Markets.com Spread Betting

2. Spreadex – Great Spread Betting App

One thing I liked about Spreadex was its solid spread betting app which I found offered a smooth trading experience on the iPhone during my tests. Normally, mobile apps like MT4 frustrate me due to clunky designs and lagging between charts but Spreadex’s app felt fluid in comparison, with responsive charts and order tickets.

If you like to perform technical analysis on your mobile devices, Spreadex offers 35+ trading indicators which include Ichimoku and Bollinger Bands, as well as access to Fibonacci retracement indicators. So the mobile app certainly holds up well for its technical analysis tools.

An indicator that I found unique to Spreadex was the Pro Trend Lines feature that automates placing support and resistance levels in addition to trend lines to your charts. Pro Trend Lines uses multi-timeframe analysis and its algorithm to detect areas of the market where price will likely react, making it a great tool for breakout trading.

The trading conditions on the app were decent, but the broker impressed me with its low spreads from my testing. Spreadex recorded 0.90 pips average spreads for EUR/USD, placing it third best in this category and below the 1.12 pips industry average.

I also consider Spreadex to be a low-cost spread betting broker as 7/8 currency pairs were also cheaper than their industry averages as you can see from the table below:

You can benefit from the low trading costs on over 10,000 spread betting markets, positioning Spreadex as one of the top brokers for financial instruments. You can access all markets on the Spreadex mobile app, which includes forex, commodities, shares, ETFs, and indices.

If you are a professional trader, you may be interested that Spreadex is the only broker to provide spread betting markets on cryptocurrencies.

My Take on Spreadex

I gave Spreadex 96/100 in my review for its tight spreads from 0.90 pips, 10,000+ spread bet markets, and excellent trading platforms. If you like to bet through a mobile device, I think the Spreadex app is your perfect partner with its responsive charting and trade management tools.

Visit Spreadex

64% of retail investor accounts lose money when trading spread bets and CFDs with this provider.

3. OANDA – Top Spread Betting Broker For Beginners

While using OANDA, I thought the broker offers a great trading experience for beginners, especially with its OANDA Trade platform, balancing TradingView’s advanced charting with beginner-friendly risk management tools. As it leverages TradingView’s charts, you get access to 70+ indicators which is enough to test your trading strategies, but what stood out for me was its risk management features.

A feature unique to OANDA Trade was its low stake sizes from £0.01p providing a safe environment when you move from a demo account to a live trading environment. I think this makes the broker a great starting point with 1p per point stake sizes, allowing you to test your strategies with the lowest financial risk possible.

OANDA also has no minimum deposit, allowing you to open a live account with £10 if you want to and still open positions with 1p per point. This is just one of the reasons I rated the broker highly for beginners. In comparison, other brokers may require you to deposit £100 and start with a bet size of 50p per point, which could be expensive if you make mistakes.

I found that OANDA Trade had excellent risk management tools including standard, trailing, and guaranteed stop-loss orders (GLSO) for you to implement with each order. The GLSO is an excellent option as it will exit your bets at the price set, even in volatile markets saving you money on losses caused by negative price slippage.

The best feature about GLSOs is that you do not pay the premium if the stop loss is never executed. So as a beginner, it makes sense to use them until you have developed an airtight risk management strategy.

In addition to OANDA Trade, if you want more advanced features like custom indicators or automated trading tools then you should switch to MetaTrader 4 or TradingView.

All platforms have access to the broker’s 100+ markets which is limited compared to the rest of the industry, especially considering it doesn’t offer shares. However, it does have a solid offering of 68 forex pairs and 29 commodities, covering major markets like crude oil and gold.

My Take on OANDA

I gave OANDA a score of 91/100 in my broker review after being impressed with the broker’s high scores on my trust, customer service and trading costs categories. The broker’s strengths suit beginners as you can use low stake sizes from 1p, no minimum deposit required, and access to top risk management tools on its OANDA Trade platform.

Visit OANDA

76.6% of retail investor accounts lose money when trading spread bets and CFDs with this provider.

4. IG Markets – Best Broker For Spread Bet Markets

I found IG Markets to have the most financial instruments in my testing, giving you access to 17,000 products, dwarfing its competitors that provide 1,000 to 2,000.

With such a range of products, you can bet on 100+ forex pairs, 130+ indices, 30+ commodities, 5,000+ ETFs, 14 bonds, and 13,000 individual shares. I liked the large selection as it lets you spread bet in a variety of markets using one account, instead of using different brokers for shares and another for forex.

