IC markets review
One of the most highly rated forex brokers thereof with very high reviews across the web, IC Markets, is a world-renown regulated broker that is trader friendly with tight spreads and very low commissions.
This article seeks to dive deeper to shed some light on what exactly makes this Seychelles-based brokerage so great that it could even receive a 4.9/ 5 rating on Trustpilot based on over 19,000 reviews.
So if you wish to know more about IC markets and whether or not it is the right broker for you, then continue reading as this article contains all the necessary information needed to make an informed decision on whether or not IC markets is a reliable and trusted forex broker to trade with.
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What is IC markets? (General information)
International Capital markets (IC Markets for short) is one of the world’s largest CFD forex providers offering its services to over 13 million clients worldwide ranging from retail traders, professional traders, and large companies. It is part of the Raw trading LTD group of trading companies.
Though incorporated, IC markets is a privately owned company with the management team boasting over 20 years of experience providing derivatives products under their belt. According to IC Markets about us page, the founders were a part of the success of one of the largest CFD providers in the world. At the very least, this can give comfort to the doubtful that the people running the show behind the scenes have a lot of experience and knows what they are doing.
IC Markets locations
Its main base of operations and headquarters was initially located in Australia, but after mid-2021 the Australian Government put a cap on the maximum leverage a CFD forex broker can offer to 1:50, most of their clients had to be transferred over to their Seychelles branch.
“The Seychelles is an archipelago of 115 islands in the Indian Ocean, off East Africa...” – Wikipedia
This was an important decision since most of their clients were outside of Australia, the cap on IC markets leverage would’ve not only affected their revenue but also their ratings. That’s because traders like to trade with high leverage since that’s one of the basic tools that give forex traders the ability to maximize their efforts in exploiting the forex market for profit.
IC markets trading accounts that are hosted at the Seychelles branch have a suffix denoted as “SC“. When creating a live account, the server information would look something like “ICmarketsSC-live31“
Is IC markets regulated?
This top-tier forex brokerage firm could not be renowned around the world by so many traders without being regulated. infact all of the Raw trading LTD companies are known to be regulated by their respective country’s financial authority.
Raw Trading Ltd group and regulating authorities
- International Capital Markets Pty Ltd (regulated by the Australian Securities and Investments Commission)
- IC Markets (EU) Ltd (registered in Cyprus and is regulated by the Cyprus Securities and Exchange Commission)
- IC Markets Ltd (registered in The Bahamas, regulated by the Securities Commission of The Bahamas)
- Raw Trading Ltd (Registered in Seychelles, regulated by the Financial Services Authority of Seychelles (FSA)).
What do ICmarkets do with my money and information?
The broker confirms that all client’s trading funds are held in segregated top-tier banks across Australia. In other words, they do not use clients’ money for operating expenses or investments. Further more, they do not sell their client’s personal information so you can rest assure when submitting your KYC (know you customer) documents.
ie: Proof of ID & Proof of Address.
Now that we’ve covered most of the general information about this brokerage firm, let’s dive deeper to see what exactly positioned this CFD platform in the number one 1 as a forex broker.
Trading with IC markets
To date, IC markets offer up to 65 currency pairs including top cryptocurrencies. Additional this forex broke offer CFDs in precious metals, commodities, indices, futures, shares, and bonds
Account types
IC markets offer two types of trading accounts, namely:
- Standard accounts: Do not charge commissions, but the spreads are slightly increased compared to what they initially received from their liquidity providers.
- Raw spreads accounts: These accounts show the raw spreads that they received from their liquidity providers, however, they are charged a commission fee with every trade.
IC markets maximum account limit
You can have multiple trading accounts under one registered email. Up to date, you can freely open up to 20 maximum trading accounts, however, terms and conditions apply when opening additional trading accounts. For example, if you already have 2 opened trading accounts and you wish to open a third, you have to ensure that the previous two have a balance greater than $1.
If you wish to open an additional account but do not wish to use the account with the balance less than $1, then simply close that account and then open a new one via the client area or contact support to do it for you.
If you hit the 20 account limit, then the terms and conditions may differ. One customer agent implied that upon hitting that number, in order to get any additional accounts open, each of the previously opened accounts must have a balance greater than $100.
Trading fee: Spreads, swaps, and commissions
Among the first things that every trader should inspect when selecting a forex broker to trade with is their trading fees. These fees are can be categorized into three depending on how they are applied and charge by the broker.
