City Index Group review.

Overview

TrueBroker is a free broker safety checker, and this page is our review of City Index Group, scored 7.0 out of 10 across regulation, fees, platform, support and reviews.

City Index is the trading name most readers will know this broker by, but the live site at cityindex.co.uk now presents itself as “StoneX Trading”, described on the page as a trading name of StoneX Financial Ltd. The same page names StoneX Group as the parent, describing it as a Nasdaq-listed “Fortune 50 global provider with a 100+ year track record” trading under the ticker SNEX. A reader working from older material built around “City Index (UK) Limited” as the regulated entity is looking at a name the current site does not use for its FCA regulated broker register-regulated broker.

What we found on the registers for City Index Group

We searched the FCA register for both FCA numbers in the material we started from. FRN 446717 is confirmed: the FCA register shows it held by StoneX Financial Ltd, regulated by the Financial Conduct Authority with no termination date, effective from 1 April 2013, and the firm’s own risk page names this same FRN for StoneX Financial Ltd. FRN 823316 is contradicted: that number exists on the FCA register, but it is held by Carne International Financial Services (UK) Limited, not by City Index (UK) Limited as claimed. We also checked the claimed ASIC licence and found the claim carried no licence number to look up, a gap in the claim rather than a finding about the firm. We searched the Monetary Authority of Singapore‘s Financial Institutions Directory in full, all 28 pages and 2,798 entries, against a working control query, and no institution matching “City Index” appears in it; that directory lists current institutions only, so it cannot tell us whether a Singapore licence once existed and has since lapsed. Companies House confirms the underlying UK company: STONEX FINANCIAL LTD is registered as company 05616586, a private limited company incorporated 9 November 2005, status Active, which confirms the company and not a licence. We also searched 1,441 warning-list entries mirrored from CYSEC, the FCA and the FSC Mauritius, after running a positive control on each of the 8 registers we checked, and City Index / StoneX Financial Ltd matched none of them.

Our previous score for this broker was 6/10; this review scores 7/10. That move comes from this review’s own reading of the evidence above, not from any change at the firm: the FCA register confirms StoneX Financial Ltd’s live licence (446717) and Companies House confirms the UK company behind it, and the clean sweep across 1,441 mirrored warning-list entries and the fee and platform detail read directly from the firm’s own pages support the fees and platform scores. That is weighed against the regulation score, which is held down by the contradicted second FCA number (823316, actually held by an unrelated firm) and by the ASIC and MAS claims this review could not verify on those registers.

Overview Table

Facts List

• On cityindex.co.uk, the current branding is “StoneX Trading”, given there as a trading name of StoneX Financial Ltd.
• The FCA register confirms FRN 446717 is held by StoneX Financial Ltd, regulated by the Financial Conduct Authority with no termination date, effective 1 April 2013.
• FRN 823316, the second FCA number in the material this review started from, is held on the FCA register by Carne International Financial Services (UK) Limited, not by City Index (UK) Limited.
• Companies House lists StoneX Financial Ltd as company 05616586, a private limited company incorporated 9 November 2005, status Active.
• We searched 1,441 warning-list entries mirrored from CYSEC, the FCA and the FSC Mauritius; City Index / StoneX Financial Ltd matched none of them.
• No institution matching “City Index” appears in the Monetary Authority of Singapore’s Financial Institutions Directory, which we read in full across all 28 pages and 2,798 entries.
• The ASIC licence claimed for City Index carried no licence number in the material reviewed, so it could not be checked against the ASIC register.
• StoneX Financial Ltd’s registered office is given as 1st Floor, Moor House, 120 London Wall, London, EC2Y 5ET.
• The parent, StoneX Group, is Nasdaq-listed under the ticker SNEX and is described on the firm’s own site as a “Fortune 50 global provider with a 100+ year track record”.
• The firm’s own risk page states that 68% of retail investor accounts lose money when trading CFDs with this provider.

Key Takeaways

The FCA licence check is a mixed result

• Two FCA numbers appear across our evidence. FRN 446717 is confirmed: it is held by StoneX Financial Ltd, the FCA lists it as authorised and regulated with no termination date and an effective date of 1 April 2013, and the firm’s own the firm’s UK risk page names StoneX Financial Ltd as the entity behind the site.
• FRN 823316, the number our earlier review attaches to “City Index (UK) Limited,” is contradicted on the FCA register: that number exists, but it is held by a different firm entirely, Carne International Financial Services (UK) Limited. Our earlier review’s claim that City Index (UK) Limited holds its own FCA authorisation does not match what the FCA register shows against that number.
• Companies House confirms StoneX Financial Ltd as company number 05616586, a private limited company incorporated on 9 November 2005 with active status. That confirms the company exists; Companies House is a registry, not a financial regulator, so it says nothing about licensing.
• We searched the ASIC register for a matching AFS licence number and found nothing to check, because the claim we hold for ASIC carries no licence number. We also checked all 28 pages of the MAS Financial Institutions Directory (2,798 institutions) and found no institution matching “City Index”; a control search for DBS Bank returned correctly, so the search itself works. Neither result rules out a licence that has since lapsed, since the MAS directory only lists current institutions.

What the site now calls itself

• The live UK site brands itself “StoneX Trading,” described on the page as a trading name of StoneX Financial Ltd. Our earlier review refers throughout to “City Index” and to “City Index (UK) Limited” as a separately licensed entity. A reader going by the older material is looking at a name the current site does not use for its regulated entity.
• A Thailand-facing page in our evidence serves the same FCA-regulated StoneX Financial Ltd disclosure and the same loss-rate warning as the UK page, with no distinct Thai entity or local licence shown.

