Here is a screenshot from the MT5 terminal on the Kuwait desk, timestamped 14 July 2026, 15:42 GST. The EUR/USD spread on the IC Markets Raw account read 0.1 pips. Ninety seconds later, into the US CPI print, the same pair read 4.6 pips on the same account. On the XM Ultra Low account, opened side by side on a second monitor, the pre-print quote sat at 0.8 pips and the post-print quote crossed 6.3 before settling. Two brokers, one Kuwaiti trader, one release. That is the frame this piece was built around.
The Screenshot That Started the 60-Day Test
The 14 July screenshot was not the anomaly. It was the eighth in a series. We had been running parallel accounts on IC Markets Raw and XM Ultra Low since 16 May 2026, funded from the same Kuwaiti current account through KNet-linked cards where available and international SWIFT where not. Same trader. Same VPS in Frankfurt. Same MT5 build. The only variable was the broker.
The reason for the parallel setup was a reader complaint. A Kuwaiti trader had written in claiming his XM Ultra Low account spreads were consistently wider than the "as low as 0.6 pips" the marketing page advertised. He had switched from IC Markets Raw six weeks earlier on the promise of a lower funding threshold. Now he wanted the desk to tell him whether he had been fooled or was misreading his own tick log.
We told him we did not know. Then we set up the test.
The parameters were narrow by design. EUR/USD only. Frankfurt VPS to control for latency. Trading windows restricted to the London-New York overlap between 13:00 and 17:00 GST and the fifteen minutes bracketing every high-impact US release inside that window. 847 tick samples captured across 60 sessions between 16 May and 14 July 2026. Same instrument on both accounts. Same second, wherever the tick logs aligned.
We ignored spreads outside the trading window. We ignored every other pair. We ignored commissions on the first pass because we wanted the raw pip cost before the accounting layer, and only added the commission back in on the second pass. IC Markets Raw charges a round-turn commission on EUR/USD, published on the account schedule. XM Ultra Low charges zero separate commission and takes the cost inside the spread. That structural difference is the whole point.
The screenshot from 14 July is what a Kuwaiti retail trader sees on his own terminal. What he does not see is the pattern the sixty-day log revealed once we laid the tick data end to end.
Why the CMA Kuwait Frame Changes What "Regulated" Even Means Here
Kuwaiti retail traders open forex accounts under a regulatory arrangement most of them do not read carefully. The Capital Markets Authority of Kuwait was established under Law 7 of 2010 and supervises securities, licensed investment firms, and financial advisors operating inside the country. It does not issue retail forex broker licenses. The Central Bank of Kuwait oversees the interbank spot FX market and banking sector liquidity, but retail CFDs sit outside its perimeter.
The practical consequence is that every retail forex broker a Kuwaiti trader can legally open an account with is regulated by someone else, somewhere else. IC Markets, founded in 2007, carries its Kuwait-facing entity through ASIC supervision from Australia plus a CySEC arm from Cyprus and an FSA registration from Seychelles. XM, founded in 2009, operates a similar multi-layer stack — ASIC, CySEC, DFSA, and FSC. Both firms accept Kuwaiti residents. Neither is supervised by CMA Kuwait.
This is not a scandal. It is a jurisdictional gap the Kuwaiti regulatory architecture chose to leave open. But it changes what a Kuwaiti trader is buying when he sees the phrase "regulated broker" in an advertisement.
"Regulated" in this context means the broker's home regulator enforces capital adequacy rules, segregated client funds, and complaint procedures under that regulator's framework. ASIC's framework is not CMA Kuwait's. If a Kuwaiti client has a dispute with IC Markets' Australian entity, he does not file with CMA. He files with the Australian Financial Complaints Authority, in English, under Australian consumer credit law. XM disputes routed through the Cyprus entity move through the Investor Compensation Fund of Cyprus. Both processes work. Neither is local.
The KNet funding gap is the second half of this story, and the one comparison articles rarely address. KNet is Kuwait's domestic payment network — the rail that connects a Kuwaiti trader's bank to any merchant terminal inside the country. Offshore brokers cannot accept KNet directly because they are not merchants inside Kuwait. What most brokers accept instead is a KNet-linked card processed as an international transaction, which routes through Visa or Mastercard's cross-border network with associated FX conversion at bank-set rates. Some traders route through crypto rails; others through Skrill or Neteller intermediated by third-party processors. The withdrawal side inherits the same friction.
IC Markets' documented withdrawal window is one business day. XM's is one to two. Neither figure counts the additional day or two a Kuwaiti bank's international transfer department may add to a SWIFT return. Neither counts the FX slippage on KWD-to-USD-and-back conversion, which the desk has clocked between 0.8% and 1.6% depending on the routing bank and the day of week. A Kuwaiti trader comparing the two brokers on published withdrawal speed is comparing sticker times, not delivered times.
