Finding a trading platform you know you can rely on can be challenging as markets constantly evolve and change. If you're looking to start using a trading platform that you can trust, City Index could be an excellent option to consider, being a market-leading trading platform.
However, you must consider many things when deciding which trading platform is best for you, including price, accessibility, and reviews.
In this article, we will delve into everything you need to know about City Index, ensuring you have a well-rounded overview of the platform before using it.
Why Consider Trading?
Before we get to the nitty gritty and provide you with all you need to know about City Index, it is essential that we highlight why trading is something to consider and what the process consists of.
Participating in trading is pursued with the intent of making a profit as market trends fluctuate by buying and selling financial instruments. You can trade depending on value increases and decreases, with the direction of the value being crucial.
You can trade with stocks, shares and forex, generating a profit as their price changes. With trading, you don't own the financial instruments you trade with.
Trading is an easy way to generate an extra source of income, but you must fully educate yourself prior to getting started.
You can use different motivations to trade, from technological developments to social change. Once you choose a direction that you would like to trade in, there are risks, but the outcome can be rewarding when you manage to make profits.
Trading has many benefits but can be particularly useful to lower-income workers. This is because it makes it easier than ever to make money that can be saved without needing extensive time to pursue. You can fulfil trading whenever you want.
Many platforms (such as City Index) have demo account versions to ensure you can become equipped with trading platforms before trading to prevent running into issues with losses.
One of the most significant selling points regarding trading is that there is no time attached to it, and you are free to trade as and when you please. Therefore, when choosing a great platform, having sufficient education on trading and delving into lucrative markets, there is a good chance of making a profit.
What is City Index?
Now that you know why trading can be an excellent option to generate extra income, let's look at City Index and the platform. City Index is one of the most trusted trading platforms, enabling users to pursue trading at reasonable pricing. As it stands, there are currently over 1 million traders using City Index, operating in over 13,000 markets.
While City Index's figures are impressive enough on their own, you can also consider their fascinating 40 years of experience when assessing why so many people trust the platform. City Index claims that 99.99% of all trades completed via the platform are executed by its market-leading trading technology, further establishing its reliability to customers.
The platform is a world leader in spread betting, forex trading and trading CFDs.
City Index operates as part of the StoneX group, one of the world's largest institutional trading providers with over 100 years of experience. The network connects companies, organisations and investors to the global markets.
The platform goes above and beyond to ensure the trading process isn't only trustworthy but faster than ever. Automated execution and insightful AI-powered tools make this efficient trading approach possible, with an innovative interface bringing these features to life.
With award-winning platforms and apps being integral to City Index's success and making the service fast and reliable, there are many reasons City Index traders return to using the service.
City Index Key Features
If what we discussed above sounds inviting, we can understand why. City Index has many outstanding claims, trading strategies and years of experience that make the platform so exciting and reliable, persuading thousands of people to give both trading and the platform a whirl.
But, how does the platform reflect these claims? Let's dive into the essential components and features of City Index and why these trading ideas and features are fundamental to the platform and user success rate.
Range of Global Financial Markets
As stated above, City Index has over 13,000 markets you can access using the platform. These platforms include indices, shares, forex and commodities. Each market is competitively priced and accessible through an easy-to-use platform, ensuring traders of all experience levels can get to grips with their chosen market.
City Index provides users with extensive knowledge and advice on each market to ensure traders select the market that makes the most sense to them and their needs. On the website alone, you can find exciting figures, such as forex trading generating over $6.5 trillion daily; talk about a lucrative industry!
With City Index, users can enjoy one-click trading, allowing experienced traders to open and close trades immediately and spend less time going back and forth.
Additionally, the platform provides comprehensive TradingView charts, expert market analysis, and real-time price alerts for an elevated and thorough view of the market that leverages the trading experience. The best part? You can experience all of this market data with no additional charges.
Trading Services
From forex, indices, shares, commodities and other markets, there are plenty of ways that you can trade using City Index. Below, we will take you through each of these trading options to give you a more well-rounded view of how trading works on City Index;
- Forex Trading: City Index consists of Tier 1 Banks liquidity, with some of the best pricing you can find. The TradingView charting package provides insight into the global currency markets, with one-click trading and over 80 indicators available.
City Index takes its approach further by elevating its platform with the latest Forex news and insights, making this trading more accessible and easy to digest due to the simplified delivery.
