City Index is one of the world leaders in spread betting (UK) and CFD trading. Established in the UK in 1983, they have grown to become one of the leading providers of spread betting, contracts for difference and FX over the past 30 years.
As a group City Index have over 400 employees worldwide and offices in the UK, Poland, Singapore, China, Israel and Australia. They transact in excess of 2 million trades every month for individuals in over 50 countries worldwide.
The City Index trading platform enables you to spread bet and trade CFDs from a single platform. Their commitment to innovate and lead prompted them to launch the first downloadable spread betting app for the iPhone.
Range of Markets Offered by City Index
City Index offer prices on thousands of spread betting and CFD trading markets including indices, shares, currencies, commodities, bonds and interest rates.
In fact the last time I checked CityIndex quoted over 10,000 markets including commodities, indices and a comprehensive listing of US, UK and European stocks. They also have an impressive number of currency pairs to trade with over 50 major and minor forex pairs to choose from. So if you are looking to trade Forex, then all Forex account holders can also access Capped Variable Spreads on 37 forex pairs, including EUR/USD, GBP/USD and USD/JPY.
City Index offer tight spreads on the most popular markets for you to spread bet on. You can take positions on thousands of global markets. As one of the leading providers of spread betting and CFD trading in the UK, they offer very tight spreads on certain indices markets, including 1 point on the FTSE 100, Wall Street, Germany 30 and France 40 markets. Unfortunately, bid-offer spreads on most of other markets they quote aren’t quite that tight.
In addition to the desktop trading platforms, you can also trade from a wide range of devices, such as on your iPhone or iPad, or your Android mobile or tablet. This enables you to keep up to date with the markets and your spread betting positions.
The City Index Trading Platforms
The company has clearly put a lot of effort into providing some of the best mobile trading solutions, allowing financial traders to access its trading platform using different devices and handsets. The platforms and devices supported by City Index are;
- Advantage Web
- Advantage Trader
- MetaTrader 4 (FX)
- iPhone App
- Android Mobile App
- Blackberry App
- Windows Mobile App
- iPad App
- Android Tablet App
Advantage Web is the primary web based trading platform offered by City Index. Advantage Web enables you to spread bet, trade CFDs or FX from the same platform. The trading platform has a wide range of features such as;
- Dealing through charts
- One-click dealing
- Fully customisable screen layouts
- Multiple charts embedded into platform layouts
Advantage Web is a customisable browser-based platform which has been designed to support your trading of the financial markets successfully. The platform is fairly straightforward to navigate with smooth transitions between markets and straightforward ticketing for placing long and short bets. As with most other platforms they provide 24 hour trading and a great live streaming news feature. Stop and limit orders can be placed as standard although the failure to provide trailing stop orders is counterbalanced by the ability to place one-closes-the-other (OCO) orders to limit market exposure.
The City Index Advantage web trading platform also allows you to deal thru charts. This is a good feature for chartists as it means you don’t have to switch between the chart and the deal ticket. You can also amend order directly from the charts which is another useful time-saving feature.
The platform also supports ‘One-click dealing’ which can increase the speed of execution to make sure you don’t miss out on trading opportunities. If this isn’t for you then you can always switch to double-click dealing. Most of the screen layouts are customisable and you can even embed multiple charts into platform screens which is useful if you wish to watch multiple charts at the same time. You can also create and amend multiple watchlists, grouping together individual markets to suit your trading needs.
Supporting Tools & Services Offered by City Index
Along with the standard trading platforms, City Index offer some additional trading tools -:
- Market News & Analysis
- Economic Calendar
- Technical Analysis News
- Trading Academy
- Learn to Trade Tutorials
- Webinars
The charting package available on the CityIndex platform is highly advanced as you would expect. The charts have multiple features for technical analysis and multiple indicators which can be overlaid on to customised studies. CityIndex also proved webinars and seminars to teach traders how to use technical analysis and other trading strategies. They also provide a great four week training programme for absolute beginners and, during this period, new traders can trade form as little as 25p per point.
Bonus
Unfortunately, at the moment it doesn’t like City Index have any bonuses available for new clients signing up. But CityIndex do sometimes have cash introductory offers to attract new traders to try their platform. Whilst these are often time-limited, they generally include cash incentives for new account holders who deposit a minimum amount into their accounts and execute a certain number of bets. Their most recent offer was a £200 cash bonus for new account holders who deposited £1000 in to their account. This became available directly in to the clients account as soon as at least 3 trades were placed at a minimum of £3 per point. Although CityIndex provide such bonuses it becomes clear from the advertising on their website that they look to attract the majority of their account holders with their mobile trading as well as competitive spreads on the most common markets.
Should I use City Index as my CFD Broker?
Overall, the City Index trading platform is easy-to-use. They also offer a very wide range of markets although the spreads are not the tightest one can find and they seem to charge 3% on overnight positions [average in the industry is more like 2.5%]. Note that in 2014 City Index was acquired by Gain Capital.
