ICMarkets is a Forex broker established since 2007 and based in Australia.
After 14 years of establishment and development, ICMarkets has now become the largest Forex broker in Australia and also one of the exchanges with the largest trading volume in the world.( review icmarkets)
1. ICMarkets is the largest forex broker in the world
“Our strength is in the numbers” – that’s the powerful introduction on the ICMarkets homepage!
According to published data. ICMarkets has always maintained its No. 1 position in the world in terms of average monthly trading volume, specifically:
- 2018: Average monthly trading volume is more than 400 billion USD
- 2019: Average monthly trading volume is more than 600 billion USD
- Q1/2021: The total trading volume of Q1 was USD 2.84 billion, approximately USD 950 billion monthly on average.
ICMarkets is rated as the exchange with the lowest spreads in the world, with competitive costs and an extremely smooth trading platform.
Currently, ICMarkets also has a dedicated support department for Vietnamese traders (although it is a bit slow), you can completely contact us to get answers to your questions if necessary.
In the next section I will talk about certificates that work in conjunction with ICMarkets client insurance policies. From there, it will help you evaluate how reputable ICMarkets is and why ICMarkets has received so much trust from traders around the world.
2. Certificates of operation and insurance for investors of ICMarkets
It is no coincidence that ICMarkets has gained the trust of a large number of traders around the world. In addition to the quality of service, ICMarkets also provides peace of mind about the legal regulations and insurance policies they offer to their clients.
Being regulated by the world’s leading financial institutions is a prerequisite for building trust with customers.
View ICMarkets certificates and insurance for its investors right here:
- https://www.icmarkets.com/sc/vn/company/regulation
- ICMarket Review – ICMarkets Insurance Certificate
2.1. License and Certificate of Operation ICMarkets
The ICMarkets exchange is authorized and regulated by the Australian Securities and Investments Commission (ASIC). It is one of the most trusted financial regulators in the world. ASIC requires licensed exchanges to comply with the specific rules and regulations they set. Ensuring fairness and transparency for financial markets in Australia.
ICMarkets also holds an Australian Financial Services License (AFSL) number 335692 and is authorized to conduct financial services in Australia.
In addition, ICMarkets is also a member of the Australian Financial Complaints Authority (AFCA), which is Australia’s approved external dispute resolution program that fairly resolves disputes between people. consumers and service providers.(Read more : broker tickmill)
See all information about ICMarkets legal certificates: https://www.icmarkets.com/company/regulation
2.2. ICMarkets Investor Protection Policy
ICMarkets follows strict regulations regarding customer accounts in the form of a segregated account.
These accounts will be kept separate from the company’s operating funds and may not be used for any other misuse.
It is also used to identify the assets belonging to the customer and use that as a basis to compensate the customer in the event of anything happening to the company (e.g. bankruptcy).
Once an account is funded, client funds are held in escrow accounts at National Australia Bank (NAB) and Westpac Banking Group. ICMarkets is subject to the processing rules for client accounts, applying strict policies and procedures in relation to such accounts.
ICMarkets also has a professional indemnity insurance arrangement with London’s Lloyds Insurer to protect its investors.
In addition, ICMarkets is also placed under an Externally Audited Entity to ensure compliance with legal obligations and operating procedures.
With a series of information that I have just mentioned above, I believe that you can somewhat make your own assessment of the credibility of the ICMarkets trading platform.
Want to open a demo account to practice?
3. ICMarkets account types & spreads
Currently, ICMarkets offers 3 main account types for traders. Each account type has its own advantages and disadvantages.
Depending on each person’s trading style and strategy, different account options are offered.
ICMarkets provides detailed information on account types here:
https://www.icmarkets.com/trading-accounts/overview
* Overview of ICMarkets account types
Below is a table of parameters of 3 account types for you to have a better overview.