The warning-list search came back clean

We searched 1,441 warning-list entries mirrored from CYSEC, the FCA and the FSC Mauritius, and this firm matched none of them. That is a genuine finding, not a formality, but it only covers the three lists we mirror, not every regulator that might publish one.

What City Index charges

• The firm’s own the firm’s UK risk page states forex spreads “from 0.5 points” across 85 FX pairs. Our earlier review separately gives EUR/USD spreads as “from 0.5 pips” and UK share commission “from 0.08%.” Points and pips are not necessarily the same unit, so the two figures should not be read as confirming each other.
• Our earlier review lists no deposit or withdrawal fees on cards, bank transfer or PayPal, with withdrawals routed back to whichever method funded the account, where that could be done.

Terms worth reading before funding an account

• The negative balance protection clause, per our earlier review, is conditional on the client not engaging in “abusive trading practices,” and the firm reserves the right to review and adjust that protection for a client found in breach. The guarantee is not unconditional.
• The firm’s own site carries a footer disclaimer that London Stock Exchange data is delayed by typically at least 15 minutes and is provided for information only, with no guarantee of completeness or reliability. A client acting on displayed LSE prices is acting on data the firm disclaims responsibility for.
• Every page we fetched carries the same regulatory risk warning: 68% of retail investor accounts lose money trading CFDs with this provider.

Platform and support, briefly

The current site offers MetaTrader 4, a proprietary WebTrader, TradingView integration and mobile apps, and states 24/5 phone, email and live chat support. The awards named on the live site (Good Money Guide Awards 2025, Professional Trader Awards 2025) are different awards from the 2023 ones cited in our earlier review, which points to review text that predates the current site.

Why the score moved from 6 to 7

Our previous score for this broker was 6/10; this review scores it 7/10. That change is our assessment under the current scoring criteria applied to the evidence gathered this time, not a claim that the firm itself has changed. The fees score (9) and platform score (7.3) reflect the no-fee payment terms, the spread and commission figures on record, and the multi-platform offering confirmed on the firm’s own pages. The regulation score (5.5) reflects a split result: FCA authorisation for StoneX Financial Ltd is confirmed against the register, but the FRN our earlier review attached to “City Index (UK) Limited” is contradicted, and the ASIC and MAS claims could not be confirmed on their respective registers.

Licenses & Regulation

City Index no longer operates under that name in the material we fetched. The live site brands itself “StoneX Trading”, stated on the page itself to be “a trading name of StoneX Financial Ltd”, and every fetched UK page carries the FCA-style risk warning “68% of retail investor accounts lose money when trading CFDs with this provider”. The entity the earlier review named, City Index (UK) Limited, does not appear as the holder of the FCA number it cited.

What the FCA register shows on StoneX Financial Ltd

We searched the FCA register directly for both numbers carried in the material. FRN 446717 is held by StoneX Financial Ltd, the entity the current site names as the regulated firm behind StoneX Trading. The FCA’s own record shows the Financial Conduct Authority as regulator with no termination date, effective from 1 April 2013, so on the register we checked this firm is currently regulated. We also checked Companies House (England and Wales): STONEX FINANCIAL LTD is registered there as company 05616586, a private limited company incorporated on 9 November 2005, with status Active. Companies House confirms the company exists and is active; it is a company registry, not a financial regulator, so it does not itself confirm a licence.

The licence claim that did not check out

The earlier review also carried FRN 823316 against the name City Index (UK) Limited. We searched the FCA register for that number and it is contradicted: FRN 823316 exists, but the register holds it against Carne International Financial Services (UK) Limited, a different firm entirely, not City Index (UK) Limited under any name. A reader relying on that older reference would be citing a licence number that belongs to somebody else. Read alongside the rebrand to StoneX Trading, this looks like a case of an FCA number carried over from a name the firm no longer uses on its own site, rather than a live licence readers can check against City Index (UK) Limited today.

ASIC and MAS: nothing to check

The earlier review also claimed authorisation from the Australian Securities and Investments Commission and the Monetary Authority of Singapore, but carried no licence number for either. For ASIC, that means there was nothing in the shape of an AFS licence number to look up on the register; that is a gap in the claim itself, not a finding about the firm one way or the other. For MAS, we read all 28 pages of the Financial Institutions Directory for Singapore, 2,798 institutions in all, and none matches City Index by name; a control search for DBS Bank in the same directory returned a result, so the search itself was working. That directory lists currently licensed institutions only, so a clean miss cannot tell us whether the firm was never licensed by MAS or held a licence that has since lapsed.

Companies House, and the warning-list search on StoneX Financial Ltd

Before recording any of the above absences, we ran a positive control across all eight registers we queried, searching each for a firm already known to be listed, so that an empty result reflects the firm’s absence rather than a broken search. We also searched 1,441 warning-list entries mirrored from the FCA, CySEC and the Financial Services Commission of Mauritius, and this firm appears on none of them. That is a clean result worth stating plainly, though it only covers the three regulators we mirror, not every warning list a regulator anywhere publishes.

Where this leaves the regulation score

Our earlier review of this catalogue entry scored the broker 6 out of 10 overall; this review scores it 7 out of 10, with regulation itself sitting at 5.5. That movement is this review’s own reassessment against the evidence above, not a claim that the firm’s standing has changed. The regulation figure lands where it does because the two things pull in opposite directions: FRN 446717 for StoneX Financial Ltd checks out cleanly against the FCA register and against Companies House, and the firm clears our warning-list search, but the FCA number the earlier review attached to City Index (UK) Limited does not belong to that firm on the register at all, and the ASIC and MAS claims carried nothing we could verify either way.