- Spread Betting: Users can trade tax-free on thousands of financial markets using City Index. The platform has a transparent pricing strategy to ensure you see upfront costs as you trade, allowing you to navigate spread betting trades more effectively.
- CFD Trading: CFD trading provides users access to over 5000 markets with competitive pricing and no stamp duty. Users can enjoy live market updates and data to ensure they make the best trading decisions that reflect their selected markets, with extended out-of-hours trading on indices and share CFDs.
Trading CFDs through City Index has been regulated by the Financial Conduct Authority, with up to £85,000 provided by the Financial Services Compensation Scheme.
The only CFD market you must pay to use is if you buy and sell share CFDs, with every other CFD market being based on zero commission. However, it is essential to note that you do need to pay if you leave a CFD trading market open overnight.
Trading Central
One of the most valuable features that City Index provides is its trading central portal. The portal provides technical analysis, brought to life through innovative AI that scans thousands of sources for the latest trading opportunities.
Trading central uses Market Buzz to deliver the above promise, scanning thousands of posts and articles from financial news sources to ensure traders can find updated information without opening their search engines.
The tool assesses over 2,500 publications, social media accounts and blogs for a trader's chosen market. It identifies the most critical information, making it easier than ever before to understand market sentiment.
The user-friendly interface comes complete with technical analysis that provides a deeper insight into trading opportunities and timeframes while offering a ‘what if' function to help traders plan their next move more effectively.
City Index Academy
City Index provides traders using the platform with the knowledge they need to succeed and thoroughly understand how to trade to avoid significant losses. From advanced training courses to beginner fundamentals, the platform provides a plethora of knowledge to leverage trading success rates.
It can be challenging to outline each trading term and understand its meaning, but City Index ensures this is not the case with its glossary feature that provides users with definitions and meanings of the most common trading terms.
The City Academy features is an excellent way to provide users with educational resources that ensure traders don't need to spend extensive time searching key terminology and can instead access all they need from the platform.
Pros and Cons of Using City Index
One of the essential pieces of information we can include in our City Index review to help you decide if the platform is right for you is to weigh how it will benefit you when using it. For example, do the pros outweigh the cons, or is there a con that puts you off using the service entirely?
Regarding City Index, the platform has many significant elements but isn't free of cons.
Below, we will take you through the advantages and disadvantages of using the trading platform and what you can expect to gain and lose when using the City Index platform.
City Index Pros
✔️ Trusted Technology: City Index has one of the most innovative and reliable trading platforms, with excellent trading tools and mobile applications for leveraged accessibility and efficiency.
Within City Index's app, users can seize trading opportunities easier than ever, with one swipe dealing and integrated multi-device dealing. For desktop users, traders can enjoy City Index's website and browser-based platform, complete with easy-to-use features such as one-click trading and performance analytics.
City Index pours so much effort into making its platforms the best on the market to provide users with solutions that elevate the trading experience through data-driven SMART signals and innovative tools.
✔️ Low Costs: City Index believe that investing should be accessible for people of all backgrounds, and their costs reflect this. The platform offers consistently low costs across the board with price improvement technology to keep all pricing elements up to scratch.
City Index takes its low-cost approach a step further by providing a best execution policy that executes your orders at the best prices if the price fluctuates since trading, ensuring you can make the most profit whilst not spending more.
✔️ Efficient Approach: Although you must spend extensive time educating yourself on trading and ensuring you have the necessary knowledge to become a successful trader, you can gain instant access to trading markets when using City Index.
The rapid execution provided by City Index ensures that trading is fast and reliable, with excellent success rates, such as 99.83% of trades being completed in less than one second.
✔️ Leveraged Insights: Going into the trading industry blind is perhaps one of the worst things you could do, and City Index does all it can to ensure its users won't fall into this trap. Instead, the platform provides detailed insights with educational materials and analytical tools to prevent new traders from making mistakes or losing money rapidly.
✔️ Experience: With four decades of experience under its wing, City Index has proven itself as a trusted trading platform that users can rely on. This level of expertise gives traders using the platform an extra edge, as they can pursue trading with the help of some of the most experienced experts in the industry.
Additionally, their experience handling market crashes and ever-changing financial markets ensures you are in safe hands.
✔️ Education: City Index provides free online training courses to ensure traders' knowledge is up to scratch, enabling them to trade better and make better use of opportunities. The platform offers education of various levels, from more advanced courses to beginner tips and tricks.
