Indices trading

Indices are a measure of a section of shares in the stock market, created by combining the value of several stocks to create one aggregate value. Major financial indices include the Dow Jones Industrial Average, FTSE 100, CAC 40, and DAX. The Dow Jones index, for example, represents 30 large publicly-listed companies traded on the New York Stock Exchange.

You can start trading on indices by opening a live account. If you would like to practise your index trading strategy first, you can open a demo account to trade with virtual funds.

One of the advantages of trading CFDs is that you only need to deposit a percentage of the full value of your position to open a trade, known as trading on leverage. Remember, trading on leverage can also amplify losses, so it's important to manage your risk.

When you trade CFDs on indices via our platform, you don't buy or sell the underlying index. Instead, you're taking a position on whether you think the index will go up or down.

With CFD trading, you buy or sell a number of units for a particular instrument. For every point or unit that the price moves in your favour, you gain multiples of your stake, and vice versa.

While you can trade on leverage, meaning you only need to put up a minor percentage of the overall trade’s value, any profit or loss is based on the full value of the trade. As a retail client, you can never lose more than the amount in your account, which is known as negative balance protection. See the major global indices you can trade with us.

CMC Markets has 15 global offices, including in the UK, Australia, Germany, Canada, New Zealand, Singapore and Bermuda. CMC Markets' entities are licensed and regulated by the local authorities, for example, CMC Markets Bermuda is licensed to conduct investment business and digital asset business by the Bermuda Monetary Authority (‘BMA’).

As a CMC Markets' client, your money is held separately from CMC Markets' own funds. It is held in segregated client bank accounts distributed across a range of major banks, which are regularly assessed against our risk criteria. Under the BMA rules, retail clients must be provided with negative balance protection. This means that your maximum loss is the amount you have deposited with us.

If you're trading on MT4 or MT5, select the instrument you wish to trade ('double-click' on your PC), and a new order window will appear. Enter your desired volume (in lots), add any risk-management orders such as a stop-loss or take-profit order. Then place a market order in the direction you wish to trade; buy to go long, or sell to go short. There are several ways to place trades or orders using MT4 or MT5 – you can learn more about MT4 or MT5 functionality by navigating to Help > Help topics or Help > Video guides.

If you’re trading on our Next Generation platform, search for your desired instrument from the 'Product Library'. Select your chosen instrument ('right-click' on your PC), and select ‘Order Ticket’. In the order ticket box, choose your order type (from Market, Limit, and Stop-Entry Order), and then enter your desired volume in units or amount (this can be configured from the ‘Settings’ menu in the main navigation). Add stop-loss and take-profit levels to minimise your risk, and choose to ‘BUY’ or ‘SELL’, depending on whether you want to go long or short. When you’re ready, select ‘Place Buy Market Order’, or ‘Place Sell Market Order’.

For retail clients, the maximum leverage you can currently trade with is 200:1 (or 0.5% margin) with our CFD trading and FX Active accounts.

TradingView is a trading research platform where you can view charts, analyse trends and interact with an online community. You can connect your TradingView account to your CMC Markets account, enabling you to open, manage and close trades within TradingView. Learn more about TradingView here.

MetaQuotes' MetaTrader 4 and MetaTrader 5 are globally popular forex and CFD trading platforms. TradingView is a trading and charting platform which you can link to your broker account to place trades. Our proprietary web-based platform is feature-rich and enables access to trade CFDs on 12,000 instruments.

With each platform you can choose from our CFD trading or FX Active accounts. Our FX Active account offers spreads from 0.0 pips on six major FX pairs, with a 25% spread discount on all other pairs. There is a fixed, low commission at $2.50 per $100,000 notional value traded.  

Our trading platform doesn’t require any downloads, while MT4 and MT5 requires downloading to fully utilise its features, such as algorithmic trading (through Expert Advisors) and social trading available via the MQL4 and MQL5 communities. 

The MetaTrader platforms offer hedging positions by default, while CMC’s trading platform offers netted positions by default. 

Yes, you can open an opposite, related, or alternative trade, with no interruption for traders using Expert Advisors.

Log in to your MT4 or MT5 client portal or our trading platform and follow the instructions in the funding section.

You can reset your password by selecting 'Forgot password?' on the login page. We'll then send instructions for changing your password to the email address you use to log in to your account.

Our aim is to provide a high level of service to all our clients, all of the time. We value all feedback and use it to enhance our products and services. We appreciate that from time to time things can go wrong, or there can be misunderstandings. We are committed to dealing with queries and complaints positively and sympathetically. Where we are at fault, we aim to put things right at the earliest opportunity. You can find our complaint handling procedure here or contact us at global@cmcmarkets.com to begin your account query. Please note that all queries and complaints will be handled in English.