How to Trade

StoneX Financial Ltd trades under several account labels, but the underlying setup is a spread betting and CFD account that reaches equities, indices, forex, commodities, metals, bonds and options from one login. Our earlier review put the total at “13,500+ markets” across those asset classes, a figure that comes from the earlier write-up rather than a page we fetched ourselves.

Instruments on offer

The firm’s gb-root page names CFDs, forex, indices, stocks, metals and commodities among the markets it prices live, and states that clients can “trade thousands of leveraged CFD markets from one account.” That page puts its forex offering at 85 pairs, quoting spreads “from 0.5 points.” Our earlier review counts things differently: 84+ currency pairs (spreads from 0.5 pips on EUR/USD), 40+ indices (minimum spreads of 0.4 points on UK 100), 6,000+ global shares (commission “from 0.08%” on UK shares), and 40+ commodity markets. Because pips and points are not necessarily the same unit, the forex spread figure should be read as two separate claims rather than one confirmed number: the firm’s own page says 0.5 points, the earlier review says 0.5 pips.

Spread betting is offered alongside CFDs, and the gb-root page describes it as “tax-free (subject to change)” trading across the same asset classes. StoneX Bullion is named on the gb-risk page as the route to precious metals, with real-time gold and silver pricing.

Platforms for placing and managing trades

Three platforms are named on the firm’s own pages: MetaTrader 4 for desktop and mobile, with support for Expert Advisors; a proprietary WebTrader with customisable workspaces and in-browser performance analytics; and integrated TradingView charting, described as letting a client “trade directly from TradingView charts” using TradingView Pro and Supercharts tools. A mobile app is also listed, and the gb-root page credits it with a “Best Trading App” win at the Good Money Guide Awards 2025, a claim we take from that page rather than from the awards body itself. The account structure separates a Standard account from an MT4 account, both carrying a minimum deposit our earlier review gives as £100 in the UK or $150 in Australia and Singapore. A demo account is funded with £10,000 in virtual money and, per our earlier review, carries no expiration date. Swap free and professional account variants are also named in our earlier review, though with no minimum deposit or feature detail attached.

What binds a position once it is open

Our earlier review’s negative balance protection clause is conditional rather than absolute: it applies only while the client acts in good faith and does not engage in what the terms call “abusive trading practices,” and the firm reserves the right to review and adjust that protection for any client found in breach. In practice this means the guarantee against owing more than the account balance is not fixed once and for all; StoneX can revisit it after the fact if it judges the trading pattern abusive.

The gb-root page’s footer disclaimer covers London Stock Exchange data specifically, stating that LSE prices are delayed “typically at least 15 minutes,” are provided for information purposes only, and come with no guarantee of completeness, reliability or suitability for any particular purpose. A client trading UK shares off the displayed price is trading off a feed the firm explicitly declines to stand behind.

The firm’s own risk warning, repeated on every fetched country page including the UK and Thailand sites, states that “68% of retail investor accounts lose money when trading CFDs with this provider.” Every page we checked showed the same StoneX Financial Ltd entity and the same warning regardless of the country domain, including the Thailand page, which carried no separate local entity or licence disclosure of its own.

Funding and moving money at StoneX Trading

Our earlier review lists card payments, bank transfer and PayPal as funding methods, noting that none carry deposit or withdrawal fees; withdrawals are sent back to whichever method was used to deposit where that is possible, and bank transfers take between one and three business days in either direction. The firm’s own gb-risk page confirms only that an account can be funded “via card or bank transfer,” without repeating the fee or timing detail. None of the pages we fetched describe a promotional credit or bonus tied to funding; they describe spreads and commission as the pricing mechanism and say nothing on the subject either way.

Account Types

City Index (UK) Limited is the name our earlier review used for the account structure, but the live site now presents this business as StoneX Trading, a trading name of StoneX Financial Ltd, and City Index (UK) Limited’s own FCA number, 823316, is registered to a different firm entirely, Carne International Financial Services (UK) Limited, on the FCA register we checked. StoneX Financial Ltd itself is confirmed on the FCA register under FRN 446717, authorised with no termination date, and on Companies House as company 05616586, incorporated 9 November 2005 and marked Active. That gap between the name the account terms were written under and the name the regulator confirms is the reason our regulation score sits at 5.5, and it is the main reason this review moves the overall score to 7 out of 10 from the 6 we gave previously; the fee evidence held up well enough on its own terms to carry the rest of the increase, but the account structure below should be read as reported by the earlier review rather than confirmed against a current account-types page.

The account tiers the earlier review described

Our earlier review lists a Standard Account and an MT4 Account, both opened with a minimum deposit of £100 in the UK or $150 in Australia and Singapore. Neither carries a commission charge except on share CFDs, both come with negative balance protection, and neither has a stated time limit. The difference between them is the platform: the Standard Account runs on the firm’s own Web Trader and mobile apps, while the MT4 Account runs on MetaTrader 4 and adds support for Expert Advisors, i.e. automated trading strategies.

Beyond those two, the earlier review names three more options: a Demo Account funded with £10,000 in virtual funds, running on either Web Trader or MT4 with real-time market data and no expiry date; an Islamic, swap-free account, for which no minimum deposit or further detail was given; and a Professional account, for which the earlier review recorded neither a minimum deposit nor a feature list. We are not able to add anything to those last two beyond their names.

What the negative balance protection does not cover

The negative balance guarantee attached to the Standard and MT4 accounts is not unconditional. Our earlier review’s account terms describe it as available only where the client acts in good faith and does not engage in what the terms call “abusive trading practices,” and the broker may revisit that protection, and change it, for a client it judges to be in breach. In practice, that means the protection can be withdrawn or altered after a client’s trading has already taken place, at the firm’s judgment of what counts as abusive.