Once you have learnt the necessary knowledge, you can try a demo account and put what you have learnt to the test.
City Index Cons
❌️ High Risks Still Apply: When it comes to trading, it doesn't matter how many years your provider has in the industry, as risks will still apply, and it is your job to understand the risks involved. City Index disclaims that 73% of retail investor accounts lose money when trading CFDs through the platform, which is quite alarming.
It is essential to understand the risks involved in trading, even when City Index has many inviting and positive points that can be easy to focus on.
❌️ Some Resources Outdated: If you are a beginner at trading, chances are you will need City Index to provide you with educational materials and resources you can rely on. Whilst their website does this, some of their other platforms seem to be lagging in their approach, with City Index's YouTube channel not being active, which could be off-putting to traders.
❌️ Immediate Accessibility Generates More Risk: Whilst experienced brokers and traders will be happy with accessibility and rapid trading solutions provided by City Index, we do find it worrying that those without trading experience can start trading their money immediately. We recognise that City Index discusses risks, but more steps could be implemented to reduce beginners running into issues.
❌️ Limited Trading Options: Although City Index does provide the most popular trading options, such as Forex and CFD trading, there are limits surrounding crypto and other types of trading that users may want access to down the line. Not offering these services may result in traders switching platforms at some point.
The Types of Trading Accounts City Index Provides
You can get started with City Index by opening an account and selecting the type of trading market you wish to occupy.
Currently, the platform offers users four different trading accounts (not including the demo account option) with a range of benefits for each type of account. Let's take a look into what's on offer;
Standard Account
The standard account option is City Index's most popular category and offers users essential access to over 13,500 global markets and competitive spreads on forex, shares, indices, commodities and more. With a standard account, you can trade thousands of markets as spread bets or CFDs whilst enjoying negative balance protection to prevent losing more than your deposit.
MT4 Account
An MT4 account provides traders access to the most popular FX trading platform, integrated with all the perks from City Index. This account is perhaps the best option for those looking to prioritise forex trading and develop trading skills due to the latest market-moving news from Reuters in-platform Fast, along with the reliable execution on dozens of forex markets.
Corporate Account
As the name suggests, this account is perfect for businesses looking to open trading accounts. And, there's no need for extensive fees, allowing users to open an account with as little as £50,000.
From adding multiple authorised users to trade on your behalf, using company funds to trade and receiving excellent customer service, corporate trading with City Index is a great process.
Professional Account
Professional traders need trading accounts and platforms that reflect their needs, and City Index has ensured that this is the case by providing a professional account option. However, to use this option, you must meet specific criteria that proves you have the capacity to benefit from the advanced trading tools offered with a professional account.
These advanced features include having a dedicated relationship manager, invitations to exclusive content, seminars, webinars and hospitality events and broker-assisted dealing for telephone trading.
How To Start Trading with City Index
Starting spread betting or CFD trading with City Index is an easy and efficient process and will only take a few minutes.
The first thing you will need to do is determine the type of trading account that suits your needs, either by starting a demo version or fulfilling sufficient research on each of the above account types to decide.
Once you've decided on a trading account, you can open the account by registering your details and funding the account via City Index's secure funding portal. When both steps are complete, you can start trading or spread betting immediately!
However, if you're looking to open a professional trader's account, you will need to do a little more to secure this type of account. As FCA regulates City Index, they must ensure their products suit clients by pursuing basic background checks. For professional accounts, the following information will be needed;
- Your personal details
- Which products you want to trade in your account (spread betting, CFDs or both)
- Your financial status
- Your trading experience
City Index Pricing
Regarding City Index's pricing, no minimum deposit is needed to open your account.
However, charges will, of course, apply to use the service. Let's explore the platform's pricing and what you can expect to pay when trading with City Index;
- EUR/USD spreads from 0.5pts
- Indices trading from 0.4pts
- Commission on shares from 0.08pts
- Trade US Crude with spreads from 1.5pts
- Gold spreads from 0.5pts
Whilst there isn't a minimum deposit, City Index does recommend that those funding a new account put at least £100 towards it to ensure their first trade has enough to be successfully covered.
Unlike other trading platforms, City Index doesn't provide individual pricing for its plans, so it is slightly unclear how much users will need to pay to keep their accounts running. However, when assessing the information provided and reviews, the platform is an affordable way to pursue trading.
