Markets.com Review 2019

Markets.com is a global CFD and FX broker established in 2010. Markets.com is operated by Safecap Investment Limited, which is regulated by two regulators, the Cypriot Cysec and the South African FSCA. It is not regulated by FCA, the top-tier, UK regulator. Safecap is owned by Playtech, a gambling software development company.

Markets.com is considered safe, because its parent company, Playtech is listed on a stock exchange.

Markets.com is a CFD and forex broker. CFDs are complex instruments and come with a high risk of losing money rapidly due to leverage. 73% of retail investor accounts lose money when trading CFDs with this provider. You should consider whether you understand how CFDs work and whether you can afford to take the high risk of losing your money.

Recommended for traders wanting to venture in CFD trading.

Markets.com pros and cons

Markets.com has low fees. Its account opening is seamless and fast. Its research tools are innovative and easy to use

It only provides CFDs and FX. It is regulated only by the Cypriot and the South-African regulators.

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Markets.com review
Fees 4 stars

Markets.com has low trading and non-trading fees.

To get things rolling, let's go over some broker fee lingo. You need to keep an eye on trading fees, financing rate, and non-trading fees.

• Trading fees occur when you trade. This can be commissions and spreads. 
• Financing rates or overnight rates are charged when you hold your leveraged positions for more than a day. Leveraged position means you borrow money from the broker to trade.
• Non-trading fees are like withdrawal fee or inactivity fee.

We compare Markets.com fees with its peers, Plus500 and eToro.

Let's start with the trading fees.

When you are an average investor it is extremely hard to figure out Market.com’s fees. There is no dedicated fee description on its website.

Trading fees

Markets.com fees are low for stock CFDs and high for forex. There is no commission, everything is included in the spread, the difference between the ask and the bid prices. 

It is super hard to compare trading fees for CFD brokers. What we did at Brokerchooser? Instead of quoting long fee tables, we compare brokers by calculating all fees of a typical trade for three assets.  

For the assets we chose cleverly and arbitrarily:

• Apple, a large US stock
• Vodafone, a large European stock
• EURUSD, a popular currency pair

The typical trade means buying a position, holding for one week, and selling it. For the volume we chose a $2,000 position for the stocks and $20,000 for the EURUSD.

This super catch-all benchmark includes spreads, commissions and financing costs for all brokers.

Here is the verdict. Markets.com stock CFD trading fees are low, and FX fees are high. 

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Financing rates

Markets.com's yearly financing rates are high. Brokers charge financing rates if you hold a leveraged position for more than one day. 

This can influence your trading fees very much if you tend to hold positions for longer.

Markets.com financing rates are only published on the trading platform, and the calculation method is not transparent. Markets.com can also change the rates anytime at its discretion.

Non-trading fees

Markets.com has low non-trading fees. There is no inactivity fee, account fee, deposit or withdrawal fee. 

Markets.com review
Account opening 5 stars

Markets.com account opening is seamless, fast and fully digital. You can open your trading account within a day.

Can you open an account?

Markets.com accepts customers from almost all countries. There are a few exceptions. Some notable exceptions are the citizen of US, Canada, Australia, New-Zealand, Hong Kong, Japan, South-Korea, Israel, Russia, Brazil, Turkey, and Belgium.

Minimum deposit

The minimum deposit is $/€/£100.

Account types

Markets.com has only one, standard account type.

How to open your account

The account opening is very easy and fully digital. It took one day until our account was approved.

Three steps of Markets.com account open:

1. Give your personal and financial information.
2. Give your trading experience and fill out a test on your knowledge.
3. Verify your ID and residency. You can upload national ID, passport, or driver's license for verifying your ID. Utility bill and bank statements are accepted for residency verification.

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Markets.com review
Deposit and withdrawal 5 stars

Markets.com deposit and withdrawal are free of charge, with many options and easy-to-do.

Account base currencies

There are a lot of base currencies: USD, AUD, DKK, EUR, GBP, NOK, PLN, SEK, and ZAR.

Why does this matter? Because if you fund your account in the same currency as your bank account, currency conversion fees won't be charged. 

A convenient way to save on the currency conversion fees can be to open a multi-currency bank account. Revolut or Transferwise both offer bank accounts in several currencies with great currency exchange rates as well as free or cheap international bank transfers. The account opening only takes a few minutes on your phone.

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Deposit fees and options

Markets.com deposit is free of charge.