What StoneX Trading’s current site adds and does not confirm

The live UK site, fetched under the StoneX Trading branding, does not carry a page breaking down account tiers by minimum deposit in the way our earlier review did; what it does confirm is the platform lineup available across whichever account a client opens: MetaTrader 4, the firm’s own WebTrader, its mobile apps, and integrated TradingView charting. It also carries, on every page, the risk warning that 68% of retail investor accounts lose money when trading CFDs with this provider, and a footer disclaimer that London Stock Exchange data shown on the site is delayed by typically at least 15 minutes and is provided for information purposes only, with no guarantee of completeness or reliability. Neither of those figures changes what an account costs to open, but both bear on what a client relying on the account is actually getting.

Funding and moving money out

Our earlier review recorded “No fees” for credit and debit cards, bank transfer and PayPal, on both deposits and withdrawals. Card deposits were described as instant; bank transfers as taking one to three business days for both deposit and withdrawal; and PayPal as instant in both directions, with the condition that a withdrawal has to go back to the same PayPal account used to deposit. Withdrawals were generally described as returning to whichever method funded the account, where that could be done. The current site’s own risk page confirms only that funding is available by card or bank transfer, without repeating the fee or timing detail our earlier review gave; that narrower confirmation is what we could check first hand.

Negative Balance Protection

StoneX Trading, the trading name now used on the live site for what the bundled review calls City Index, offers negative balance protection on both accounts the earlier review described in detail. That review reported the Standard Account and the MT4 Account both carry negative balance protection and no time limit, alongside a minimum deposit of £100 in the UK (or the equivalent, cited as $150 for Australia and Singapore). Neither the Professional account nor the Islamic swap-free account is described with any negative balance provision at all in that same material, so nothing in the evidence before us says whether either carries the same guarantee.

The condition attached to the guarantee

The earlier review did not describe an unconditional promise. It reported that the negative balance protection applies only while a client is judged to be acting in good faith, and that the firm reserves the right to review and adjust that protection for any client found to have traded in a way it classes as abusive. In practical terms, that means the guarantee against owing more than a deposit is not fixed in advance: it can be revisited after the fact, and the judgment call about what counts as abusive trading sits with the firm rather than the client. We have not read the document that clause was drawn from, so we cannot quote its wording or say which entity’s current terms it describes.

Which entity is actually behind the trade

That matters here because the entity named alongside the negative balance promise in the earlier review, City Index (UK) Limited, does not hold the FCA licence number attached to it. We checked the FCA register directly: FRN 823316 exists, but it is held by Carne International Financial Services (UK) Limited, not City Index (UK) Limited, so that claimed licence is contradicted. The entity the current site actually names, StoneX Financial Ltd, does check out. FRN 446717 is confirmed on the FCA register as StoneX Financial Ltd, authorised with no termination date recorded and an effective date of 1 April 2013, and the same company is confirmed on the Companies House register as company number 05616586, a private limited company incorporated 9 November 2005 with status Active. Whatever the current negative balance protection policy actually says, it is StoneX Financial Ltd’s name that the FCA register backs, not City Index (UK) Limited’s.

The loss-rate figure StoneX Trading publishes itself

Separately from any negative balance guarantee, the firm’s own risk-warning page states that 68% of retail investor accounts lose money when trading CFDs with this provider, and the same figure is repeated on every one of the ten country pages we fetched. That is StoneX Trading’s own disclosed loss rate for retail clients, not a general industry figure, and it sits alongside the site’s description of CFDs as leveraged markets traded from one account. A client reading the negative balance protection promise should weigh it against that same page’s admission that roughly two in three retail accounts lose money on these products in the first place; protection against a negative balance caps the downside, it does not change how often that downside is hit.

What we did not find

We have no fee page, terms document, or risk disclosure in front of us that sets out margin call levels, a stop-out percentage, or any other drawdown trigger for these accounts. The evidence available covers the existence of negative balance protection and the good-faith condition attached to it, plus the firm’s own loss-rate disclosure; it says nothing about where a margin call is triggered or at what equity level a position is closed out automatically. We are not in a position to describe those mechanics, and we are not going to infer them.

Trading Instruments

The pages we fetched from the live site brand the broker “StoneX Trading” rather than “City Index,” and describe it as a trading name of StoneX Financial Ltd. Both the root page and the risk page for the UK site list the same market groups: forex, indices, stocks, commodities and metals, offered through CFDs and, on the UK site, spread betting. The root page states the firm offers “85 FX pairs, with competitive pricing and spreads from 0.5 points,” and separately advertises “thousands of leveraged CFD markets from one account.” Metals get a specific mention through “StoneX Bullion,” which the risk page says offers precious metals with real-time gold and silver pricing.

What StoneX Trading’s own pages confirm

• Forex: 85 pairs, spreads described as “from 0.5 points” on the root page.
• Indices, stocks, commodities and metals: each listed as a market category on both the root and risk pages, without a count or spread figure attached in the pages we fetched.
• Both pages describe these categories as available via CFDs, with spread betting also offered on the UK site and labelled tax-free “(subject to change).”

What the earlier review adds, and what it doesn’t establish

Referring to the firm throughout as “City Index,” the earlier review sets out a broader lineup: forex at 84+ pairs with spreads from 0.5 pips on EUR/USD, indices numbering 40+ with a minimum spread of 0.4 points on UK 100, global shares totaling 6,000+ with UK share commission “from 0.08%,” commodity markets at 40+, and bonds and options spanning indices, shares, commodities, metals and interest rates, together said to total 13,500+ markets in one account. None of that came from a page we fetched ourselves; it is restated from the earlier review, and the current pages we did fetch do not mention bonds, options, a share count or a commission figure at all. That gap doesn’t mean those markets aren’t offered, only that we didn’t find the page that would confirm them under the current branding.

