Capital.com

ASIC Regulation: Australians will be trading under the subsidiary, Capital Com Australia limited, authorised and regulated by the Australian Securities and Investments Commission (ASIC).  

Safety Features: One of the world’s top regulators, ASIC ensures that all Capital.com client funds are held in segregated accounts and that Capital.com offers its traders negative balance protection, ensuring that clients cannot lose more than is in their trading account. Under this regulation, leverage is capped at 1:30 on major currency pairs, and it prohibits Capital.com from offering bonuses and promotions.

The account opening experience at Capital.com is excellent: it is intuitive, quick, and easy, and accounts are generally approved within one business day.  

It took us about 3 minutes to open an account at Capital.com. We could immediately deposit funds into our accounts, and customer service approved our account within 24 hours.

Traders can open a corporate account (in which case, clients need to contact customer support), or an individual account, which will be the focus of this review:

1. We clicked the “Trade Now” button at the top right-hand corner of the website.  
2. We were directed to fill in our details, including name, country of residence, employment status, financial status, etc. 
3. The next step required choosing our preferred base currency.
4. Capital.com requires at least two documents to accept us as an individual client:

1. Proof of Identification – Capital.com accepts all government-issued identification documents such as Passport, national ID card, driving license, or other government-issued ID. 
2. Proof of Address – Proof of residence/address document must be issued in the name of the Capital.com account holder within the last 6 months and must contain a trader’s full name, current residential address, issue date, and issuing authority.

After submitting our documentation, we could fund our accounts and start trading immediately. Our accounts were approved within 24 hours. 

We suggest you read Capital.com’s risk disclosure, customer agreement, and terms of business before you start trading.  

Capital.com offers a wide range of financial instruments, including a huge range of shares, Forex pairs, and cryptocurrencies that are not usually available at other brokers.

Capital.com’s account has a minimum deposit requirement of only 20 USD, making it accessible to most traders. The CFD trading account is commission-free, with spreads that start at 0.6 pips on the EUR/USD, making it one of the lowest cost accounts in the industry. Most other good brokers have an average trading cost of 9 USD per lot of EUR/USD.

spreads are 0.6 pips on the EUR/USD, and leverage is capped at 30:1 as stipulated by ASIC regulations and as high as 500:1 for professional traders. Note that the professional account is without negative balance protection if leverage above 50:1 is deployed.  

We opened and tested Capital.com’s account:

Professional Account

Capital.com categorizes clients as either retail or professional. Even if you are initially categorized as a retail client, you can qualify to be a professional client later, which allows you, for example, to trade at higher leverage (up to 1:500 on currencies). To qualify, you have to meet the following criteria:

• 10 trades placed in the previous quarter; these trades have to be relevant with a significant size
• Your portfolio exceeds 500,000 EUR.
• You have worked in the financial sector for at least one year

Capital.com only offers support for its own in-house mobile platform, but the platform is easy to use and customisable. 

Capital.com does not offer support for the mobile version of MT4, but traders can download its in-house platform available on both Android and iOS mobile devices and tablets. 

We found that the app has a sleek design and intuitive interface. We could easily transfer, withdraw and deposit funds, search for instruments and create watchlists. We were also impressed that we could choose the layout of our watchlists. Additionally, the mobile app has an integrated newsfeed, and we were able to access all Capital.com’s technical indicators, chart types, graphical orders, and the full set of trading orders.

Capital.com has designed its own trading platform, available on a web browser. The platform is easy to use, intuitive and simple to set up, which is great for beginner traders. We were also pleased to find that it has also recently added MT4 to its trading arsenal.

Capital.com Web Platform

The bespoke platform offers an in-depth financial analysis with over 75 technical indicators, multiple trading chart types, and extensive drawing tools.  We were also able to effortlessly toggle in and out of up to six tabs while keeping an eye on all charts and instruments in the trading arsenal. Another benefit of the platform is that it provides traders with smart risk management tools allowing traders to control their risk with various stop loss and take profit tools.  

One drawback of the platform is that it lacks support for automated trading solutions and third-party strategies, but Capital.com offers MT4 for these purposes.

Metatrader 4

The main benefit of using third-party platforms such as MT4 is that traders can keep their own customised versions of the platforms should they choose to migrate to another broker. MT4 also supports the creation, modification, and utilisation of automated trading strategies.  Additionally, there are thousands of plugins and tools available for MT4.  

Overall, Capital.com’s platform support is average compared to other similar brokerages, and it offers its own proprietary trading platform, which is easier to use and set up than MT4.  

A well-regulated broker, Capital.com ensures that all Anti-Money Laundering rules and regulations are followed, and as such, all withdrawals are returned to the deposit source.  

Accepted Currencies: When we opened our account, we were given the choice of five base currencies – EUR, USD, GBP, RUB, and PLN, which is average compared to other brokers, but disappointing for Australian traders who will likely have bank accounts denominated in AUD and who will have to pay conversion fees on both deposits and withdrawals. Conversion fees can make trading expensive and are usually not presented on the fee report but affect profitability.

Payment Methods: Capital.com offers commission-free deposit and withdrawal options that can be performed on the broker’s trading platform. The deposit and withdrawal methods offered include Debit cards, Credit cards, Bank Wire transfers, and POLi. 

The minimum deposit is 20 EUR, 20 USD, 20 GBP, 1500 RUB, or 100 PLN for all payment methods, except a wire transfer, which has a minimum of 250 EUR (or the equivalent in the currency of your trading account).

Withdrawal requests are processed within 24 hours but can take between five to seven business days for funds to reach client accounts. Wire transfers may take longer. 

Capital.com offers support for Trading View in addition to a few risk management tools on its web platform.  

Trading View

Capital.com recently added Trading View to its arsenal of trading tools.  Trading View is free of charge for traders who open a live account.  It is an excellent tool for researching, charting, and screening any instrument.  Additional features of Capital.com’s Trading View tool include:

• 50+ intelligent charting tools
• Over 100,000 custom user-built indicators and scripts
• Synchronised layout for multiple charts

The market analysis available at Capital.com surpasses that of most other brokers.  The material is well-structured, comprehensive, and in-depth, providing traders with good trading ideas.

The Financial News and Features section is filled with well-presented, up-to-date analytics and fundamental analyses.  The overall quality of the content, the comprehensive analysis, and the research’s educational value far exceed its competitors.  This research material correlates with videos presented on the Capital.com TV platform.  An Economic Calendar is also available. 

Capital.com’s educational materials comprise the following:

• Demo account
• General educational videos
• Webinars
• Quality educational articles
• Glossary
• Learning courses (on different topics, ending with a quiz)

Demo Accounts

Capital.com offers a free unlimited demo account where clients can test out trading strategies with virtual funds. The customer support team is available 24/7 to help with any account setup or technical difficulties.

Educational Materials

Capital.com’s excellent written educational materials help traders develop skills to improve trading performance.  Seven guides have been compiled and cover topics ranging from basic trading strategies to financial markets and instruments. Capital.com also provides five video courses, introducing the most fundamental trading elements and allowing traders to explore various trading approaches. 

Capital.com also regularly hosts free webinars available to subscribers of the broker’s official YouTube channel.

Capital.com offers customer support 24/7 via phone, Facebook messenger, Viber, WhatsApp, Telegram, online Live Chat, and email in English, Russian, German, Spanish, Arabic, French, Italian and Turkish.

For the purposes of this review, we found customer support responsive, polite, and very helpful.  They were able to answer most of our questions to our satisfaction.