As other CFD broker, there are a lot of options at Markets.com:

• Bank transfer
• Credit Card Payment
• Paypal
• Skrill
• Neteller

The bank transfer can take more business days, while electronic wallets and credit/debit cards are instant.

You can only deposit money from sources which are on your name.

Withdrawal fees and options

Markets.com withdrawal fee is free of charge. This is very competitive. 

Withdrawing money is easy. Funds can be withdrawn in the same way as deposited. 

The quoted withdrawal time was 7 days, that is not the fastest. We tested the card withdrawal and we received the money in 4 business days, less than the quoted.  

You can only withdraw money from sources which are on your name.

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Markets.com review
Web trading platform 3 stars

Markets.com's web trading platform looks nice, easy to use, and has a great search function. It has limited order types, and the two step login is missing.

At Markets.com you can use its own platform, or you can use MetaTrader 4 and 5. We tested Markets.com trading platforms.

The web platform is available in 15 languages including English, French, German, Spanish, Italian, Greek, Russian, Arabic, Dutch, Norwegian, Finnish, Swedish, Danish, Polish, Czech. The mobile platform covers even more languages including e.g. Hungarian, etc.

Look and feel

Markets.com web trading platform is easy to navigate around. Its design is good, it got upgraded in 2018.

However, you cannot customize the platform.

Login and security

Markets.com applies a one-step username / password login. Brokerchooser was missing a more secure two-step authentication.

Search functions

The search function is great. You will find easily everything. We searched "Apple" "Japan" and "Oil" and managed to get the relevant results quickly.

You can also browse by categories. You can select for example stocks from South Africa, or have the "Top Volatile"s lined up by a few clicks.

Placing orders

Markets.com order panel is simple and clean because there are not a lot of functions built in. 

You have

• market order
• limit order
• stop-loss order

If you keep the platform and the default mode and do not change to the advanced mode, you only see market order. You can find a short explanation of the order types in our guidebook.

Alerts and notifications

We also liked the alert and notification function. You can set up email, SMS and push notifications.

You could set an alert for the same price level and circumvent this. However, there is no way to set a notification for order confirmation.

Portfolio and fee reports

The portfolio and fee reports are clear and easy to access. E.g. it is clear how much financing rate you paid. It is a bit confusing that in the statement, funds and withdrawals are added to profits and losses. This makes the statement a bit hard to read.

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Markets.com review
Mobile trading platform 4 stars

The Markets.com mobile platform looks nice and it is easy to use. There are only basic order types, two step login is missing, and you cannot setup an order confirmation.

Markets.com operates mobile platforms both on iOS and Android.

The mobile platform is very similar to the web platform. It looks nice, and you can easily get around. There is a great onboarding when you first log in, and after a few minutes, you will be good to go. Furthermore, the search function is great.

However, there is no two-step login, there are only a few order types. You cannot set up notifications.

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Markets.com review
Markets and products 2 stars

At Markets.com you can trade only with CFDs, forex, and cryptos.

Markets.com is a CFD and forex broker. To learn more on CFDs read our CFD trading tips.

CFDs are complex instruments and come with a high risk of losing money rapidly due to leverage. 73% of retail investor accounts lose money when trading CFDs with this provider. You should consider whether you understand how CFDs work and whether you can afford to take the high risk of losing your money.

Markets.com has a competitive FX offering, but the CFDs are not the best. There are a few cryptocurrencies: Bitcoin Futures, Ripple, Ethereum, Dash, Bitcoin Cash and Litecoin.

Based on the customer support answers, you cannot change the default leverage level of the products. We think you should be in control of this.

Markets.com offers CFD Blends, which are practically more CFDs organized along themes, like "legal cannabis", "trade war losers" The composition of the CFD portfolios are clear and well disclosed, also its past performance. We liked this function.

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Markets.com review
Research 4 stars

Markets.com provides great research tools, including recommendations, sentiments and a good charting tool. Fundamental data is missing.

Markets.com research tools are available in all 15 languages the platform is available at. This is great.

Recommendations

There are a lot of recommendations you can use at Markets.com. These recommendations are clear, stating both the direction and in some cases the target price. They do not provide argumentation behind the recommendations. Most of them are provided by TipRanks, a 2012 founded startup.

You can find recommendations from analysts. They are from top-tier bank analysts (UBS, Merrill Lynch etc.) and they give recommendations on shares. Also, a good feature that analysts are ranked based on their past performance.

