City Index CFD Broker Review 72

Overview/ Background

The operation takes great pride in its long history, but that is far from being its main selling point. It offers Forex, CFD and Spread betting services covering more than 12,000 global markets. These services are well regulated and available in scores of countries worldwide – among them Canada.

The main regulator of City Index is the UK’s FCA. As such, it is obvious that the operator is held to high-quality standards in regard to its pricing and execution, and its traders are covered by the Financial Services Compensation Scheme, which will refund trader monies up to a maximum of £50,000 in case of an unexpected broker bankruptcy.

As far as the security of trader funds is concerned, City Index seems to be at the top of their game. Clients’ monies are held in segregated bank accounts, as required by the regulators, and the funding portal used to handle traders’ deposits and withdrawals is 100% safe and secure.

The corporate actor behind the City Index brand is GAIN Capital Holdings Inc. A company listed at the NYSE, GAIN Capital is indeed one of the biggest and best-known providers of institutional as well as retail trading services in the world. GCAP handles assets worth more than $1.43 billion, and it provides retail trading services to more than 150,000 clients worldwide, whose assets totaled $946 million in 2016.

The operation is regulated in 8 jurisdictions and its liquidity exceeds the $182 million mark, far above the minimum required $113 million.

GAIN Capital’s Investor Relations department can be contacted directly from the City Index website. Information can be requested about the detailed financial results of the operation too.

City Index Regulation

The actual physical address of City Index’s offices is in London, but the operator maintains offices in several other major cities world-over. The regulatory profile of the brokerage is a truly global one as well.

Besides the FCA, which is the home-turf regulator of the broker, City Index is also regulated/licensed by Australia’s ASIC, the UAE’s Central Bank, and Singapore’s MAS. That said, traders from Canada can also access and trade through the brokerage, in a fully legal and regulated manner.

City Index Reputation

This is where this review takes a turn for the unexpected: despite being considered a reliable and trustworthy destination by scores of clients and the majority of reviewers, City Index has somehow managed to rack up a bad reputation on online feedback portals such as Trustpilot. Indeed, the majority of their users posting there have nothing good to say about the brokerage.

Complaints range from issues concerning withdrawals (some people say they have to engage in lengthy phone-conversations even when withdrawing nominal sums of £100) to accusations of cheating against the backdrop of various site “anomalies” and penny-pinching by shaving money off every trade one makes.

While there are indeed quite a few positive reviews posted there too, all the complaining does prompt one to give it all a second thought. Customer support is said to be questionable as well.

City Index Trading Platforms and Tools

City Index features a massive array of trading platforms, aimed at fulfilling every need their traders may have.

The Advantage Web platform is their handiest one. It is an HTML5-based, no-download platform, which was voted the best spread-betting platform of 2017. Advantage Web offers no fewer than 12 chart types and more than 80 technical indicators.

The AW layouts are fully customizable and one-click trading is available through the platform. Watch-lists can be set up and personalized, heat maps can be used, and various risk management tools can be deployed through the platform.

The mobile trading platforms are aimed at iOS and Android-based devices, offering 24-hour access to one’s trading account, even when on the move. The mobile charting packages are surprisingly powerful, and technical analysis can be optimally performed through these mobile platforms as well. An economic calendar and live streaming prices are also included in this package.

As far as downloadable platforms go, the AT Pro seems to be the flag-bearer of the operation, even though MT4 is available too.

AT Pro can be fetched off the City Index website for free and its installation can be completed within a few minutes. The platform offers a staggering array of drawing tools, as well as more than 100 technical indicators. Hundreds of built-in trading templates are delivered with the platform, and traders can create their own, custom ones, through Visual Basic, C# or .NET.

Trading signals are a major part of the AT Pro package, and back-testing tools are provided to test the accuracy of these signals against historical data.

MT4 needs little to no introduction for those familiar with the trading world. The gold standard in online trading, MT4 comes with a massive number of preinstalled technical indicators and drawing tools, giving traders the possibility to create their own. EAs are among the most popular features of MT4.

As far as trading tools go, besides the comprehensive educational package offered by the site, a technical- and fundamental analysis portal is also available. Real-time trading signals can also be had, through email or SMS.

City Index Account Types

The Demo accounts featured by City Index are surprisingly generous. They come with £10,000 in virtual cash, and they remain active for 12 weeks. Demo account users can access all the tools and features offered by the real money accounts and that includes real-time pricing on all tradable assets, including Bitcoin.

The Standard account is the basic real-money account option offered by the broker. This account requires a minimum deposit of only $100/equivalent.

The VIP account is for large-volume users. There is no minimum deposit requirement posted for this account type.

As far as trading conditions go, there are no commissions charged on spread-betting and CFDs (with the exception of equity CFDs). The spreads are quite manageable: on the EUR/USD pair, for instance, they can be as low as 0.5 points. Obviously, on more exotic pairs, such as those involving cryptos, the spreads are quite a bit higher.  

City Index Tradable Markets

The brokerage covers more than 12,000 tradable assets, over several asset categories, such as Indices, Shares, Forex, Cryptos and a special asset-class covering commodities, options, metals, bonds and interest rates.

In regard to FX: there are 84 pairs available for MT4 Forex, CFD trading and spread betting.

The Crypto selection includes Bitcoin, Ethereum, Litecoin and Ripple trading, as well as detailed explanations about cryptocurrencies in general, about CFDs and about other aspects of trading these relatively new assets.

Conclusion

City Index looks like a reliable and trustworthy operator, although one has to bear in mind that scores of their users will not agree with that.