Trading Books

No, as a professional client you will not get the same protections afforded to retail clients when using CMC Pro.

Risk warnings: CMC Markets will not be required to provide you with the current risk warnings we must provide to retail clients.

Communications and financial promotions: Certain FCA (or equivalent) rules relating to the form and content of information provided by CMC Markets do not apply, including those relating to communications and financial promotions.

Negative balance protection: Retail clients benefit from negative balance protection, meaning that their losses cannot exceed deposits. This functionality is not available to professional clients.

Leverage restrictions: CMC Markets is required to restrict leverage to between 30:1 and 2:1 on the products we offer to retail clients. Higher leverage can work against investors and amplify losses.

Financial Ombudsman Service (or equivalent): Access to the Financial Ombudsman Service (the “FOS”) will not extend to all professional clients (only those that meet the FCA handbook definition of a consumer) and may therefore not extend to you. The FOS is an independent service for settling disputes between FCA-regulated firms and eligible complainants. If you are not sure whether you will be entitled to refer your complaint to FOS, we suggest you contact FOS directly.

As with a standard account, we will hold and maintain an amount equal to your account value in a segregated client money bank account. If you are eligible, the Financial Services Compensation Scheme may provide compensation up to £85,000. Check your eligibility here. If you are an eligible complainant and are not satisfied with the outcome of a complaint to us, you are able to use the Financial Ombudsman Service.

With all CMC Markets accounts you get the same access to our award-winning trading platform*, wide range of instruments and advanced trading tools. Regulatory restrictions have been placed on our standard spread betting and CFD trading accounts, to offer greater protection to retail clients. A CMC Pro account will not have the same investor protections that are available on a standard account. Higher leverage available on products on a CMC Pro account can work against investors and amplify losses. Professional clients with a CMC Pro account will have access to restricted products, plus a personal account manager and monthly cash rebates for high-volume traders†.

The European Securities and Markets Authority (ESMA) has limited the leverage available to retail clients to between 30:1 and 2:1, as spread betting and CFD products are considered high risk and complex, and higher leverage rates are not suitable for the majority of retail clients. These restrictions took effect on 1 August 2018 but don’t apply to CMC Pro clients, who are classified as ‘professional clients’.

Our Countdowns product is a type of binary option, available for professional clients only. Countdowns offers a fast-paced way to place fixed-odds trades, with low minimum stake sizes and competitive payouts. Countdowns are 50/50 trades based on whether an instrument's price will settle above or below its current level at the end of a range of short timeframes, from 30 seconds to one hour. There are only three possible outcomes (win, lose and occasionally, draw) and the amount you can win or lose is predetermined. You can trade Countdowns on popular forex pairs, indices and commodities.

If you’re not eligible for CMC Pro, you can still trade thousands of financial markets on our award-winning platform*, using a standard CMC Markets account‡.
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As you would already be classified as a professional client with us for your spread betting account, this status would automatically be applied to your new CFD account.

Financial instruments that count towards your portfolio size include shares, derivatives (only available cash deposits or profits realised from investing in derivatives), debt instruments and cash deposits. It does not include property portfolios, direct commodity ownership or notional values of leveraged instruments.

Only clients that are new to CMC Markets will need to first open a standard spread betting or CFD trading account before applying for a CMC Pro account. If you already have a spread betting or CFD account with us, you can apply for CMC Pro now.‡

We’ll contact you by email to notify you when your application to become a professional client has been approved and you have switched over to CMC Pro. Your login details, account number and platform settings will remain the same. Remember, while you are waiting for your CMC Pro account, you can still trade on your standard account.

Dynamic Trading and Trading Books are available for CFD accounts only.

Dynamic Trading and Trading Books are currently available only in the UK.

No, you will need to deposit funds to each Trading Book separately. To transfer funds to or from a Trading Book, go to the funding module in the platform.

Each Trading Book will be liquidated separately. You will receive liquidation notices via email and platform pop-ups.

Trading Books can be created in the following currencies: GBP, CHF, EUR, NOK, SEK and USD.

You can trade on the majority of CFD instruments, except forwards, cryptocurrencies and manual trading instruments. Trading Books are not available via a spread betting account.

You can add up to 25 instruments per Trading Book.

For initial launch, not all features will be available on both desktop and mobile. Below are the features currently available on desktop and mobile:

Market orders are the only order type supported on a Trading Book. The following order types are not currently available:

• Stop-loss orders, including trailing stop-loss orders
• Guaranteed stop-loss orders
• Take-profit orders
• Limit and stop-entry orders

We are working on adding stop-loss orders for Trading Books and hope to be able to release this feature in the near future.

This feature is only available to professional investors. The holding cost offset reduces, up to the full value, an overnight holding cost debit charged on a Trading Book. The holding cost offset contains two components: custom margin offset and interest on cash offset.

a) Custom margin offset: reduces overnight holding cost debit, up to the full value, for which custom margin is provided across all instruments available with Trading Books. This has the effect of charging overnight holding costs based on the borrowed value of the exposure, rather than the full value of the exposure.

b) Interest on cash offset: reduces overnight holding cost debit for which interest is received on the entire credit cash balance of the Trading Book, capped at the exposure of the Trading Book.

Where a market order is placed but can’t be executed because the relevant market is not open for trading, the order will be held as a pending market order, to be triggered on market open. A pending market order will be triggered at the first available price on market open.

A pending market order will be displayed on a Trading Book, but it will not be displayed on the orders window. Where a new price is received on market open, the pending market order will be adjusted to the correct number of units.