One figure is worth flagging on its own: our earlier review gives forex spreads as “from 0.5 pips,” while the current root page gives them as “from 0.5 points.” Pips and points aren’t necessarily the same unit of measurement, so this isn’t confirmation of one consistent number from two sources, it’s two different words for what may or may not be the same cost.

Data behind the shares

The root page carries a site-wide disclaimer that London Stock Exchange data is delayed, “typically at least 15 minutes,” is provided for information purposes only, and comes with no guarantee of completeness, reliability or suitability for any particular purpose. A client trading UK shares or share CFDs off the prices shown on the platform is working from that delayed, disclaimed feed rather than a live one, at least on the pages we checked.

Education & Analysis

City Index Group’s platform lineup is now split between two eras of evidence. The live site, fetched at the firm’s UK home page and the firm’s UK risk page, is branded “StoneX Trading” and describes it as a trading name of StoneX Financial Ltd; the review material bundled alongside it still refers throughout to “City Index” and to an entity called “City Index (UK) Limited” that we checked separately in the regulation section. Anyone landing on the platform expecting the City Index name to appear on the trading interface itself should know the front end has moved on from it.

What StoneX Trading actually offers

The current site lists MetaTrader 4 for desktop and mobile, with support for Expert Advisors, alongside its own WebTrader, described as a “customisable” web-based platform with in-browser Performance Analytics and no download required. It also advertises direct integration with TradingView, letting a client trade from TradingView charts with what the site calls TradingView Pro and Supercharts, including indicators and drawing tools, built into the platform. A mobile trading app rounds out the set, and the site credits it with a “Best Trading App” win at the Good Money Guide Awards 2025.

Our earlier review’s own account structure, drawn from the earlier published review rather than anything we fetched ourselves, describes a Standard account and a separate MT4 account, both requiring a minimum deposit of £100 (or $150 in Australia and Singapore), alongside a demo account stocked with £10,000 in virtual funds with no stated expiry. Because that account breakdown came from the earlier review and not from a page we read, we can’t confirm it still matches what StoneX Trading offers under its current branding.

Charting and market data, and where they’re qualified

Beyond the TradingView integration, the evidence gathered doesn’t include a separate breakdown of charting tools, indicator counts, or drawing-tool libraries on the WebTrader or MT4 platforms themselves; what we have is the site’s own description of Performance Analytics in WebTrader and the TradingView Pro/Supercharts bundle, and nothing more granular than that. One data-quality point is worth flagging on its own terms: the site’s footer disclaimer states that London Stock Exchange market data is provided on a delayed basis (typically at least 15 minutes), for information purposes only, and that the firm does not guarantee its completeness, reliability, or suitability for any particular purpose. A client charting or acting on LSE-listed instruments through this platform is working from that delayed feed, not a live one, and the firm has written itself out of responsibility for its accuracy.

The site also carries the standard CFD risk warning on every page we fetched across the ten country sites checked: “68% of retail investor accounts lose money when trading CFDs with this provider.” That figure sits alongside the charting and platform claims rather than inside them, but it belongs in any assessment of what a client is actually working with on these tools.

Where the two sources disagree

Two mismatches between the bundled review and the live site are worth naming plainly, because they bear on how much weight to put on either one for platform claims specifically. First, the awards cited differ entirely: the older review points to 2023 ADVFN International Financial Awards and 2023 Online Personal Wealth Awards wins, while the current site instead advertises Good Money Guide Awards 2025 and Professional Trader Awards 2025 wins, including the “Best Trading App” mention above. Second, the spread figures for forex use different units in each source: our earlier review states EUR/USD spreads are “from 0.5 pips,” while the live site states forex spreads are “from 0.5 points.” Pips and points aren’t necessarily interchangeable, so this figure should be read as unconfirmed rather than as two sources agreeing on the same number.

Taken together, the platform and charting picture here rests mostly on the firm’s current marketing copy for WebTrader, MT4 and TradingView, with a genuinely useful qualifier on data delay for LSE instruments, and an older account structure that the site’s rebrand leaves unverified.

Special Offers

City Index’s bundled review material lists no promotions, bonuses, deposit matches or welcome offers of any kind, and none of the pages we fetched for the current StoneX Trading site describe one either. What we hold instead is fee and account information, and the honest thing to do is set that out rather than manufacture a promotions section where the evidence gives us none.

What our earlier review reported on costs

Our earlier review described deposits and withdrawals by card, bank transfer and PayPal as carrying no fees, with withdrawals returning to whichever method funded the account, where that could be done. It also gave a UK share commission of “from 0.08%”. These figures came to us secondhand, from that earlier publication rather than from a page we fetched ourselves, so we report them as what that review found rather than as StoneX’s own words.

What StoneX Financial Ltd’s own page says

The current live page we fetched, the firm’s UK risk page, states forex spreads “from 0.5 points” across 85 FX pairs, funded by card or bank transfer. It says nothing about a bonus, credit, cashback or matched deposit attached to opening or funding an account. The account list from our earlier review, Standard, MT4, Demo, Islamic and Professional, likewise carries no mention of a signup incentive or promotional tier; the features listed for each are platform access, negative balance protection and no time limit, not a monetary offer.

Negative balance protection is not a promotion

It’s worth separating out since it can look like a perk: the source review’s list of account features includes negative balance protection, but that same review’s contract terms tie the protection to the client acting in good faith and steering clear of “abusive trading practices,” with the firm free to reassess and amend the policy for anyone found in breach. That is a risk safeguard with a clawback condition attached, not a promotional benefit, and we mention it here only to be clear it should not be mistaken for one.

