OTC Spot Foreign Exchange
OTC Spot Foreign Exchange
ICM provides online currency trading conditions for clients around the globe and is one of the fastest growing multi-asset online trading companies in the world. We offer tight spreads on Over The Counter (OTC) Spot Foreign Exchange for all major currency pairs.
The online currency trading market is open 24 hours a day allowing online forex trading to take place from Monday to Friday.
Learn more about OTC Spot Foreign Exchange
The Foreign Exchange Market (FX) is the arena in which one nation's currency is exchanged for that of another at a mutually agreed rate. It was created in the 1970's when international trade transitioned from fixed to floating exchange rates, and is now considered to be the largest financial market in the world because of its huge turnover.
In Forex trading all currencies are traded in pairs, with the 'base' currency being the first currency of the pair and the 'quote' or 'term' currency being the second currency in the pair.
Base currency Quote currency Rate USD JPY = 120.25
This abbreviation specifies how much you have to pay in the quote currency to obtain one unit of the base currency (in this example, 120.25 Japanese Yen for one US Dollar). The minimum rate fluctuation is called a point or a pip.
Most currencies, except USD/JPY, EUR/JPY, CHF/JPY and other Yen crosses where a pip is 0.01, have 4 digits after the period (a pip is 0.0001), and sometimes they are abbreviated to the last two digits. For example, if EURUSD is traded at 1.2389/1.2391 the quote may be abbreviated to 89/91.
OTC Spot Forex details:
Contract Specifications
| Foreign Exchange | ICM Direct | Commissions | ICM Direct Limits/stops pending orders can be placed from market price | ICM Zero | Commissions | ICM Zero Limits/stops pending orders can be placed from market price |
|
|||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| AUDCAD | 3.8 | $0 | No Minimum | 0.4 | $7 | No Minimum | - | - | ||||
| AUDCHF | 3.2 | $0 | No Minimum | 0.4 | $7 | No Minimum | - | - | ||||
| AUDJPY | 3 | $0 | No Minimum | 0.3 | $7 | No Minimum | - | - | ||||
| AUDNZD | 3.9 | $0 | No Minimum | 0.2 | $7 | No Minimum | - | - | ||||
| AUDUSD | 1.7 | $0 | No Minimum | 0.1 | $7 | No Minimum | - | - | ||||
| CADCHF | 3.5 | $0 | No Minimum | 0.3 | $7 | No Minimum | - | - | ||||
| CADJPY | 3.3 | $0 | No Minimum | 0.2 | $7 | No Minimum | - | - | ||||
| CHFJPY | 2.8 | $0 | No Minimum | 0.5 | $7 | No Minimum | - | - | ||||
| EURAUD | 3 | $0 | No Minimum | 0.4 | $7 | No Minimum | - | - | ||||
| EURCAD | 3.2 | $0 | No Minimum | 0.5 | $7 | No Minimum | - | - | ||||
| EURCHF | 2.1 | $0 | No Minimum | 0.2 | $7 | No Minimum | - | - | ||||
| EURGBP | 1.3 | $0 | No Minimum | 0.1 | $7 | No Minimum | - | - | ||||
| EURJPY | 2.1 | $0 | No Minimum | 0.5 | $7 | No Minimum | - | - | ||||
| EURNZD | 4.3 | $0 | No Minimum | 0.5 | $7 | No Minimum | - | - | ||||
| EURSGD | 15 | $0 | No Minimum | 1 | $7 | No Minimum | - | - | ||||
| EURUSD | 1.3 | $0 | No Minimum | 0 | $7 | No Minimum | - | - | ||||
| GBPAUD | 3.8 | $0 | No Minimum | 0.6 | $7 | No Minimum | - | - | ||||
| GBPCAD | 3.6 | $0 | No Minimum | 0.6 | $7 | No Minimum | - | - | ||||
| GBPCHF | 2.8 | $0 | No Minimum | 0.7 | $7 | No Minimum | - | - | ||||
| GBPJPY | 2.1 | $0 | No Minimum | 0.1 | $7 | No Minimum | - | - | ||||
| GBPNZD | 6.2 | $0 | No Minimum | 0.6 | $7 | No Minimum | - | - | ||||
| GBPSGD | 22 | $0 | No Minimum | 0.8 | $7 | No Minimum | - | - | ||||
| GBPUSD | 1.8 | $0 | No Minimum | 0.2 | $7 | No Minimum | - | - | ||||
| NZDCAD | 3.8 | $0 | No Minimum | 0.6 | $7 | No Minimum | - | - | ||||
| NZDCHF | 3 | $0 | No Minimum | 0.3 | $7 | No Minimum | - | - | ||||
| NZDJPY | 3 | $0 | No Minimum | 0.2 | $7 | No Minimum | - | - | ||||
| NZDUSD | 2.1 | $0 | No Minimum | 0.2 | $7 | No Minimum | - | - | ||||
| USDCAD | 2.1 | $0 | No Minimum | 0.1 | $7 | No Minimum | - | - | ||||
| USDCHF | 1.5 | $0 | No Minimum | 0.2 | $7 | No Minimum | - | - | ||||
| USDCNH | 15 | $0 | No Minimum | 0.7 | $7 | No Minimum | - | - | ||||
| USDJPY | 1.3 | $0 | No Minimum | 0.1 | $7 | No Minimum | - | - | ||||
| USDSGD | 15 | $0 | No Minimum | 1.2 | $7 | No Minimum | - | - | ||||
i. ICM Trading Hours: Sunday - Friday (22:01 - 22:00) Server Time
ii. Min and Max Lots per trade: 0.01 lots - 500 lots
iii. All contract size is 100,000 of the base currency
iv. Subject to change without prior notice
Margin Requirement Calculation Formulas:
Example for calculating the margin requirement for ICM Direct trades is as follows:
Required Margin = (Trade Size (lot size) / leverage) * account currency exchange rate (if different from the base currency in the pair being traded).
Example:
Trading 1 lot of GBP/USD using 1:200 leverage with an account currency denominated in USD
1 lot = 100,000
Leverage = 200
Base currency/Account currency exchange rate = 1.58
100,000/200 = 500
500 * 1.58 = 790
Required margin on this trade is $790.
Swap Policy
ICM offers Islamic accounts to clients following the Muslim faith. Forex Islamic accounts are also known as swap-free accounts as they imply no swap or rollover interest on overnight positions, which is against Islamic faith.
ICM reserves the right to discontinue an Islamic/SWAP-free account without warning. ICM will invoke this right in case of suspicion of abuse, in which case ICM may, at its sole discretion, decide to close all open positions in the account and deduct or add swaps for all transactions currently and/or previously made in the account and decline from accepting any further requests from the Client to be exempted from SWAP.
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