFD the fee is 0.6 average spread cost, which is low.
✓ For Europe 50 CFD the fee is 1.5 average spread fee, which is considered to be low.
✕ For EURUSD the fee is €0.7 for each lot for PRO accounts, which is also low.
✕ There is inactivity fee of $12 per month after 2 years.
To help you choose the best broker for you, we will compare 3 top brokers side by side: IG, XTB and eToro.
For the sake of this comparison, let’s say you have a typical trade which means buying a leveraged position, holding it for 1 week & only sell it afterwards.
* Volume: a $2,000 position for:
1) The stock Index
2) CFD
3) Forex transactions.
The leverage in these scenarios is:
• 20:1 stock index CFDs
• 5:1 CFD
• 30:1 forex
Compare IG CFD & Forex Fees
| Benchmark Fee | IG | XTB | eToro |
|---|---|---|---|
| EURUSD | $16 | $15 | $19.6 |
| GBPUSD | $15.1 | $11.1 | $16.2 |
| AUDUSD | $14.1 | $10 | $12.4 |
| EURCHF | $6.9 | $6.6 | $11.8 |
| EURGBP | $11.1 | $9.9 | $19.9 |
| CFD Scenario | IG | XTB | eToro |
|---|---|---|---|
| S&P 500 index CFD fee | $2.1 | $2.0 | $2.4 |
| Europe 50 index CFD fee | $1.6 | $2.2 | $2.7 |
| Apple CFD fee | $31.9 | $17.9 | $6.3 |
| Vodafone CFD fee | $25.7 | $20.9 | — |
| Stock Scenario | IG | XTB | eToro |
|---|---|---|---|
| US Stocks | $15 | $10 | $0 |
| UK Stocks | $9.6 | $10 | $0 |
| German Stocks | $11 | $8.8 | $0 |
Trading fees are very easy to understand. Those fees are there only when you trade anything.
IG market fees is very easy to monitor as they are pretty transparent with its trading fees.
As one of the best spread betting broker in UK, IG uses different fee structures for each asset classes.
Except UK where the focus of this brokerage company is on spread betting, IG is primarily offering forex trading and CFD in Australia and the majority of other countries.
We all know that when it comes to online trading, the USA financial market is kind of complicated. However, IG allows U.S. citizens to trade Forex, So for Uncle Sam’s kids, it’s known as on of the top 10 best forex brokers.
Apart from FX and CFDs, you might be interested in Options Trading, Indices, Stock CFDs and ETF.
If you come from these countries, you have a chance to trade on IG.(Austria, Denmark, France, Germany, Ireland, Italy, Netherlands, Norway, Portugal, Romania, Sweden)
What is IG Trading Platform?
Is MT4 good for starting CFD trading?
When it comes to trading, apart from commissions and spreads that matters the most, getting your hand on the best online trading platform is a dream. In fact when you know the trading history and also you are able to customise your trades using advanced charting, you can easily define your success in different financial markets.
Since IG uses MetaTrader 4, you can rely on a secure automated trading platform to build your own Expert Advisor trading algorithms and implement EA strategies in more than 57 forex markets.
Risk management is another important area of CFD trading because your capital is always at risk. IG trading platform allows you to set price change alerts. As soon as you create your “instant buy and sell price alert” which needs to be done once only, you’ll receive free notifications either via SMS, e-mail or push notification on your smartphone.
Here is a summary of other features that you have when trading forex with this brokerage platform:
Whether you use iPhone trading app or Android trading app, because metatrader4 supports following languages, so you can easily customise your IG cfd trading platform to your preferred language:
أفضل وسطاء العملات الأجنبية in Arabic Bulgarian Danish Dutch, Estonian Finnish French Greek Hebrew Hindi Hungarian broker cfd terbaik in Indonesian migliori broker cfd in Italian Japanese Korean Latvian Polish melhores corretoras de forex Portuguese in brazil Spanish bästa cfd-mäklare i Sverige in Swedish Tajik.
What Types of Account can You Open on IG Markets?
You can expect a very easy, smooth and professional process to open your trading account with IG. All you need is an email or a social platform credentials to begin with.
You can immediately use your demo account, but your Live account will be opened in 1-3 day.