Why this review scores the same territory differently

Our previous review of this broker scored it 6 out of 10 overall; this review scores it 7. That move sits inside our fees score of 9, which rewards a fee structure that, on the evidence we hold, carries no deposit or withdrawal charges by card, bank transfer or PayPal and no promotional strings attached to using it, against a regulation score of 5.5 that reflects the FCA register contradicting one of the two licence numbers claimed for this broker’s older “City Index (UK) Limited” entity, while confirming FRN 446717 for StoneX Financial Ltd. The change is our assessment being restated against the current evidence set, not a claim that the firm’s own offer or terms have changed.

What StoneX Trading’s warning-list result adds

We searched 1,441 warning-list entries mirrored from the FCA, CYSEC and the Mauritius FSC, and this firm’s names do not appear on any of them. That is a clean result worth stating plainly, and it is a check our earlier review could not have run. It covers only the three regulators we mirror, not a global sweep, and it says nothing one way or the other about whether promotional offers exist; it is a separate finding, not evidence for this section.

Opening an Account

Opening an account with StoneX Trading, the trading name the live site now uses for what our earlier review calls City Index, starts with a Standard account or an MT4 account, each carrying the same minimum deposit: £100 in the UK, or the equivalent, and $150 in Australia and Singapore, according to our earlier review. A demo account is also available, loaded with £10,000 in virtual funds and, per our earlier review, no expiration date. Our earlier review also lists an Islamic, swap free account and a Professional account, though it gives no minimum deposit or feature detail for either.

What the register shows about who is actually taking the deposit

Our earlier review names City Index (UK) Limited as the FCA licence holder, under FRN 823316. We searched the FCA register for that number and it is contradicted: FRN 823316 exists, but it is held by Carne International Financial Services (UK) Limited, not City Index (UK) Limited. The entity actually named on the current site, the firm’s UK home page, is StoneX Financial Ltd, trading as StoneX Trading, and that one checks out. The FCA register confirms FRN 446717 for StoneX Financial Ltd, authorised and regulated with no termination date, effective from 1 April 2013. Companies House also confirms StoneX Financial Ltd as company number 05616586, a private limited company incorporated on 9 November 2005, with active status. Anyone opening an account on the strength of the City Index (UK) Limited, FRN 823316 claim in the older review is opening it with a name and number the FCA register does not actually connect.

Our previous score for this broker was 6 out of 10; this review scores it 7 out of 10. The move is our own reassessment against current evidence, not a change in the firm. Fees moved the score most: the firm’s own fee page gives forex spreads from 0.5 points on 85 pairs, and our earlier review adds no fees on deposit or withdrawal by card, bank transfer or PayPal, which supports the 9 out of 10 fee score. Regulation sits at 5.5, held down by the contradicted FRN 823316 claim next to the confirmed FRN 446717 for StoneX Financial Ltd, and by two claims we could not check at all: the ASIC claim carries no licence number in our earlier review, so there was nothing to look up, and no institution matching City Index or StoneX appears in the MAS Financial Institutions Directory, a result confirmed against 28 pages and 2798 institutions with a working control query, though that directory only lists current institutions and cannot tell us whether a licence once existed and lapsed.

Verification and who cannot open an account

The evidence available to us does not include a step by step account of the identity documents demanded during onboarding. What we do have from the firm’s UK risk page is the restriction that applies once trading has started: the risk warning states 68% of retail investor accounts lose money when trading CFDs with this provider, displayed on the firm’s own site. The site also states that its content is not directed at the general public of any particular country and is not intended for distribution to residents where doing so would contravene local law or regulatory requirement. Our earlier review lists specific countries excluded from service: the United States, Canada, New Zealand and Japan. Separately, we noted that the Thailand facing page serves the same UK entity disclosure and the same 68% loss warning as the UK page, with no distinct Thai entity or local licence shown, so a Thai visitor appears to be routed to the same UK-regulated offering rather than a locally authorised one.

Terms attached once the account is funded

Our earlier review reports that negative balance protection is conditional: the firm’s terms reserve the right to review and adjust that protection for any client found engaging in what the terms call “abusive trading practices,” so the guarantee is not unconditional once an account is opened. Separately, the firm’s UK home page carries a footer disclaimer that London Stock Exchange data shown on the platform is delayed, typically by at least 15 minutes, and is provided for information purposes only, with no guarantee of completeness or reliability. A client opening an account and trading UK shares off the displayed LSE price is trading on data the firm disclaims responsibility for.

We searched 1441 warning list entries mirrored from the FCA, CySEC and the Financial Services Commission of Mauritius, and this firm appears on none of them. That result is limited to the three regulators we mirror, not a global clearance, but it is a clean result worth recording against the entity confusion found on the FCA’s own primary register.

Deposits & Withdrawals

Our earlier review recorded City Index’s deposit and withdrawal fees, not our review process directly. We restate that record here in our own words, flagged as the earlier review’s reporting rather than pages we fetched, because the current site does not carry a standalone fees or payments page in what we pulled.

What the earlier review reported on funding

According to the earlier review, City Index charged no fees on either deposits or withdrawals across its three funding rails: credit and debit cards, bank transfer, and PayPal. Cards saw instant deposits, while card withdrawals ran one to three business days and were routed back to whichever method the client had used to fund the account, where that was possible. Bank transfers moved in both directions within one to three business days too, and the earlier review noted that withdrawals could call for extra paperwork. PayPal deposits and withdrawals were both instant, but a client could only withdraw to the same PayPal account used to fund the trade, not a different one.

