CM Trading Broker Review

Is CM Trading Safe?

CM Trading’s parent company, Blackstone Marketing SA, has been regulated by the FSCA (License Number 38782) since 2009 and CM Trading has been an active CFD broker since 2012.  In 2018, CM Trading won the Best Broker: Africa award from African Investor for quality and innovation – in making the award, special reference was made to CM Trading’s CopyKat trading system and Guardian Angel automated feedback tool.

Overall, although CM Trading is lacking oversight from one of the major regulators, they have a great reputation amongst their clients in Africa and are widely recognised as a trustworthy broker.

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Trading Conditions

As you might expect, trading conditions and spreads depend on your account type. CM Trading’s account types are split across four tiers depending on how much money you deposit: Bronze, Silver, Gold and Premium – with Gold and Premium accounts having the tightest spreads.

Interestingly, ECN Accounts are also available but only at the Gold and Premium tiers, putting them out of range of most new traders. Islamic (swap-free) account are available on all account types, except for ECNs.

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Account Features

Spreads and Commissions

While trading with a Bronze of Silver account will be commission-free, the Gold and Premium tiers allow you to choose an ECN Account which has a charge of 5 USD round-turn per trade – though spreads do get down to 0.1 pips on major pairs.

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Broker

Trading Conditions

Base Currencies

EURUSD (Standard)

Trading Cost (Standard)

EURUSD (Best)

GBPUSD (Best)

USDJPY (Best)

Commission

CM Trading

4/ 5

EUR, USD

1.50 pips

USD 15

1.70 pips

2.60 pips

1.70 pips

USD 0

IQ Option

3/ 5

EUR, GBP, USD

0.80 pips

USD 8

0.80 pips

1.30 pips

0.90 pips

USD 0

Trade.com

3.5/ 5

CHF, CZK, EUR, GBP, ZAR, USD, PLN

1.90 pips

USD 19

3.00 pips

3.00 pips

3.00 pips

USD 0

Generally, traders with a Bronze account will be getting spreads of 2-3 pips, with the EUR/USD averaging 1.5 pips and the USD/JPY averaging 1.7 pips (see below). Spreads will get incrementally tighter the higher your account tier.

Bonuses & Promotions

CM Trading are always changing their promotions and bonuses and usually offer at least two at the same time. These can range from different cash bonuses and improved trading conditions to education packs and giveaways.

NB: These bonuses are accurate for October 2019 and are only illustrative of what you might expect.

Deposits and Withdrawals

Deposits and withdrawals are generally processed within 2-3  business days.  Deposit methods include all major credit and debit cards as well as wire and bank transfers, CashU, Neteller, and Fasapay.  Withdrawals are processed more quickly if the correct documentation is provided. Same-day withdrawals are available for premium customers. 

Unusually, CM Trading does not publish their fees for deposits and withdrawals, so we approached them to find out what they were and received the following reply:

• Bank Wire: CM Trading will charge the going market rate plus 2% with respect to all deposits and market-rate less 2% with respect to all withdrawals.
• Cryptocurrencies: CM Trading will charge the going market rate plus 3% with respect to all deposits and market-rate less 4% with respect to all withdrawals
• Credit/Debit Card: CM Trading will not charge any fees with respect to all deposits but will charge 4% on all withdrawals

If you wish to know more about these charges, contact the CM Trading finance team on [email protected].

CM Trading for Beginners

CM Trading is a good Forex broker for beginners, with a decent 3rd-party education section and adequate analytical content.  If your priority is to have an African broker, CM Trading is definitely one of the best for beginners in the local market – an added bonus is that you do not have to be a CM Trading client in order to access any of this learning material.

Educational Material

Training Videos

The backbone of the education section is a generic library of animated training videos, with subjects covering common Forex terms, social trading, the MetaTrader 4 platform, trading strategies and trading psychology.  While most of the training videos are aimed at beginner traders, lessons in technical and fundamental analysis and trading plans support more advanced learning. Other more advanced videos cover EAs to use with the MT4 platform and other methods of automated trading.

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Broker

Beginner Course

Advanced Course

Well Structured Education

Education Quality

Webinars

CM Trading

No

No

No

Medium

Yes

IQ Option

No

No

No

Medium

No

Trade.com

No

No

No

Low

No

The one downside to CM Trading’s video library is that all the videos are only accessible through CM Trading’s own player, which is dated and has very limited functionality. This is frustrating, especially for those of us accustomed to YouTube and other popular players.