ICMarkets account types:
| Raw Spread (cTrader) | Raw Spread | Standard | |
| Minimum deposit | 200$ | 200$ | 200$ |
| Maximum leverage | 1:500 | 1:500 | 1:500 |
| Spread Type | Floating | Floating | Floating |
| Spread (pips) | 0.0 | 0.0 | 1.0 |
| Commission | 3$/lot | 3.5$/lot | 0$ |
| Minimum volume | 0.01 | 0.01 | 0.01 |
| Stop out | 50% | 50% | 50% |
| Suitable for | Day trader & scalper | EAs & Scalper | freedom |
3.1. ICMarkets Raw Spread account
This is the most popular account type of ICMarkets, the best account type, has extremely low transaction costs and is highly appreciated by the Vietnamese trader community. I am also trading this type of account.(Read more : exness broker)
Its advantages are super low spreads, averaging only 0.1 pips on EUR/USD and quite competitive commission fees, 3.5$ per lot per side.
In addition, the ICMarkets Raw Spread account has extremely fast order matching speed and almost no latency.
During my many years of trading, I have never encountered a single requote of an order on the ICMarkets Raw Spread account. This is also the factor that makes me evaluate ICMarkets as one of the most reputable Forex brokers today.
So, this account type is very suitable for those who do day trading or scalping. Even swing traders with average holding times of several days are perfectly suitable.
The downside of the Raw Spread account (as well as other broker ECN accounts) is that the spread can be quite wide when there is strong news or at the time of closing/opening trading sessions between days.
However, this is a common feature of the ECN account type, because you will be trading directly with the market price, so you are forced to accept the times of spread.
3.2. ICMarkets Raw Spread (cTrader) Account
ICMarkets cTrader account has low spreads and commissions, suitable for day traders and scalpers.
Up to now, MT4 is still the most popular and easy to use platform, so I still encourage novice traders to use MT4 instead of cTrader.
3.3. ICMarkets Standard Account
The ICMarkets Standard account also works on the Meta Trader 4 & 5 platform. The execution speed and latency are comparable to the Raw Spread.
Standard account has no commission but in return, its spread is slightly larger than Raw Spread and cTrader. Average 1.0 pips for EUR/USD.
There are many people who do not like to pay a fixed commission of $ 7 / lot of Raw Spread, so choose Standard because the total cost of the account types will not be much different!
4. Which ICMarkets account type should I choose?
ICMarkets does not have many account types for you to choose from, but in reality, you do not need that many account types.(Read more : forex broker)
With ICMarkets, it is best to use the Raw Spread account, which is also the type of account that brings ICMarkets reputation with outstanding advantages such as:
Raw Spread is a True ECN account
Extremely low transaction costs (can be said to be the lowest in the market today)
Order matching speed is very fast
Smooth trading platform, no order requotes
5. How is ICMarkets account different from other brokers?
When participating in the forex market, you will see brokers like mushrooms and everywhere say that they offer True ECN accounts for their customers.
The reality is not, a lot of brokers are brokers and the ECN accounts they tell their clients are really just a prank.
What is ECN?
ECN stands for Electronic Communication Network. This network provides an electronic system that helps buyers and sellers find each other directly to make transactions instead of having to go through some intermediary channels.
Why don’t many brokers actually offer ECN accounts?
A broker that offers an ECN account means that they only profit from commissions and they are on the same side as the client.
That means the more clients trade, the more profitable the broker (not that the more customers deposit, the more profitable the broker is).
So you can answer the question above yourself, right?
Is ICMarkets an ECN broker?
ICMarkets is a true ECN broker, your trades will be pushed to the market by ICMarkets and the trades will be matched there.
Of course ECN has many advantages but also its disadvantages.
First I will talk about the advantages of ECN.
The first advantage is the price. Obviously, the fact that the order is directly pushed out of the market makes the spread almost zero.
Next is TRANSPARENCY. ECN gives you peace of mind that your trades are being manipulated and controlled by brokers.
In addition, the ECN platform always makes transactions very fast and smooth. The phenomenon of command requote almost does not appear.
Most importantly, you will not have to confront your broker because there is no conflict of interest between you and the broker.
What about the downside of this platform?
The first is price dilation at times of strong market volatility.
Of course, product prices at this point are completely dependent on the market, so when the market is volatile due to important or sudden political or economic news, the difference between buying and selling will increase. and brokers have no control over this.
The second thing is that you have to pay higher fees & commissions compared to other account types. This is understandable because with an ECN account, ICMarkets only makes profits from the trading commissions of its clients.
