Spread bets and CFDs are complex instruments and come with a high risk of losing money rapidly due to leverage. 67% of retail investor accounts lose money when spread betting and/or trading CFDs with this provider. You should consider whether you understand how spread bets, CFDs, OTC options or any of our other products work and whether you can afford to take the high risk of losing your money.

Trading alerts for price, execution and news

Trade alerts are free and automatic notifications that traders receive about specific assets that they are monitoring. Trading alerts can include potential price increases or price drop alerts, in whichever financial market that you prefer to trade, as well as breaking news that may have an effect on your positions, and execution alerts for pending or upcoming orders.

This means that you do not have to worry about constantly analysing price charts​ for technical analysis or reading fundamental reports throughout the day. Instead, you can take advantage of potential trading opportunities after receiving an announcement that may affect your trading strategy. Watch the below video to get started with trade alerts on our award-winning trading platform*, Next Generation. We offer a range of notification types, either using your desktop platform or mobile app.

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So, what are different types of trading alerts that you can activate on our platform?

Price alerts

Price alerts in trading can be useful for detecting when your chosen asset’s price drops, hits support and resistance​ levels, or encounters a breakout on a price chart. Price alerts on our platform vary by market, asset and timeframe​.

It is a simple and easy process to set price alerts for your chosen assets, whether these be within the forex, shares, index, treasury or commodity markets. You can choose to receive web-based trading alerts that may pop up while you are monitoring positions, or we also offer a mobile trading app that will send notifications at any time of the day. Our price alert tool can be useful for the following:

Currency/forex price alerts

Foreign currencies are affected by inflation or interest rates, for example, and this causes the currency pair to move several pips​ (percentages in point) throughout a specified time period. This may have a subsequent impact on your forex trading strategy.

Gold trading alerts

Many traders choose to analyse the price performance of the precious metal, gold, due to its status as a safe haven asset. Therefore, traders can use gold trading alerts to track when the asset hits a certain price, in order to either buy or sell the asset, depending on which way the market is moving.

Stock price alerts

Earnings reports, P/E (price-earnings) ratios and ROI (return on investment) are a few key indicators that can cause a change in the supply and demand for a stock, leading to a rise or decline in a company’s share price. Stock price alerts can influence traders to hold their position if the stock is doing well, or short sell the stock​ if it is underperforming. You can choose the exact stocks that you want to receive notifications for, such as penny stock trade alerts or shares within a particular sector.

Swing/day trading alerts

Our platform does not explicitly offer notifications for trading strategies, but you can interpret price increases and drops in the way that suits you best. For example, news announcements that cause rapid and fluctuating market changes may motivate a trader to enter and exit trades on a short-term basis, attempting to profit from the temporary volatility. This can include day trading and swing trading strategies.

App for price alerts

Our award-winning platform is available through a mobile trading application​, where you can set triggers and notifications on your price alert app. The mobile app works for both Android and iOS devices and it means that you can trade on-the-go throughout the day.

How to set price alerts on MT4

You can also set up price alerts with a MetaTrader 4 account through your mobile. The international software allows traders to set alerts for desktop or push notifications for mobile apps when your chosen market hits a specified price. Learn more about trading with MT4.

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Execution alerts

Order execution alerts notify the trader when a pending or upcoming order is due. If the order is placed with immediate execution; for example, through our one-click trading or price ladder​ functionalities; you will not receive an execution alert. Otherwise, you will receive a trade confirmation and you can then monitor your positions.

Learn more about our execution and order types​, including market, stop-loss, stop-entry, take-profit and limit orders.

Calendar and news alerts

News alerts inform traders of significant economic events that can have an effect on your positions in a number of financial markets. Our calendar events include non-farm payrolls, earnings reports for stocks, GDP and PPI updates, interest rate decisions for currencies, and many more. You can also subscribe for breaking news reports, which may be related to political, economic or social events across the globe.

You can trade on economic calendar as part of an event-driven strategy. One day to do this is by monitoring our economic calendar​, which updates automatically with live data so that you do not miss an important event in the world of trading. You can then decide whether you think asset prices are due to rise or fall, and choose a subsequent trading strategy to take advantage of these temporary market changes.

How to set up trading and price alerts

  1. Open a live account to start trading the financial markets or open a demo account to practise risk-free.
  2. On our trading platform, navigate to the ‘Settings’ tab and click on ‘Notifications’.
  3. Add your email address and/or mobile number, depending on where you want to receive the alerts. Download our mobile app if you want to receive SMS and push notifications.
  4. Check the alert types that you wish to receive, such as execution, news and price alerts.
  5. You can also register for trade confirmations and statement delivery emails to be sent on a daily or monthly basis.

Download our free trade alerts

In summary, the CMC Markets trading platform offers a wide range of trade alerts that you can take advantage of, whether this be price alerts, news alerts or alerts relating to your personal trading account.

Want to see more of our charting features that are available for both desktop and mobile devices? Some useful trading tools include our trading forum, where you can discuss techniques with other investors and become involved with copy or social trading, our drawing tools and pattern recognition software to study price action on charts, and a broad range of technical indicators to support your trading strategy. Explore our platform video tutorials folder to find out more information about our resources.


*No1 Web-Based Platform, ForexBrokers.com Awards 2020; Best Telephone & Best Email Customer Service, based on highest user satisfaction among spread betters, CFD & FX traders, Investment Trends 2020 UK Leverage Trading Report; Best Platform Features & Best Mobile/Tablet App, Investment Trends 2019 UK Leverage Trading Report.

Disclaimer: CMC Markets is an execution-only service provider. The material (whether or not it states any opinions) is for general information purposes only, and does not take into account your personal circumstances or objectives. Nothing in this material is (or should be considered to be) financial, investment or other advice on which reliance should be placed. No opinion given in the material constitutes a recommendation by CMC Markets or the author that any particular investment, security, transaction or investment strategy is suitable for any specific person. The material has not been prepared in accordance with legal requirements designed to promote the independence of investment research. Although we are not specifically prevented from dealing before providing this material, we do not seek to take advantage of the material prior to its dissemination.