My pet peeves about CMC Mobile MarketMaker; no charting facility is a big downside as well as weak mobile phone reception: CMC Mobile MarketMaker is a smart innovation by CMC Markets the giant CFD provider. I say "smart" because this tool 'helps' traders with their business of trading and also 'helps' CMC Markets' bottom line. Although CMC Markets Mobile software is practical and useful, as a trader you are simply introducing yet another trading risk if you choose to trade with this tool which is widely available for GPRS enabled mobile phones.

I think this piece of software is a very smart move on behalf of CMC markets, probably the biggest CFD provider in the world. Personally, I think Mobile Market Maker is simply another route of temptation to overtrade. And when you overtrade – who wins? The broker, CMC Markets of course. Others may argue it is a win-win situation since CMC Markets practically invested their efforts in this mobile phone software so traders can trade wherever they want whenever they want.

I know that the following paragraph is in no way CMC markets' fault but it needs to be said. The trade off with this "take anywhere" piece of software is that it has its weak points. The weakest point is the reception. Is CMC markets to blame? I’m not sure because I know there is reception, since I can browse the internet using the opera mini browser. But the Mobile MarketMaker refuses to connect and spits out a "Signal interrupted..Attempting to reconnect..." message. I am hazarding a guess that the software requires a stronger signal than normal browsing as it is using more bandwidth to secure the line between your phone and their servers. The error message pops up even when I’m standing still and not moving for a while with maximum reception bars. So I would say this service is not 100 per cent reliable if you desperately trading a volatile market. I would suggest you always trade with a stop loss, especially when trading with mobile marketmaker.

Another factor about CMC Mobile MarketMaker that I’m very annoyed about is that it does not have charting facilities. When I called up and quizzed customer service about it they said that "The screen is too small". Bull crap. I can read the news on my opera mini browser on my Sony Ericsson K750i with letter the size of a pin head. My first and second days of trading with CMC Market Maker on my Mobile really screwed up my trading plan. It all boils down to my style of trading: full technical analysis from charts. When I arrived home I was kicking myself because these simple mistakes could have simply be avoided by a quick glance at a chart.

Oh and finally, here's another thing you need to know before you trade with Mobile MarketMaker: You can't cancel your pending stop loss orders. You can view them… hell it even says "cancel" on the screen - but it never does cancel. You have to call up or use your desktop software to cancel those types of orders.

So will I be using Mobile Market Maker in future? I'm not too sure. I'm currently considering a few options. One option is to use an online broker and just check the charts there. Which defeats the purpose of trade anytime anywhere. The other option is to buy a mobile charting device. The final option is to buy an internet card for my laptop that accesses the internet just like the mobile phone - through the GSM (mobile phone) network.

If you are considering trading on your mobile phone and wondering which data bundle plan you want to join CMC markets on their website estimates that download using their CMC mobile marketmaker is 150kB per hr and using the Vodafone mini data bundle plan at $2.95 per month calculates to 87 cents for 3.5 hours of usage. If you want to use a Vodafone prepaid card then it would cast you $1 per 5 minutes of access. Mind you these prices may have changed since I last checked.

Response: Just read the stuff about mobile marketmaker ...its not good enough for being on the move as there are no chart of course ...but i just saw on a TV advert that vodafone have introduced mobile internet ...does anyone know if it is really the mobile version of the home broadband or oa poor scaled down version of it ????. if it is th e real deal then it renders marketmaker mobile obsolete !!

MyShareTrading Response: Vodafone, 3 and Telstra (among others) already have portable internet facilities. You can buy a card to access the internet anywhere anytime and plug it into your laptop so you can trade. The downside is the cost of the operation - however if you know that you can easily recoup the cost from trading, then it is worth the outlay. 3 has new mobile phones out where you can plug your mobile phone into your PC and that will act as your internet "modem". Good Luck.