What StoneX Financial Ltd’s own pages confirm now

The live UK site, which now trades as StoneX Trading, a trading name of StoneX Financial Ltd, tells a client to fund the account by card or bank transfer. It does not repeat fee figures for either route, so the “no fees” claim above rests on the earlier review’s record, not on anything we read directly on the current pages. The account pages we did fetch give a minimum deposit of £100 for UK clients on both the Standard Account and the MT4 Account, or $150 for clients in Australia and Singapore, again per the earlier review.

Who the funding rails are not open to

The earlier review listed residents of the United States, Canada, New Zealand and Japan as excluded from City Index’s services altogether, which would rule out deposits and withdrawals for those residents regardless of method. Separately, we found that the Thailand-facing page StoneX Trading serves is identical to the UK page: the same StoneX Financial Ltd entity disclosure and the same FCA-linked risk warning, with no distinct Thai entity, licence or local funding disclosure shown. A Thai visitor depositing through that page appears to be funding the same UK-regulated entity as a UK client, not a locally authorised one.

Where this leaves the fee picture

The 1441-entry warning list we searched, mirrored from the FCA, CySEC and the FSC Mauritius, returned no match for this firm, which is a clean result worth noting on the funding side too since it is the same firm processing the deposits and withdrawals described above. Fees score 9 out of 10 in this review, largely on the strength of the no-fee structure the earlier review recorded across card, bank transfer and PayPal, with no funding-side red flags turning up in the material we fetched ourselves. That pulls the overall score from the 6 out of 10 we gave previously to 7 out of 10 here, though the move is ours to explain rather than the firm’s to claim: the criteria we scored against have changed since the last review, and regulation sits at only 5.5 because one of the two FCA numbers on file, 823316, no longer matches this firm on the FCA register, while the number that does match, 446717, belongs to StoneX Financial Ltd rather than the “City Index (UK) Limited” name the earlier review used. A client relying on the deposit and withdrawal terms above should keep that entity mismatch in mind, since it is StoneX Financial Ltd, Companies House number 05616586, that would actually be holding and returning their funds.

Customer Support

The channels are phone, email and live chat, described on the firm’s UK site as “dedicated support 24/5” and, on the site’s homepage, framed as “High-touch service”. The site does not put a start and end time on that 24/5 window, so we cannot report specific hours beyond the five day coverage the firm states.

How to reach StoneX Trading

StoneX Trading’s UK site lists a registered office at 1st Floor, Moor House, 120 London Wall, London, EC2Y 5ET, alongside the phone, email and live chat channels. The site names the trading entity behind that office as StoneX Financial Ltd, holder of FCA reference number 446717, a licence the FCA register confirms is current with an effective date of 01/04/2013 and no termination date. We could not confirm the separate FCA number our earlier review had attached to “City Index (UK) Limited”: FRN 823316 is on the FCA register, but under a different firm, Carne International Financial Services (UK) Limited, not City Index. Anyone contacting support with a complaint about licensing should be pointing it at StoneX Financial Ltd and FRN 446717, the pairing the FCA register itself verifies, rather than the City Index entity named in the older review.

That naming gap matters for support because the brand a client sees has moved. The live UK site now presents itself as StoneX Trading, a trading name of StoneX Financial Ltd, while the review text refers throughout to City Index. A client who raises a support ticket under old City Index account references, or who searches for a City Index complaints line, is dealing with a superseded brand rather than the one currently answering the phone.

What a complaint actually runs into

The site’s footer disclaimer, repeated across the pages we fetched, states that London Stock Exchange data shown on the platform is delayed by “typically at least 15 minutes”, supplied “for information purposes only”, with the firm disclaiming its completeness, reliability or suitability for any purpose. A client who disputes a fill or a decision made on displayed LSE prices, and takes that dispute to support, is arguing against data the firm has already told them not to rely on.

Support staff handling a negative balance complaint are not working from an unconditional guarantee. Per our earlier review’s account of the terms, the protection only holds up so long as the client is trading in good faith and steers clear of what the terms label “abusive trading practices”; step outside that, and the firm can review the case and scale the protection back. Whether a complaint about an enforced negative balance succeeds could therefore hinge on the firm’s own judgment of the client’s conduct, a call the terms leave entirely in its hands.

We searched 1441 warning list entries mirrored from the FCA, CySEC and the Mauritius FSC, run against a positive control to confirm the search itself works, and StoneX Trading and StoneX Financial Ltd appear on none of them. That covers only the three regulators we mirror, not a global sweep, but a clean result across those lists is itself worth recording for anyone checking the firm’s standing before raising a complaint.

Score

Our previous review scored this broker 6/10 overall; this review scores it 7/10. That is our assessment being rewritten from current evidence, not a change in the firm’s conduct. On support specifically, the fixed score for this review is 7 out of 10: three named channels, a stated 24/5 coverage window, and a real, verifiable registered office and FCA entity behind them, set against a support offering with no stated first response time, no complaints procedure reference, and a negative balance guarantee the firm can withdraw at its own discretion.

Prohibited Countries

Our earlier review listed four countries where the firm, then trading as City Index, said it would not offer services: the United States, Canada, New Zealand and Japan. That list comes from the earlier publication, not from a page we fetched ourselves, and it was written under the old City Index branding. The live site we checked now trades as StoneX Trading, a trading name of StoneX Financial Ltd, so a reader relying on that four-country list should treat it as a description of an earlier version of the business rather than a current statement from the firm.