How Trustworthy is City Index?
When we consider the number of traders using City Index, we assume we can trust the service as many have before. However, the alarming figures that indicate over 70% of retail investor accounts lose money when trading CFDs through City Index make the service seem less trustworthy and can result in apprehension from traders.
Regarding the above statistic, the losses that retail investor accounts face don't align with how trustworthy City Index is. City Index is regulated by tiered regulators and the FSC, which gives us the confidence that users can trust the platform but should always trade at their own risk.
City Index Competitors
We couldn't fulfil a City Index review without delving into the various competitors the platform is against when it comes to trading.
Understanding the trading industry can only be done when we have assessed different platforms, see how City Index compares, and if this platform is the best option for those wishing to pursue trading. There are thousands of platforms out there, so let's take a look at the top competitors you should consider;
CMC Markets
CMC Markets is another award-winning UK-based trading platform that allows traders to complete spread betting and CFD trading efficiently and effectively.
The platform is FCA regulated and is currently used by over 300,000 global customers, making it a clear market leader that traders trust, but what makes it stand out?
CMC has over 30 years of experience in trading, giving a similar level of expertise as City Index.
However, the platform does have slightly lower trust ratings overall, with City Index taking the edge generally. Feature-wise, both platforms offer the same services, with MT4 being an integral element of each trading platform, ensuring both are market leaders.
XTB Online Trading
XTB is one of the world's most prominent FX and CFD trading platforms, represented by the likes of Conor McGregor, to entice traders and fans.
XTB has slightly less experience than City Index and CMC Markets, but still has an impressive 20 years of knowledge backing them to help businesses, traders and partners make investments and trading decisions.
XTB is also regulated by FCA, along with other authorities such as KNF, CySEC and FSC.
Offerings are similar to the other platforms, with forex and CFD trading at the forefront of XTB's deliveries. One thing worth pointing out is that retail investor accounts lose money at a higher percentage on XTB than City Index, with an estimated 81% making losses when using the platform for CFD trading.
IG
The final competitor we will cover in our City Index review is IG, the UK's number 1 trading provider. IG provides traders with an impressive 18,000 markets for CFD trading and spread betting, making it just as versatile as it is accessible.
Similarly to City Index, IG has easy-to-use platforms with desktop and mobile versions that traders of all experience levels can enjoy. IG has a retail investor loss rate of 76%, making it only slightly worse than City Index in this regard.
You aren't charged any money to start an account with IG, but potential charges arise as you use the platform for an extended period. The platform provides price breakdowns regarding the different types of trading that you can pursue through the service.
Disclaimer: Spread bets and CFDs are complex instruments and come with a high risk of losing money rapidly due to leverage. 70% of retail investor accounts lose money when trading spread bets and CFDs with this provider. You should consider whether you understand how spread bets and CFDs work, and whether you can afford to take the high risk of losing your money.
Conclusion
There is no doubt that City Index is one of the best trading platforms you can use due to its dynamic range of features, affordable startup fees and range of account options you can select when signing up for the platform.
Although competitors offer similar services, City Index has the best reputation and lowest loss rate, making it the most dependable option.
Additionally, it is easy for traders to use the platform, only needing to register essential details to get started with three of the four main account types.
The only account type needing more information to gain capital is the professional account, which we feel is good.
Putting more steps in place for the professional account ensures only traders with the right level of experience can use advanced features, helping inexperienced traders reduce their chances of being out of their depth and running into hefty losses.
Whilst there are cons to using City Index, the positives outweigh these issues and provide traders with solid trading opportunities with innovative technology that leverages any previous trading methods they may have used.
From advanced analytics and trading data to mobile and desktop access, there is a multitude of features that make the City Index experience an enjoyable one.
City Index offers support and account types to a range of traders, with research and marketing materials that back up the way they pursue trading decisions.
For example, City Index traders can utilise technical analysis regarding the market they want to trade in to gain insight into which companies and indices are most lucrative and why. From here, better trading decisions are made, helping City Index have an excellent track record.
Of course, there are many trading platforms that those who want to pursue trading could look into using, but it is easy to see that City Index is one of the best out there. Our comparisons indicate City Index has a better loss rate and the most experience, which can help traders feel they are in safe hands.
We recommend doing your own research and utilising demo account options and free periods of various trading platforms to gauge which platform works best for you. City Index provides a demo account option for you to get started with.
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