KYC, also known as know your customer process, comes in play when you decide to move forward as a trader and work with real money. That would be the time that IG asks you to provide your passport copy or valid ID along with proof of residency (something like a utility bill or bank statement).
As you can see in the image below, you will be prompted with easy to use wizard for getting onboard with IG.
In brief follow these 7 steps for account opening at IG:
1. Get ready with your email address
2. Select the country of residency.
3. Provide demographic data
4. Choose your preferred online trading platform
5. Select your account type & base currency.
6. Explain your trading experience and provide employment history
7. Provide identity and residency proof for activation.
When you compare online brokers, you need to think of customer support as a significant factor because no one likes to face an issue and wait days to receive support.
Overall, IG customer support team responds quickly and is reachable if you call 312 981 0499 24hrs 0n business days from 3 am to 5 pm (EST). They have decent live chat which is in English and has a short time queues.
What CFD Products IG offer in 2021?
Should I Trade share, Forex, or CFD?
As one of the best cryptocurrency brokers, the trading portfolio that are available to you at IG are:
- Stocks,
- Indices,
- ETF,
- Forex,
- Options,
- Stock CFDs
- CFD,
- Crypto,
- IPO
There is also equities available clients form United Kingdom.
Currency Pairs | 95 |
Stock Index CFD | 68 |
Stock CFDs | 10,500 |
ETF CFDs | 1500 |
Commodity CFDs | 47 |
Bond CFDs | 13 |
Future CFDs | 0 |
Crypto | 8 |
Best Market Research Tools for CFD Traders
Financial experts always advice that market research tools are one of great features that every online trader should use. Good news is that you have plenty of technical analysis and latest research at your disposal when trading with this brokerage firm.
The research part is also strong. For instance, they have a feature called ‘Market sentiment’ that illustrates the log and short positions of percentage of the clients. IG offers one more market research tool called the ‘Heatmap,’ that visually shows the winners and loser traders.
It also offers decent technical analysis tools (in 21 languages) that engages you with good UI and user-friendliness environment, nice interactive charts, and some recommendations about analysis and ideas on trading.
Does IG offer Fundamental Data? No.
Does IG offer Trading Ideas? Yes.
If you are a beginner and looking for a lot of trading videos and articles to learn how to trade, you should pay a visit to our forex trading blog.
Since IG offers a trading academy for Basic, Intermediate, Expert, and premium users, you can easily use IG education repository as they offer plenty of pages and videos from trading essentials to advanced trading strategies and tutorials on how to use the tools.
Having Access to their webinars is another advantage if you need to clarify your questions with IG representatives.
Conclusion of IG Pros & Cons
We discussed a lot about IG markets pros & cons in this IG review, yet overall IG is considered to be a safe brokerage company as it is regulated in most financial markets.
IG Trading platform is designed for both professional and beginners to customise its UI or utilise the technical analysis and other research tools.
IG FX fees are low and very reasonable. On the contrary the Stock CFD fees that you will pay are high; You might also be charged inactivity fees.
IG offers vast variety of offers such as 95 Currency pairs, 68 Stock index CFDs, more than 10k Stock CFDs, and about 1900 ETF CFDs and has of the best trading portfolio in CFD and forex market,
IG is well regulated in the majority of jurisdictions including:
- (FCA): Financial Conduct Authority in the UK.
Federal Financial Supervisory Authority (BaFin) in Europe.
Swiss Financial Market Supervisory Authority (FINMA). - Oceania:
Australian Securities and Investment Commission (ASIC).
Singapore Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS).
Japanese Financial Services Authority (FSA).
Financial Markets Authority (FMA) of New Zealand. - Middle East:
South Africa & Dubai (Financial Services Authority (DFSA)
Follow these steps to learn how to open trading account:
1. Get ready with your email address
2. Select the country of residency.
3. Provide demographic data
4. Choose your preferred online trading platform
5. Select your account type & base currency.
6. Explain your trading experience and provide employment history
7. Provide identity and residency proof for activation.
The minimum deposit is $450.
- 17,000 Markets & 95 Currency Pairs
- Low spreads from 0.8 pips on EUR/USD & USD/JPY
- No Fee Deposit & Withdrawal
- 70 indicators for Analysis
- Well Regulated in Top-tier Financial Markets
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