StoneX Trading (Formerly City Index) Customer Reviews & Expert Rating

Overall, StoneX Trading has a great all-round platform that is backed by one of the largest financial institutions in the world.

We rate StoneX Trading as an excellent broker. Personally I really like StoneX Trading and have used them for decades going back to when they were known as City Index. They offer some of the best trading tools and analysis to help traders perform better. Their unique post-trade analytics and voice brokerage service make it an excellent choice for large and frequent traders.

A big plus for me is that they are one of the oldest and most established trading platforms offering CFDs and financial spread betting, with a huge range of markets to trade, post execution analytical tools and trading signals.

StoneX Trading Awards

StoneX has won Best Spread Betting Broker in our 2025 Good Money Guide Awards, prior to that winning “best trading app” in 2024 and “best trader tools” 2023. And “best trading platform”, “best trading app” & “best forex broker” in 2022.

Fees: Pricing & Spreads

StoneX Trading has always been competitive on pricing. For most financial spread betting and CFD markets, there is no separate commission, with StoneX Trading making its money through the spread. Share CFDs are the exception, with UK shares charged from 0.08% commission and US shares from 1.8 cents per share. Overnight financing is broadly in line with other major brokers, with UK positions currently charged at SONIA plus 3% for long positions and SONIA minus 3% for shorts.

Market Access: 

Excellent coverage, especially for small-cap stock and exotic currency pairs.

Stocks, Forex, Indices and Commodities

You can buy over 4,700 stocks on StoneX Trading as a CFD or financial spread bet, however, you can’t trade equity options or invest in physical shares.

Obviously, they have access to more than the usual forex, index and commodity markets and add value with some nice thematic-themed indices (like ESG), and a good pool of sectors to speculate on. You can also trade options (CFD or spread bets thereof) on a good range of indices and commodities like Natural Gas or EU stocks. Plus, you can trade on synthetic markets. Everyone loves a bit of volatility speculation in choppy markets.

Spread Betting

Spread betting is StoneX Trading’s forte, and it’s the product that a lot of their high-net-worth customers use for trading stocks. As one of the original spread betting brokers StoneX Trading offers access to one of the widest selections of UK, US and European shares (as well as the major indices). The key advantage of spread betting of course is that profits are free of capital gains tax.

CFD Trading

Unlike spread betting CFD profits are subject to capital gains tax, so are less popular among UK traders. Historically, StoneX Trading would offer CFDs to more professional traders and spread betting to smaller clients. CFDs and spread betting are similarly priced with StoneX Trading, with the commission being included in the spread, which is slightly wider than the underlying market bid/offer. The main reason why both products are on offer is that spread betting is only available to UK residents, whereas StoneX Trading can offer CFD trading to its global client base.

Trading Platforms & Apps

StoneX Trading gives you a choice of platforms depending on how you prefer to trade. Its main Web Trader platform is browser-based and combines advanced charting, Reuters news and trading tools without requiring a download, while the StoneX Trading mobile app provides much of the same functionality for trading on the move. More experienced or technically focused traders can use MetaTrader 4 (MT4), including Expert Advisors for automated strategies, while StoneX also integrates with TradingView, allowing you to trade directly through TradingView’s charts and use its indicators, screeners and trader community.

I actually prefer the StoneX Trading app to the desktop version of the trading platform. Sometimes I can find the desktop version to be a bit clunky, but the app is really slick, and clearly in our mobile-first world, where all the recent development has been focused. And why not, the desktop trading platform is brilliant for research, trading signals and post-trade analytics, but at the point of execution the app is a quick and simple stripped-down version with all the salient features front and centre.

You can trade on MT4 and MT5 with StoneX Trading, but functionality and market access is not as good as their main proprietary trading platform or some of their MT4 competitors. You can only trade 80+ markets on MT4 through StoneX Trading, but if you just want to trade the major markets, StoneX Trading is a good broker for MT4 based on their regulation, service and pricing.

Customer Service: 

Lots of experienced dealers to help with any issues, who you can get through to on the phone.

Research & Analysis: 

StoneX Trading excels here, lots of educational guides, trading ideas and analysis, to keep traders aware of major market moves.

Performance Analytics

Another acquisition from parent StoneX is Chasing Returns, now integrated into the platform as Performance Analytics. Which really drills down into where you are trading well and where you are losing money. Performance Analytics can break down your wins and losses and tell you what markets you trade best, what time of day you are most profitable, if you make money trading in quick succession or, if you do better if you take a break between trades. It’ll even tell you if your first trade of the day is often a winner or loser, or if you are a better bull or bear and also if you are as good at trading volatility as you pretend to enjoy doing, but letting you know if you trade better in calm or erratic markets.

Economic Calendar

One thing, though that does let them down is StoneX Trading’s economic calendar, it’s terrible. In fact, most brokers, even IG just have a bog standard list of upcoming earnings and economic announcements. But I think you need more from a trading platform these days, especially as when logged into the desktop platform the format is all off. One broker that has absolutely nailed their economic calendar is ThinkMarkets. With TM when you’re logged in you get a really good visualisation of previous data, volatility and most importantly what impact it had on relevant institutions like EURUSD. It’s a great way to see how markets have moved against previous numbers. Honestly, StoneX Trading should embed this too as it’s available from Trading Central who they have a deal with anyway.

Extended Hours Trading

You can trade US equities outside normal market hours with StoneX Trading, giving you the ability to react to company news and earnings before and after the main New York session, which runs from 9:30am to 4:00pm Eastern Time.

StoneX Trading now offers extended-hours trading on more than 170 US shares and ETFs, including major stocks such as Apple, Microsoft and Nvidia, as well as actively traded names such as Coinbase, Robinhood and GameStop. Selected US stocks can also be traded 24 hours a day, five days a week, which is particularly useful when company results or other market-moving news is released outside normal trading hours.