Why trade Commodities with CMC Markets?
You wanted tighter Commodities spreads and lower margins
CMC Markets has revolutionised commodities trading with the introduction of cash commodities into our next generation trading platform, enabling us to cut the cost of trading your favourite commodities like Gold, Silver, Crude oil, Copper and many more.
You can now trade Gold, for example, from just 0.3pts spread with an initial margin of just 1%, and both Crude Oil West Texas and Crude Oil Brent are now from just 3.5pt spreads with a 1% margin requirement. Couple this with industry leading platform features such as customisable margin and fractional trading means you can now trade any commodity amount on your terms.
Click here to see a comparison against some of our competitors.
Wide range of Commodities products
Natural resources and agricultural products have been traded for centuries but clients have access to a whole host of different commodity types including Precious Metals such as Gold and Silver to volatile Energy Commodities such as Crude Oil, Gasoline and Natural Gas.
Click here for a complete list of Commodities.
Cash price - No rollovers just one smooth continuous price
CMC have re-invented commodities trading by being the first to offer a purely cash price. Traditionally, Commodities are traded via futures contracts which have expiry dates, rollover costs and price jumps at expiry. With CMC Markets cash commodity CFD prices we strip out the carrying costs that are built into futures prices. When we do this the price becomes smoother and more continuous, avoiding the price disparities (price jumps) seen when a futures contract expires and is replaced by the next contract. The carrying costs are applied to the position as a financing adjustment at the close of business each day, providing total transparency on the cost of holding the position.
Click here to learn more about our Commodities Cash price.
Customisable margin (CFDs only) and transaction based stop losses
Traditionally, commodities have shown very little correlation with popular financial products, such as shares, and have historically performed with considerable volatility so we wanted to offer our clients additional tools to protect them during these times against adverse price movements. This is why we introduced our customisable margin and transaction based stop loss tools.
Customisable margin
You now have the option to choose your own margin amount for each and every trade, which can help you manage risk and financing costs. From a financing perspective, if you decide to fund 50% of the trade and use 50% margin, you would only pay financing on your net borrowings (in this case 50% of the total trade).
Typically, most commodities have fixed margin requirements and you have to pay financing on the total position size regardless of your margin. At CMC Markets we believe customisable margin (the ability to deleverage your position) is a cost effective way for our clients to manage their financing costs.
By using a customisable margin, you have more control over your risk and financing during volatile markets to try and avoid a quick liquidation of your positions if they move against you.
Transaction based stop losses
Whenever you open a trade the platform automatically suggests a stop loss based on the margin requirement for your trade (this feature can be disabled in preferences). This will be done by instrument, every time you trade.
If you vary your margin the stop loss will be aligned to your new margin requirements automatically. There is a simple financing slider in the deal ticket to allow you to select margins up or down . This enables you to balance your risk profile against your borrowing requirements.
You can also have the platform automatically suggest a take profit order at a percentage of the market price. So if the transaction based stop loss is set at 5% you could have the take profit level automatically set at 10% to create a 2 to 1 risk to reward ratio. (You can enable this feature in preferences).
No minimum trade sizes with our CFD fractional trading
Our Next Generation CFD platform allows us to offer you the unique ability to trade commodities at a fraction of any amount. This effectively means a unit is no longer the minimum trade size when trading commodity CFDs. With CMC Markets you can trade from as low as 1/1000th of a unit. This feature also allows you to trade in nice round amounts in your local currency. For e.g. if you traded gold it is quoted in US$, with fractional trading you can enter a trade using a pound amount and the platform will automatically figure out how many units that is as a fraction so you can transact the trade. Even if that trade size is 0.001 of a unit, we give you the control over your asset allocation.
Automatic currency calculations
When you open a trade in a currency that is not your account based currency (e.g UK resident trading overseas markets) our Next Generation platform will automatically value your position, such as Gold and Crude Oil (both quoted in US$), into pounds sterling using the latest market exchange rates (e.g. USD/GBP). We do this for all of your overseas trades so your real time profit and loss is valued in your home currency.
Up to 20 years’ worth of price history on major Commodities
For those that trade using technical analysis we have built in up to 20 years’ worth of price history into our charts for commodities. Traditionally, when trading futures contracts you can only view price history for the period of the futures contracts of say 3 months. Due to our cash price that has no expiry, we can show a smooth continuous price within our charts for an extended period.
Click here to learn more about our advanced charting functionality.