Capital.com Broker Review

Founded in 2016 and headquartered in Cyprus, Capital.com is authorised and regulated by the Securities Commission of The Bahamas (SCB), the UK’s Financial Conduct Authority (FCA), the Cyprus Securities and Exchange Commission (CySEC), the Australian Securities and Investments Commission (ASIC), and the UAE’s Securities and Commodities Authority (SCA).

Based in the European Union, Capital.com complies with the requirements imposed by the Markets in Financial Instruments Directive (MiFID).

International clients will be trading under the subsidiary, Capital Com Online Investments Ltd., operating under the supervision of the Securities Commission of The Bahamas (SCB). A well-respected regulator, all Capital.com client funds are held in segregated accounts and that Capital.com offers its traders negative balance protection, so trading losses can never exceed the funds on the account. Additionally, leverage is capped at 200:1 on commodities, currency pairs and indices.

Filipino clients can no longer open accounts with Capital.com

The account opening experience at Capital.com is excellent: it is intuitive, quick, and easy, and accounts are generally approved within less than 10 minutes.

Eligible traders can open an account at Capital.com as long as they meet the minimum deposit requirement of 20 USD.

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

1. Click ‘Sign Up’ at the top right-hand corner of the website. 

2. You’ll be directed to fill in your details when signing up. Capital.com requires a proof of identification document to accept you as an individual client. All identification documents issued by a public authority within your country of nationality or residence are accepted, such as passports, national ID cards, driving licences, and other government-issued IDs. 

3. You’ll need to complete an eligibility test to determine your appropriateness for their live CFD trading account.

4. You’ll also choose your preferred base currency.

After the application is approved, traders can log in and fund their accounts. We suggest you read Capital.com’s risk disclosure, customer agreement, and terms of business before you start trading.

Overall, Capital.com’s account-opening process is intuitive and hassle-free.

Alongside Forex pairs, Capital.com offers cryptocurrencies, stocks, commodities, indices, and currency indices.

Capital.com only derives its revenue from spreads, and no commissions apply. The EUR/USD spread is listed as 0.60 pips, representing a competitive offer with no additional costs. Capital.com also allows hedging and scalping but does not have a copy trading option.

Note that Capital.com does not offer Islamic Swap-free accounts.

With a single registration, Capital.com clients can open both a real and a demo account, and trading is offered on Capital.com’s proprietary web trader platform and MetaTrader 4. 

Capital.com’s account is suited to both beginners and more experienced traders. We define beginner traders as inexperienced traders who have never traded before or have been trading for less than a year. Beginners often do not want to risk trading large sums of money, and will generally not be able to trade full-time during the workweek. Capital.com’s account has a reasonable minimum deposit requirement of 20 USD, putting it within the reach of beginner traders.

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

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.

As 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. Capital.com offers fee-free deposit and withdrawal options that can be performed on the broker’s trading platform.

The deposit and withdrawal methods you can use depend on your country of residence and the license your trading account is registered under. The main methods available are Apple Pay, Google Pay, bank cards, and bank transfer.

Most withdrawal requests are processed within 24 hours but can take up to five business days for funds to reach client accounts. Wire transfers may take longer. 

The minimum deposit is 20 EUR, 20 USD, 20 GBP, 80 AED, 400 MXN, or 100 HKD 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).

Capital.com offers an average number of base (trading account) currencies compared to other similar brokers.

Trading accounts can be denominated in seven base currencies – USD, GBP, EUR, AED, MXN, HKD, and SGD – which is average compared to other brokers. However, Capital.com does not offer PHP trading accounts.

For traders that trade in large volumes (more than 10 lots a month), it is better to open an account denominated in USD at a digital currency bank, especially for trading on assets such as the EUR/USD. This is because when trading a USD quoted currency pair with another currency account, there will be a small conversion fee for every trade made. However, traders can also open multiple accounts in different base currencies to avoid fees on deposits and withdrawals.

Capital.com’s trading app is well-designed and intuitive, MT4 and TradingView are also available as mobile apps.

Capital.com’s trading platform is available on Android and iOS mobile devices and tablets. As with the web trading platform, traders can choose from multiple languages. Although the platform’s functionality is slightly limited compared to the desktop version, with reduced timeframes and fewer charting options, traders will still have access to analytics with technical indicators, graphical objects, and a full set of trading orders.

MetaTrader 4 and TradingView Mobile Trading

Capital.com offers support for the MetaTrader 4 and TradingView mobile trading apps for Android and iOS. Traders should be aware that there is some loss in functionality when compared to the desktop trading platforms, including reduced time frames and fewer charting options, but traders can close and modify existing orders, calculate profit and loss, and trade on the charts.

Capital.com Web Platform

Capital.com has its own self-developed trading platform, available on web browser. The platform is easy to use, intuitive and simple to set up, which is great for beginner traders.

The bespoke platform offers an in-depth financial analysis with over 75 technical indicators, multiple trading chart types, and extensive drawing tools. It also enables users to effortlessly toggle in and out of up to six tabs while keeping an eye on all charts and instruments in the trading arsenal. One is also able to set up multiple watch lists to track selected markets. It also 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.

MetaTrader 4

Developed by MetaQuotes in 2002, MetaTrader 4 is still one of the most popular CFD trading platform in the world. Although the platform’s interface is now dated, MT4 is still widely recognised for its fast execution speeds, wide range of charting tools, algorithmic trading, and customisability. Other features of MT4 include:

• Supports the creation, modification, and utilisation of automated trading strategies.
• Algorithmic trading, which allows any trading strategy to be formalised and implemented as an Expert Advisor. 
• Allows traders to develop their own custom indicators.
• Additional Smart Trader Tools, including 30 popular technical indicators and 24 analytical objects.

TradingView

Capital.com recently added TradingView to its arsenal of trading platforms. TradingView Basic is free of charge for traders who open a live account at Capital.com but be aware that Premium versions of TradingView have a monthly subscription cost.

TradingView is not only a trading platform with detailed information to help you make trading decisions: it also includes one of the biggest social trading communities, with plenty of EAs (Expert Advisors) that beginner traders, or those too busy to trade manually, will appreciate.

TradingView advantages include:

• Unmatched charting capabilities, suitable for beginners and advanced traders
• Large social trading community of more than 50 million users
• The ability to design your own indicators and strategies using TradingView’s Pine Script
  programming language.
• The option to validate trading ideas using TradingView’s bar-by-bar replay function.
• Wide selection of fundamental data
• Real-time global news coverage

The benefit of Capital.com offering third-party platforms such as MetaTrader 4 and TradingView is that traders can take their own customised version of the platform with them should they choose to migrate to another broker. Additionally, thousands of plugins and tools are available for MetaTrader 4 and TradingView.

Capital.com offers access to its platform via API and supports TradingView and MetaTrader 4. They also have a comprehensive range of risk-management tools including stop-losses, trailing stop-losses, guaranteed stop-losses and take-profit orders. Note that not all stop-losses are guaranteed.

The Financial News and Features section at Capital.com 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)

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, which provide an in-depth introduction to the most fundamental trading elements and allow traders to explore various trading approaches. 

Capital.com 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.