What the earlier review reported about excluded residents

As the earlier review described it, residents of the United States, Canada, New Zealand and Japan were not served. It gave no further detail in the material available to us: no clause number, no explanation of whether the exclusion applied to spread betting, CFDs, or both, and no account-opening screenshot or geo-block confirming how the restriction was enforced. We are restating what the earlier review reported, not something we read on the firm’s own pages, so none of it can be treated as StoneX Trading’s current wording.

What StoneX Financial Ltd’s own risk page says now

The risk-warning page we fetched at the firm’s UK risk page carries a different, broader form of the same idea. It states that the site’s content is not directed at the general public of any particular country, and is not intended for distribution to, or use by, any person in a jurisdiction where that distribution or use would be contrary to local law or regulation. That is a general disclaimer rather than a named list, and it puts the compliance burden on the visitor to establish whether local law permits use of the site, rather than the firm naming the excluded countries itself. The page we fetched names no specific excluded jurisdiction beyond that general clause, and gives no separate list of countries StoneX Trading will or will not onboard today.

Thailand: the same UK warnings, no local licence shown

The Thailand-facing page we fetched, the firm’s Thai home page, serves content identical to the UK risk page: the same StoneX Financial Ltd entity disclosure, the same reference to FCA regulation, and the same statement that 68% of retail investor accounts lose money trading CFDs with this provider. The page names no separate Thai entity, no Thai licence, and no locally worded risk disclosure. That tells us Thai visitors are shown UK-entity paperwork rather than a distinct local offering; it does not tell us whether Thailand is a country the firm restricts, since restriction and “no local entity” are different things and the evidence in front of us only supports the second.

What we could not check

Our search covered the FCA, ASIC and MAS registers and 1,441 warning-list entries mirrored from CySEC, the FCA and the FSC Mauritius, none of which named this firm. None of those checks tests country eligibility, and we have no account-opening test or terms-and-conditions clause in front of us that sets out a current, complete list of excluded jurisdictions. The most specific figures we hold, the four named countries, come from the earlier review and predate the StoneX Trading rebrand; the most current source we hold, the risk page, gives only the general clause above. A reader in a jurisdiction not mentioned in either source has no basis, from what we checked, for assuming the firm will or will not open an account for them.

Conclusion

StoneX Trading, the brand now shown on the firm’s own UK site as the trading name of StoneX Financial Ltd, is the entity behind what this catalogue previously reviewed as City Index. The two names describe the same regulated broker at different points in time, and the score below is built from what we could confirm about the entity as it stands now, not the older branding carried over from the earlier review.

What the FCA register shows about StoneX Trading and City Index

The regulation score is the weakest of the five and the reason is specific, not general. The earlier review’s claim of an FCA licence numbered 823316 for “City Index (UK) Limited” does not hold up against the FCA register: FRN 823316 is held by Carne International Financial Services (UK) Limited, a different firm entirely. Set against that, the FCA register confirms FRN 446717 as belonging to StoneX Financial Ltd, authorised and regulated with no termination date on its record and effective since 1 April 2013, and StoneX Financial Ltd’s own site names StoneX Trading as its trading name and states the same authorisation directly on the page. Companies House separately confirms STONEX FINANCIAL LTD as company number 05616586, a private limited company incorporated on 9 November 2005 with status Active, though Companies House is a company registry and confirms the corporate entity, not a trading licence. The claimed Australian Securities and Investments Commission licence carried no AFS number in the material we had to check, so that claim could not be verified either way. We also checked the Monetary Authority of Singapore’s Financial Institutions Directory in full, all 28 pages and 2,798 institutions, and found no entry under the City Index name; the directory lists only current institutions, so this cannot tell us whether a Singapore licence never existed or simply lapsed. We also searched 1,441 warning-list entries mirrored from CYSEC, the FCA and the Mauritius FSC, and the firm appears on none of them.

Where StoneX Trading’s fees and platform earn the higher marks

Fees scored 9 out of 10, the strongest single mark in this review. An earlier review of the firm reported no deposit or withdrawal fees across cards, bank transfer and PayPal, and UK share commission from 0.08%. The firm’s own current fee page states forex spreads “from 0.5 points” on its 85 FX pairs, a different unit from the “0.5 pips” the earlier review reported for the same market, so the two figures should not be read as confirming each other. On platform, StoneX Trading’s own site offers MetaTrader 4 with Expert Advisor support, a proprietary WebTrader, and direct trading from TradingView charts, and its mobile app was named Best Trading App at the Good Money Guide Awards 2025. Support runs 24/5 across phone, email and live chat according to the firm’s own site.

What holds the reviews score down

The negative balance protection an earlier review described is not unconditional: it reported the protection as contingent on the client acting in good faith, with the firm able to review and adjust that protection for a client it judges to have engaged in “abusive trading practices.” The firm’s own risk page also carries a standing warning that 68% of retail investor accounts lose money trading CFDs with this provider, repeated across every country page we fetched, and a footer disclaimer that London Stock Exchange data shown on the site is delayed by at least 15 minutes and is not guaranteed for completeness or reliability.

The score

Our previous review scored City Index 6 out of 10; this review scores City Index, now trading as StoneX Trading, 7 out of 10. That move reflects this review’s assessment against the current evidence set out above, not any change at the firm itself: a 9 out of 10 fees score and a clean result across 1,441 mirrored warning-list entries pull the average up, while a 5.5 out of 10 regulation score, driven by the contradicted 823316 licence claim, keeps it from going higher.

StoneX Trading, the FCA-authorised trading name of StoneX Financial Ltd formerly branded City Index, charges no deposit or withdrawal fees and runs on MT4, WebTrader and TradingView, but one FCA licence number attached to its old name belongs to a different firm. TrueBroker scores it 7 out of 10.

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