markets.com, is a global trading brand owned by Finalto Group. The company provides online trading using the electronic trading platform MetaTrader 4 for trading on the foreign exchange market, commodity market, cryptocurrency market, stock market (both indices and individual stocks), ETFs and bonds through Contracts for Difference (CFDs) and in the UK & Ireland, Spread Bets along with CFDs.

The markets.com brand is operated by a number of regulated entities which are part of the Finalto Group for doing business globally. The brand is operated by its 5 companies which are regulated individually by the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) in the UK, the Cyprus Securities and Exchange Commission (CySEC) in Cyprus. the Financial Sector Conduct Authority (FSCA), the Australian Securities and Investments Commission (ASIC) in Australia, and British Virgin Islands Financial Services Commission (BVI FSC) in the British Virgin Islands for global clients.

markets.com offers web-based and mobile trading with leverage up to 1:300. Those in Europe and UK are subject to ESMA regulations that limit leverage to a maximum of 30:1 and clients in Australia are limited to a maximum of 30:1 leverage for FX trades, 5:1 for Shares and 10:1 for Cryptocurrency trades after the ASIC 2021 intervention order.

History
markets.com began as GFC Markets and rebranded in 2008 as 'markets.com' after acquiring the domain name from Actor Armando Gutierrez– this was done after a merger of GFC Markets' owner Safecap Investments Limited and TradeFX, a developer of software for Forex and CFD operators. In 2015, Playtech fully acquired TradeFX and thus Markets.com for the sum of €458m.

CEO Matan Shvili was one of the co-founders of markets.com in 2008. He stayed at markets.com for nine years as it grew to over 300 employees. Shvili has founded several other businesses but returned to Finalto as Group Commercial Director in 2021, becoming CEO of the consumer division markets.com.

Operations

Platforms
markets.com offers accounts for MT4 and MT5 platforms but has since 2015 also operated its own proprietary CFD trading platform. Since 2018 there have been a number of major updates to the platform, affecting both the web trading and mobile apps. In 2022 a new app was rebranded and launched.

markets.com charts are powered by TradingView, whilst the platform also features news and sentiment tools from TipRanks.

Blends
Blends are markets.com’s proprietary baskets of stocks that are bundled into a single CFD product. These allow traders to take a position on a particular sector or investing theme such as ESG, Social Media and Cannabis.

Licenses / Regulations
The Group has licensed entities by the FCA (UK), ASIC (Australia), CySEC (Cyprus), FSCA (South Africa) and FSC (BVI).

Finalto 
markets.com is the business-to-consumer (B2C) division of Finalto, which was previously TradeTech. Finalto was purchased by Gopher Investments in 2022.

The group comprises eight regulated entities focusing on the following brands:

 Finalto Liquidity (formerly CFH)
 Finalto Trading (formerly TradeTech Alpha)
 Finalto 360 (formerly TradeTech360)

References

Foreign exchange companies