IC markets Spreads
“A broker spread is the difference between the bid and ask price. Spreads are one of the most common means a forex broker makes money, as such different brokers have different spreads. However, the tighter the spreads, the more beneficial it is to a trader.” forex glossary
At first glance at the widget below, you can clearly see that the spreads being offered is fairly low. But to really appreciate and understand how low these spreads are, you would have to compare these spreads to other broker’s spread.
Myfxbook.com
As you can see on the Rhasfx broker Spread Comparison tool (<-opens in a new tab), this broker in topic has some of the tightest spreads available to trade with when compared to its competitors. Currency pairs such as EURUSD and GBPUSD have spreads that are as low as 0.0 – 0.2 the most regardless of market conditions.
To summarize, when it comes to tight spreads, this forex broker, ICmarkets, offers the lowest spreads available to any retail trader.
IC markets Commissions
A broker’s commission fee is the charge that is applied to a trader’s account when a position is open and closed.
For MetaTrader, IC markets commission is $7 per standard lot for every round turn. This means that the commissions are charged based on the lot size of the trade. The basic charges are as followed:
IC Markets commissions Table
| Lotsize | Commissions (round turn) | |
|---|---|---|
| Standard lot | 1.00 | $7.00 |
| Mini lot | 0.10 | $0.70 |
| Micro Lot | 0.01 | $0.07 |
PLEASE NOTE: that in forex terminology, “round-turn” means for both open and closed positions.
It is to be noted that depending on the MetaTrader platform that a trader is using the commissions are charged differently.
- On MT4 all commission charge for a position is applied at the opening of the trade.
- On MT5 commission is charged per side (opening/closing).
Additionally, On MT5 the commission charged display is rounded to 2 decimal places instead of 3. So instead of seeing $0.035 while using the MT5 terminal, you’ll see $0.04 ($0.08 round turn) instead. But not to be alarmed, the actual commission charges are still the same $7.
On Ctrader however, the commission for every standard lot is $3 ($6 per round turn).
ICmarkets swaps
Swaps are fees that are charged for positions that are kept open until the next forex trading day. Swap fees can be positive or negative, but some currency pairs have both negative rates whether your trade is a buy [long] or sell [short].
Each currency pair has its own swap charge and is measured on a 1.00 standard lotsize. Swap rates are calculated in points, MetaTrader 4 and 5 convert them automatically into the base currency of your account. For MetaTrader, the swap for the most popular trading instruments are as follow:
IC markets Swap table
| Symbol | LONG | SHORT |
|---|---|---|
| AUDCAD | -1.51 | -1.55 |
| AUDCHF | 0.25 | -2.5 |
| AUDJPY | -0.9 | -1.79 |
| AUDNZD | -3.17 | 0.14 |
| AUDSGD | -1.1 | -1.95 |
| AUDUSD | -1.81 | -1.44 |
| CADCHF | 0.67 | -3.18 |
| CADJPY | -0.4 | -2.14 |
| CHFJPY | -3.36 | 0.22 |
| EURAUD | -4.6 | 0.18 |
| EURCAD | -4.41 | 0.67 |
| EURCHF | -1.72 | -2.29 |
| EURJPY | -3.18 | -0.55 |
| EURGBP | -2.86 | -0.41 |
| EURNZD | -6.9 | 2.9 |
| EURSGD | -3.34 | 0.46 |
| EURUSD | -3.29 | 0.46 |
| GBPAUD | 3.31 | -4.05 |
| GBPCAD | -3.06 | -3.01 |
| GBPCHF | 0.03 | -4.7 |
| GBPJPY | -2.17 | -3.44 |
| GBPNZD | -5.83 | -2.45 |
| GBPSGD | -0.28 | -2.88 |
| GBPUSD | -3.15 | -3.1 |
| NZDCAD | -0.23 | -2.5 |
| NZDCHF | 1.61 | -3.13 |
| NZDJPY | 0.68 | -2.79 |
| NZDUSD | -0.61 | -2.08 |
| USDCAD | -2.16 | -1.93 |
| USDCHF | 0.35 | -3.18 |
| USDJPY | -1.29 | -2.7 |
| USDSGD | -4.91 | -4.7 |
| XAUUSD | -1.68 | -0.7 |
| BTCUSD | -10 | -10 |
However, you may visit here to see the swap rates for the CTrader terminal.
How to avoid paying swaps?
If you are restricted by your beliefs and want to avoid paying swaps to your forex broker, then you can simply create an Islamic account. These are accounts that are not charged nor do they earn interest on their positions. Luckily, IC Markets offers Islamic accounts that is available on both our Raw Spread and Standard account types on the MT4, MT5, and cTrader platforms
ICMarkets available Platforms
You can trade with IC markets as your broker of choice while using your favorite platforms.