You can also see what bloggers on SeekingAlpha or MotleysFool write about a few stocks.

There is also a Hedge Fund sentiment. It shows the insiders, e.g. management or other stakeholders what trade with a stock.

Fundamental data

There is a menu for fundamental data, but there is no real fundamental data, like financial ratios or historic financial reports.

Charting

Markets.com's charting tool is good. Besides the basics, you can add plenty of indicators. For a few stocks, you can access Trading Central's technical recommendations. Trading Central is a third party technical analysis firm. 

You cannot save your chart settings.

News feed

There is no real news feed. All the news you get is through the economic calendar. There is also a pop-up alert when Markets.com thinks something newsworthy is happening. Sadly, you cannot set alerts manually.

How does the economic calendar work?

Beyond the listing upcoming events, you can also see the currency pairs the events influence.

Furthermore, you can see whether the FX pair out or underperformed the consensus after a similar economic event.

Let’s see an example. The UK GDP YoY growth rate report is an economic event. With the tool you can investigate the effect of the GDP report on the GBPUSD. You can hit trade straight away.

This is by no means a bulletproof advice on how to trade currencies. Still, it is a handy tool.

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Markets.com review
Customer service 5 stars

Markets.com customer service is great. You can contact them on all channels. The answers are relevant and fast. However, you can only reach them on weekdays.

Markets.com's customer service is available via

• phone
• chat
• email.

The customer service is available in multiple languages. We know about English, German, Spanish and Italian.  

Markets.com's customer service was always quick and reliable when we tested it. E.g. when we asked about fees, they talked about the financing rate too. You can rate your agent, a good way to give feedback. The tone was also nice.

You can call a local phone number, so there is no need for an international call.

On the flip side, the customer service cannot be reached on the weekends, it is 24/5.

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Markets.com review
Education 5 stars

Markets.com's education is good. There is a demo account. You can sign up for regular webinars about trading and also watch tutorial videos.

You can practice on the demo account and that is a good way to learn.

There are quite a few videos in the Knowledge Centre. There are platform tip videos. A Canadian trader hosts short videos about trading tips and also makes some longer, 60-minute videos on special topics, like trend signals.

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Markets.com review
Safety

Markets.com's parent company is listed on the London Stock Exchange. This is a good sign. However, it is only regulated by the Cypriot and the South African regulator, and not by the FCA or other top-tier ones.

Markets.com is a Cypriot broker established in 2010 serving clients globally. Is Markets.com safe? To be certain, it is best to check two things: how you are protected if something goes south and what the background of the broker is.

How you are protected

Markets.com is regulated in Cyprus and South Africa. Clients from all countries, except South Africa benefit from the Cypriot investor protection, in case Markets.com defaults. 

Cyprus has more online brokers than its global economic strength would suggest. Allegedly, because of its relaxed regulation. Being regulated only in Cyprus is not the best sign when it comes to a broker’s safety.

Markets.com provides negative balance protection. This means you cannot lose more than what you have in your account.

Background

Markets.com's background is a bit complicated. Playtech, a gambling software company, acquired TradeFX in 2016. TradeFX owned Safecap Investments Limited, the Cypriot firm which operates Markets.com. Hence, Playtech is the owner of Markets.com. Playtech is listed on the London Stock Exchange. This is a good sign as companies listed on major exchanges need to be transparent. 

Markets.com has done significant steps to become a transparent broker. The sheer fact that Markets.com owners are transparent shows Playtech's efforts. There is also a good press coverage on how Markets.com is transforming its business to be more diligent. Nevertheless, keep in mind that Markets.com is neither regulated by the stringent UK regulator, nor is listed directly on an exchange, nor discloses its financials transparently and regularly. These factors would show more transparency and regulation quality.

Markets.com's parent company, Playtech is listed on the London Stock Exchange. This is a good sign for Markets.com's safety.

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Markets.com review
Bottom line

In our Markets.com review, we tested Markets.com thoroughly and here is the verdict. It is an ok broker, especially if you want to concentrate on CFD trading. Its spreads are not so competitive, but there is no withdrawal or inactivity fee. It has also an easy-to-use platform and great research tools.

It is not regulated by top-tier financial regulators, like the FCA or the SEC.

All in all, it is a good choice. The account opening is super easy and there is no inactivity fee, feel free to try it.

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