6. ICMarkets trading platform
ICMarkets offers a full range of today’s most popular trading platforms, including MetaTrader 4, MetaTrader 5, Meta WebTrader and cTrader.(Read more :depositing and withdrawing money)
6.1. MetaTrader 4/5 . Platform
With its friendliness, ease of use and full support of trading tools, MetaTrader 4/5 has always been the trading platform of choice for traders and ICMarkets is no exception.
See also: MT4 User Guide and MT5 User Guide
Today, ICMarkets with its Raw Pricing connection allows you to trade with liquidity from the world’s leading investment banks, insurance funds and shadow liquidity institutions. Therefore, ICMarkets ensures that clients can trade without price manipulation and requotes.
ICMarkets MetaTrader servers have low latency of less than 1 millisecond for the main VPS provider, servers located in the NY4 data center or through dedicated lines to nearby data centers.
This almost absolute low latency is ideal for EA traders or scalpers.
Special: ICMarkets has no requirement for order distance and has a zero freeze, which means you are allowed to place your stop loss anywhere you want.
6.2. Meta WebTrader Platform
The WebTrader platform is a user-friendly trading platform that allows you to enjoy the Raw Pricing No Dealing Desk environment from anywhere in the world.
In addition to Metatrader 4 & 5, ICMarkets also provides a WebTrader platform that allows logging in and trading directly on the website platform.
If you are not familiar with the concepts of Dealing Desk and No Dealing Desk, find out here
WebTrader offers the same spreads, pricing and trading features as the desktop version of MetaTrader with a control panel that allows you to personalize.
6.3. cTrader platform
ICMarkets offers the cTrader platform, which is a trading platform from UK-based Spotware. When you trade on cTrader you are trading on a real ECN platform.
Beautiful interface.
Can connect via cloud to save templates or indicators for use anywhere.
Upload to Myfxbook conveniently.
- There is Vietnamese language and can also adjust the time zone in Vietnam.
- And many other features….
Besides, cTrader also has many disadvantages such as not supporting many Indicators or EAs and the mobile trading platform is not really smooth.
6.4. Other trading instruments at ICMarkets
ICMarkets review – ICMarkets trading tools
ICMarkets offers MAM/PAMM
For managers who have to manage multiple accounts at the same time, ICMarkets provides them with MAM software.
The MAM software connects any allocation setup directly to the ICMarkets MetaTrader 4 server. This helps managers only need to focus on their accounts, all other accounts are handled seamlessly by MAM software.
ICMarkets offers free VPS
With the use of VPS will ensure that you can run EA 24/24 without having to worry about your account having unexpected problems related to network connection, computer damage or simply… power-off.
If you trade more than 15 lots/month, ICMarkets will give you a free VPS with one of the providers ForexVPS, Beeks FX VPS and New York City Servers.
7. Outstanding advantages of ICMarkets trading platform
7.1. ICMarkets platform for super fast order matching
ICMarkets MetaTrader 4 and 5 servers are located at the Equinix NY4 data center in New York. The NY4 data center known as the financial ecosystem is home to over 600 companies buying and selling, exchanges, trading venues, market data, and service providers. The MetaTrader 4 and 5 servers are cross-connected to the ICMarkets trading system to ensure extremely low latency and fast execution of your trades.
IC Markets MetaTrader 4 and 5 trading servers have less than 1 millisecond latency for the main VPS provider, leased to the NY4 data center or through dedicated lines to the data centers. whether nearby. This low latency environment is ideal for automated trading and High Frequency Trading and fast trading
7.2. ICMarkets does not limit order time and distance
IC Markets MetaTrader 4 and 5 platforms have no restrictions on trading. ICMarkets has no minimum order distance and a zero freeze of 0. This means that your trades including stop loss orders can be placed anywhere as close to the market price as you like.
7.3. ICMarkets has the best Spread in the market
IC Markets attracts mainstream users by competing on transaction costs. ICMarkets spreads are at 0.0 pips on MetaTrader 4 and 5 platforms with an average on EURUSD of 0.1 pips 24/5. This is currently the lowest average spread of EURUSD globally.
ICMarkets offers such good spreads because they have up to 25 different liquidity providers. This means that at almost any time, ICMarkets is still able to generate extremely good liquidity for its clients, even during times of volatile news.
7.4. Market depth
Market depth represents the full range of prices that can be executed directly from the price provider.