- MT4
- MT5
- Ctrader
Do IC markets offer deposit Bonuses?
Unfortunately, as good as they are, they do not offer any bonus of any kind. This is one of the few, if not the only area where they fall short. Likewise, neither do they offer any form of promotion or contest to engage with their clients.
IC Markets trading service
Forex trading is not an easy thing to grasp, and traders around the world struggle every day to become profitable on their own. However not many are fortunate to do so. As a result, most top forex brokers are opting into creating additional trading services where new [unprofitable] traders can piggyback on the trades of experienced [profitable] traders. Among the most popular service are:
- PAMM/ MAM: Their Multi Account Manager allows you to manage clients’ money with flexible allocation methods.
- Copy-trading: They don’t have their own in-built copy trading system, however, they’ve partnered with multiple 3rd party copy trading platforms.
ICmarkets copy trading partners:
- Zulutrade
- Mql5
- Duplitrade
- Myfxbook
- Fx Junction
- Tradency
Rhasfx Copy Trading
Since we are on the topic of Copy trading and PAMM, then it is to be noted that Rhasfx is allocating a massive inventory of profitable EA (expert advisors) that will be available for copy trading across many different copy trading platforms and brokers alike including ICmarkets. To be informed when this service is ready, you can:
- Subscribe to our newsletter.
- Join our telegram channel
- Follow us on: Facebook, Instagram, and/or Twitter
- Subscribe to our YouTube Channel.
Trading instruments
ICmarkets offer a wide range of trading instruments spanning across different markets. To summarize, please refer to the table below.
IC markets Trading instruments
| Markets | Leverage | # of Assets |
|---|---|---|
| Forex | up to 1:500 | 61 |
| Commodities | up to 1:500 | 22 |
| Indices | up to 1:200 | 25 |
| Bonds | up to 1:200 | 11 |
| Digital (crypto) Currencies | up to 1:5 | 5+ |
| Stocks | -- | 730+ |
| Futures | up to 1:200 | 4 |
Transactions
Of course, another keep variable to consider when analyzing a forex broker is their transaction details.
ICmarkets Minimum deposits
Their first-time minimum deposit is $200. However, after making that deposit for the first, there is no minimum deposit thereon after. In other words, you can deposit $200 today and have the restriction removed, withdraw the $200 the following day (using the same method), and then deposit how little you can afford.
ICmarkets Withdrawal fees
Other than a bank wire transfer, this broker in review does not charge any fee on withdrawing or depositing. In fact, the broker itself does not charge for the bank wire transfer, but rather their bank that processes the transfer (AUD $20 or equivalent), as well as your receiving bank.
Author’s note: The first and last time I did a bank wire transfer was when I was just new to trading and was withdrawing about $280. Out of that, I had to pay about $50+ ($32 to my receiving bank, and the rest for the sending bank)
ICmarkets Withdrawal and Funding (deposit) methods
Among the different withdrawal methods a trader can use to deposit and withdraw their funds in and out of IC markets are:
- PayPal (YES! IC markets accept PayPal)
- Skrill
- Neteller
- Neteller VIP
- UnionPay
- Bank Wire transfer
- Visa/ Master card
- Bpay
- FasaPay
- Broker to Broker
- Poli
- Thai internet Banking
- RapidPay
- Klarna
- Vietnamese Internet Banking
ICmarkets withdrawal processing time is very fast. Withdrawal requests cut-off time is 12:00 AEST/AEDT. If your withdrawal is submitted before this time it will be processed on the day of receipt. If your withdrawal is submitted after this time it will be processed on the following business day.
My recommendation is to use the “visa direct” withdrawal method. Withdrawing the funds is instant or may take on a few minutes to be accredited to your bank account for use.
ICMarkets Support:
Their support team is very polite and would go beyond limits to assist their troubled clients to the best of their ability.
Author’s note: Speaking from experience.
If your issue is not within the agent’s field of expertise, they would not hesitate to connect you with an agent that can be of excellent assistance to you. Above all, despite their massive client base, they always reply within 5 minutes after texting them.
Conclusion
I hope this review of IC markets is of use to you and you found the information that you were searching for and more. Overall, the broker is without a shadow of a doubt one of the best forex brokers with ultra-low fees along with superb customer support. So if you are looking for a broker to trade with, then I implore you to look no further, ICmarkets is among the best forex brokers.
this is a really nice and in depth review. Its all and everything necessary someone needs to know about the broker in one place, keep up the good work.