Webinars

CM Trading hosts weekly webinars on a range of subjects, recent webinars include the Psychology of Trading and Trading Cryptocurrencies. These webinars are simple to register for and, once more, you do not have to be a CM Trading customer to access them.

Video Chart Analysis

The chart analysis section is accompanied by a brief, yet useful, analytical breakdown of the major currency pairs. The video chart analysis on offer is straightforward and detailed and is helpful to both novice and expert traders.

Ebooks

CM Trading, through a 3rd party, offers a collection of eBooks covering Forex terms, trading psychology, basic and advanced technical analysis and basic and advanced trading strategies. These are also available to non-customers but unfortunately non-downloadable.  Much like the with the Training Videos, CM Trading’s player is not a particularly easy way to digest new information, even in written format.

Analysis Material

The analysis material offering is basic but adequate in that it contains a functional economic calendar, highlighting the major events of the day.  This is accompanied by a five-minute daily market review every morning before market-open, which highlights potential trading opportunities across the major financial markets for the coming day, and is generally well researched. 

Customer Support

Customer support is available 24/5 via live chat, WhatsApp, email and via 11 different international phone numbers (in South Africa, Canada, Malaysia, UK, China, France, Brazil, Mexico, Saudi Arabia, Russia and Bahrain) with full language support for each region.  Additionally, CM Trading provides MT4 support to help beginner traders get started and one-on-one training is available to larger depositors.

Trading Platforms

MetaTrader 4

CM Trading offers its version of the Meta Trader 4 (MT4) platform, which is the industry standard for Forex & CFD trading.  MT4 allows trade using EAs, and also allows for hedging or scalping. If you have your own existing Expert Advisor it will integrate seamlessly with CM Trading’s version of MT4. 

Sirix Webtrader

Sirix WebTrader was released in 2014 by Leverate and was developed in HTML5 so can be used on any phone, tablet or desktop. It has over 60 built-in indicators, a high level of security and receives regular software updates.

Designed to speed up trading, the Sirix trading windows can be pre-configured to include the instruments and lot sizes you trade regularly. One-click-trading can be enabled or disabled.

Additionally, Sirix Webtrader comes with a built-in copy trading functionality, which we will look at in more detail below.

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Broker

Platform Choice

Copy Trading

Platforms

CM Trading

4/ 5

Yes

MT4

WebTrader

IQ Option

4/ 5

No

IQ option

Trade.com

4/ 5

Yes

MT4

MT5

Sirix

Trading Tools

CopyKat

With CM Trading’s Sirix WebTrader you will also receive access to Sirix CopyKat, Sirix’ copy trading tool.

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Broker

Economic Calendar

Autochartist

Trading Central

Trading View

Free VPS

CM Trading

Yes

No

Yes

No

No

IQ Option

Yes

No

No

No

No

Trade.com

No

No

Yes

Yes

No

CopyKat allows you to watch professional traders’ deals and copy them in real-time but also allows for automated copying. The system is easy-to-use and supports one-click trading.

Guardian Angel

CM Trading runs a Smart Communication System for its customers called Guardian Angel, which provides support and direct messages concerning market trends and provides automated feedback on how you trade, highlighting market volatility indications and a stop loss calculator.

CM Trading Mobile Apps

CM Trading’s Sirix platform is available across all devices with little loss in functionality. CM Trading also offers a mobile trading platform driven by MT4.

Evaluation Process

We value transparency and openness in the way we review the partners. To bring transparency to the forefront, we have published our review process that includes a detailed breakdown of the CM Trading offer. Central to that process is the evaluation of the reliability of the broker, the platform offering of the broker and the trading conditions offered to clients, which are summarised in this review. Each one of these is graded, and an overall score is calculated and assigned to the broker.

CM Trading Risk Statement

Trading Forex is risky, and each broker is required to detail how risky the trading of Forex CFDs is to clients. CM Trading would like you to know that: Trading Foreign Exchange (Forex) and Contracts for Differences (CFD’s) is highly speculative, carries a high level of risk and may not be suitable for all investors. You may sustain a loss of some or all of your invested capital, therefore, you should not speculate with capital that you cannot afford to lose. You should be aware of all the risks associated with trading on margin.

Overview

CM Trading is a well-known FSCA-regulated market maker broker focused on its African client base. Established, award-winning, and trusted, CM Trading’s trading conditions are in line with their competitors and platform support is adequate. A wide range of trading tools, especially for beginner traders, is a bonus but CM Trading’s offering is slightly let down by expensive deposit and withdrawal fees.