Market depth provides complete transparency on the liquidity of each currency pair by showing the available volume for each price at any given time. High liquidity, asynchronous spot prices and low latency ensure the lowest possible spreads.
8. Products traded on ICMarkets
ICMarket Review – Products on ICMarkets
ICMarkets offers a very diverse product range of trading markets such as:
Forex (Forex): 65+ currency pairs, leverage up to 1:500 and spreads from 0.0 pips. See details about Forex products here.
Indices: With 17 globally traded indices with spreads from just 0.5 point. Leverage up to 1:200 and no commissions. See details about Indices products here.
Commodities: Over 19 products including energy, agriculture and metals with leverage up to 1:500. See details about Commodities products here.
Stocks: More than 120 stocks from ASX, Nasdaq & NYSE on MT5 platform. See details about Stocks products here.
Bonds: A wide range of bonds issued by governments around the world such as Japan, UK, USA and some European countries. Leverage up to 1:200 and no commissions. See details about Bonds products here.
Cryptocurrencies (Crypto): More than 10 popular cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin, Ethereum, Litecoin, Dash and Bitcoin Cash… with leverage up to 1:20. See details about Cryptocurrency products here.
Futures: With 4 futures contracts including ICE Dollar Index and CBOE VIX Index. Leverage up to 1:200 and no commissions.
9. ICMarkets customer care and support services
You can contact ICMarkets support directly via Livechat on the website or email support@icmarkets.com.
ICMarkets has a good customer service and support team in English, but Vietnamese support for Vietnamese customers is very limited. ICMarkets’ Vietnamese support staff are often “busy”.
Because the number of customers at ICMarkets is extremely large, if you contact via Livechat during “peak” hours, you may have to wait in long queues.
Before contacting support, please see if your question is on the list of frequently asked questions: https://www.icmarkets.com/global/en/help-resources/help-centre
10. Deposit and withdrawal methods of ICMarkets exchange
ICMarkets has quite strict deposit and withdrawal regulations. So to avoid risks during deposit and withdrawal at ICMarkets, please read carefully and follow the instructions in the article How to deposit and withdraw ICMarkets.
10.1. Deposit ICMarkets
ICMarkets offers many different deposit methods and most of them are “instant”, that is, instant deposits. After just a few seconds when you make a deposit request, the money will immediately be in your account for you to trade.
ICMarkets does not charge any fees when you deposit money into your account, however, you should note that when you deposit via Visa/Mastercard, you will be charged according to the regulations of international banking organizations.
ICMarkets will not be responsible for this fee.
For Vietnamese traders, you can choose to top up Vietnamese Internet Banking to deposit money into ICMarkets.
See full deposit methods at: https://www.icmarkets.com/trading-accounts/funding
10.2. Withdraw ICMarkets
ICMarket Review – Withdraw funds from ICMarkets
Similar to deposits, ICMarkets also does not charge any fees for any withdrawals.
The time for the money to be deposited into your account depends on the method you choose, usually you will receive the money within 24 hours from the time of making the withdrawal order.
In fact, during a long time of trading at ICMarkets, I have never encountered any problems from withdrawing money to my account.
So I believe you can rest assured about this issue.
In my opinion, depositing and withdrawing money via Internet Banking portal is the most convenient and cost-effective today. The exchange rate difference between deposits and withdrawals is extremely low.
See full withdrawal methods at: https://www.icmarkets.com/trading-accounts/withdrawal
11. Summarize the evaluation of ICMarkets
ICMarkets is a reputable exchange, licensed and regulated by the most trusted financial regulators in the world.
Most importantly, as an individual trader, I myself have never had any trouble in both trading and depositing with ICMarkets.
Therefore, with my own evaluation, I believe that ICMarkets trading platform deserves to be one of the best choices for you.
To summarize the review, I can summarize the pros and cons of ICMarkets as follows:
Advantages:
- Extremely reputable, managed by trusted regulators
- Long history of operation and very transparent
- Transaction costs among the best in the world (if not the best)
- Very good trading platform quality, smooth and no order requotes
Defect:
- Time to open and approve account verification is quite long, from 2-3 days (and excluding holidays)
- Withdrawal time is still slow, from 24-48 hours
- Vietnam customer support time is slow
- High minimum first deposit requirement: 200$
These are my personal judgments and assessments based on my experience and trading experience on many different exchanges.
