Spread betting is better for UK CMC Markets traders as you do not have to pay capital gains tax on profits. Other than that, spread betting and CFDs with CMC Markets are the same in terms of price and market coverage.
CMC Markets pioneered electronic trading in the UK during the early 1990’s and introduce financial spread betting to complement its CFD and forex trading in 2001. Since then the Market Maker spread betting platform has evolved into the “Next Generation” platform and is one of the best proprietary trading platforms for active traders in the industry.
Overall, CMC Markets is an exceptional spread betting platform with innovative features suitable to frequent traders wanting to trade on tight spreads.
- Spread betting markets available: 12,000
- Minimum deposit: £1
- Account types: CFDs, spread betting
- Equity overnight financing: 2.9% +/- SONIA
- Pricing: Shares 0.1%, FTSE 1, GBPUSD 0.59
CMC Market’s spread betting offering has always won business by producing great technology that reduces the cost of trading. By focussing on mobile and online trading, they now see over 70% of spread bets go through on mobile versus online.
I found that CMC Market’s spread betting prices were always tight and hail from the original online platform name (Deal4Free, and slogan “compare the spread”). CMC Markets also invented the concept of the daily cash rolling spread bet so traders no longer need to trade the futures price, reducing trading costs further.
Whilst CMC Markets focus on the major markets, they do actually offer access to quite a large amount of assets, over 12,00 including an industry-leading 338 fx crosses (CMC did start as a forex platform), 124 commodities, 28 indices and hundreds of UK and international stocks.
Two of CMC Market’s very innovative spread betting features are how they break down client sentiment and their share baskets. It’s commonplace for spread betting brokers to display client sentiment, but CMC Markets let you filter that sentiment down to profitable clients so it can become more valuable. They also provide a wide range of weighted share baskets so you can spread bets on sectors like driverless cars, big tech, cyber security and China tech, where ETFs have not yet been created.
- Expert opinion: CMC Markets full review
Compare CMC Markets to other spread betting brokers below:
| Spread Betting Broker | Markets Available | Minimum Deposit | GMG Rating | More Info | Risk Warning |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
 | 12,000 | £100 | See Platform | 69% of retail investor accounts lose money when trading CFDs with this provider | |
 | 1,200 | £1 | See Platform | 75.3% of retail investor accounts lose money when trading CFDs with this provider | |
 | 17,000 | £250 | See Platform | 70% of retail investor accounts lose money when trading CFDs and spread bets with this provider. | |
 | 10,000 | £1 | See Platform | 64% of retail investor accounts lose money when trading CFDs with this provider | |
 | 12,000 | £1 | See Platform | 69% of retail investor accounts lose money when trading CFDs with this provider | |
 | 3,981 | £10 | See Platform | 66.95% of retail investor accounts lose money when trading CFDs with this provider |
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