Amongst the selection of markets included two extra product types including futures and options markets, offering you unique ways to bet on the markets.

The futures markets are a great alternative if you have a longer-term trading idea that may last weeks because you do not pay the overnight financing fees. Whereas with traditional spread bets, you will pay a percentage based on your margin every night while the bet is open, increasing your trading costs.

Options give you an alternate way of betting on the markets to profit from price direction and increased volatility with risk limited to the cost of opening an option (premium). These are good tools if you have a longer-term idea and want to benefit from announcements like GDP or earning reports to profit from the increased volatility.

Both of these options allow for longer-term trading while still exempt from capital gains and stamp duty, making them good tools to use for hedging your stock portfolios. One thing to point out is that you can only spread bet in these markets on the IG Trading platform.

The IG Trading platform has the core features you want from a platform including 50+ indicators and access to market news including IGTV which is like their own Bloomberg channel. It’s the only option if you wish to bet across its 17,000+ markets as the alternatives (MetaTrader 4 and ProRealTime) lack some of the markets.

MetaTrader 4 in particular doesn’t offer stocks, options or futures, but is an excellent option if you want to automate your forex trades by using expert advisors. While ProRealTime lacks futures and options markets, ProRealTime offers excellent technical analysis tools like ProReal Trend to automate finding support and resistance levels, allowing for quick market analysis.

What surprised me was how well IG Markets performed in my trading costs test with 9/9 currency pairs beating their industry averages. The broker placed second for EUR/USD average spreads with 0.85 pips but achieved first place on AUD/USD at 0.82 pips.

My Take on IG Markets

IG Markets delivered a decent trading experience on its IG Trading platform considering it offers 17,000 markets and tight spreads, the broker earned a solid 86/100 score. With access to futures and options markets, it gives you alternative ways to profit from the markets by using one spread betting account.

5. AvaTrade – Great Spread Betting Broker With Fixed Spreads

Out of the 16 brokers I’ve tested, AvaTrade is the only one to offer fixed spreads that may appeal to you if you day trade or automate your bets. This is because fixed spreads do not widen during volatile times such as news announcements like non-farm payrolls, allowing you to enter bets at the same prices.

I found this useful if you overlook upcoming events and accidentally open a bet during an announcement, as with variable spreads this mistake could cost you a lot of money.

What impressed me is that the fixed spreads were competitive, if not better than some of the variable spread brokers in my tests. For example, AvaTrade’s spread on EUR/USD is 0.90 pips which is lower than 11 of the 16 brokers tested and below the industry average of 1.12 pips.

However, the broker’s spreads were slightly more expensive across the other 8 forex pairs tested but surprisingly 8/9 pairs performed better than the industry averages. With that said, I’d only look at betting on EUR/USD and EUR/JPY where it is most competitive as you can see in the table above. If you want to bet on other markets you’d find better value with a broker like Spreadex.

Interestingly, I felt AvaTrade missed the mark with its range of 150+ financial markets, one of the lowest selections I’ve seen, only just beating OANDA. You do get access to a variety of assets like forex, commodities, indices, and shares, but they are limited in numbers which may not be appealing.

One area that I ranked AvaTrade highly in was its trading platforms scoring 7/10 for offering MetaTrader 4 and MetaTrader 5. You get a similar experience with both with 30+ indicators and drawing tools, automated trading tools, and custom indicators making them great platforms for analysing markets like EUR/USD.

If you want to bet on shares, I found you can only do this on MetaTrader 5 as the MT4 platform doesn’t support the price feed of shares.

My Take on AvaTrade

AvaTrade scored 48/100 in my tests as I thought the broker underperformed in major categories like range of markets and customer service. I think AvaTrade is a good platform if you want stable costs during your trading day thanks to its competitive pricing on forex majors. However, outside of these markets, I found the broker to be expensive which is why you may get better value from variable spread brokers like Pepperstone.

Who Is Markets.com?

Markets.com is a forex broker that specialises in CFD trading for its 4.7 million clients across the world. Since launching in 2009, the broker has grown in popularity and gained licences in 5 major jurisdictions which include the UK, Europe, Asia, Africa, and Australia. In our latest review, Markets.com no longer provides services to new UK-based traders which is a letdown if you want to spread bet with the broker.

With Markets.com pausing new clients in the UK, I have to recommend alternatives like Pepperstone, Spreadex, or OANDA which provide excellent spread betting services.