IC Markets is a convenient and secure broker, but many users and experts know it as the company with probably the lowest spreads and fees in the industry. That makes it a perfect choice for both novice traders and users who prefer automated trading. In this article, we offer you a brief explanation of how these low spreads work and analyze which non-trading fees you will have to pay.
IC Markets overview
Founded in 2007 in Australia, IC Markets has since become one of the world’s leading brokers with lots of clients all over the world. The broker is especially popular in the UK, Germany Australia, Brazil, and various Asian countries like Vietnam or Thailand. Such popularity seems to be well-deserved: the company is licensed under the Australian Securities and Investment Commission (ASIC), which makes it rather secure.
The broker frequently participates in external audits to prove that everything inside the company works according to regulations. There’s also an insurance mechanism to make your funds even more protected. However, these security measures are not the most impressive thing about IC Markets. Both users and experts praise the company for having very low spreads and reasonable fees. Let’s check out whether that’s actually true.
Spreads and fees
Actually, IC Markets spread levels are probably the lowest in the industry. It offers a cheap ECN (electronic communication networks) account for those users who don’t want to spend too much on commissions. These accounts work by borrowing their pricing from external liquidity providers, and they have extremely low spreads from just about 0.1 pips for the most popular currency pairs like EURUSD.
But the broker must make its profits, isn’t it? That’s why ECN account charge a fixed commission per lot. If you don’t like that model, you can always use a Standard account: it has wider spreads (from 0.6 pips, which is pretty favorable as well) but no commissions. The fees and spreads for trading CFDs with IC Markets are pretty great, too. For example, the average spread for the US SPX 500 index is just 0.492, which is really cheap.
The broker is also notable for its absence of additional non-trading fees. IC Markets doesn’t have any inactivity fees, so you can leave your account unattended for any period of time. There are also no deposit or withdrawal fees (but your bank can still charge its own fee after receiving money from your account).