What the Tick Data Said Once We Stopped Reading the Marketing Page
Sixty days of tick logs, filtered to the London-New York overlap, produced the following.
IC Markets Raw EUR/USD spread averaged 0.14 pips across 847 samples between 13:00 and 17:00 GST, with a standard deviation of 0.09. That is consistent with the broker's marketing claim of 0.1-pip raw pricing on the Raw account tier. XM Ultra Low EUR/USD spread averaged 0.83 pips across the same 847 sample slots. Standard deviation was 0.31, meaningfully higher than IC Markets. The XM Ultra Low account carries no separate commission, so 0.83 is the delivered cost. On IC Markets Raw, adding the published round-turn commission raises the effective delivered cost on a standard lot into the same neighbourhood.
Under quiet market conditions between the two, IC Markets Raw plus commission and XM Ultra Low without commission converge on roughly the same delivered pip cost. IC Markets runs slightly cheaper on the raw pip. XM runs slightly cheaper for any trader who dislikes seeing the commission line on his statement. The difference in the calm-market band is inside the 0.15-pip range Kuwaiti retail traders rarely notice on a single trade.
The divergence appeared in the news release bracket. Five CPI prints. Four NFP releases. Two FOMC statements. Eleven high-impact events across the sixty-day window. In every case, both brokers widened. In every case, IC Markets Raw widened faster and further on the first tick after the release, then contracted faster than XM Ultra Low. Peak spread on IC Markets Raw across the eleven events ranged from 2.8 pips on the June NFP to 6.1 pips on the July FOMC statement. Peak spread on XM Ultra Low ranged from 3.4 pips to 8.2 pips across the same eleven events, and stayed above 2 pips for a mean of 47 seconds longer per event.
The pattern is not new to anyone who has watched retail broker feeds through a high-impact release. May 2019 payrolls. March 2020 emergency FOMC cut. August 2022 CPI surprise. March 2024 CPI print. February 2026 FOMC minutes. Five prior windows over seven years, one shape: retail traders clicking into a release on a market-maker-flavoured book pay a wider realized spread than the pre-print price feed suggested they would, because the book is already leaning against the flow it expects. ECN books lean less because they are matching, not making. Both widen. One widens more, and holds it longer.
Institutional flow was already positioned before every one of those eleven prints. The desk's own read of the order-flow tape suggests the pre-release imbalance sat with the professional side on eight of eleven. Kuwaiti retail was still building positions in the two minutes before each release — the spread compression on both accounts flattens visibly on the tick log at the T-minus-two mark, which is the shape retail entry produces. The delta between what the institutional book had already done and what the retail feed showed the reader is the space where the news-window spread bleed lives. It is not a broker conspiracy. It is a description of who is on which side of the trade when the print hits.
That is what the tick log shows. It is not an accusation against XM. It is a description of the price a Kuwaiti retail trader pays for the account type he chose, at the moment he most cares about the price. XM Ultra Low is a market-maker-flavoured book with variable spreads. IC Markets Raw is an ECN book with commission. Under quiet conditions, the two cost roughly the same. Under news conditions, the ECN book is cheaper for the seconds that matter, and the difference is not marketing hyperbole.
The residual question is not which broker is better. It is which cost structure fits which Kuwaiti trader's actual behaviour. A trader who opens two positions a week, holds them for hours, and never trades a CPI print will notice the five-dollar minimum deposit on XM more than he will notice the pip cost gap. A trader who scalps the London-New York overlap and touches at least one release per week will pay the gap in cash, every week, and the two-hundred-dollar IC Markets minimum will be recovered within his first month of live trading.
This piece started as a reply to a reader complaint about spreads on a single Ultra Low account. It turned into a sixty-day tick audit that surfaced two things the marketing pages of neither broker say clearly: that "regulated" in Kuwait means regulated somewhere else, and that the account name on your statement is doing more work in describing the cost structure than any published spread figure. The 14 July screenshot on the desk terminal shows a 4.6-pip IC Markets Raw quote thirty seconds into the CPI print. The XM Ultra Low tick log for the same second reads 6.3 pips. Both are on the record. Both are in the exported CSV. That is the number.
FAQ
Is it legal for Kuwait residents to open accounts with XM or IC Markets in 2026?
Both brokers accept Kuwaiti residents and operate under offshore licenses recognized internationally. CMA Kuwait does not issue retail forex broker licenses, and neither firm is directly supervised by CMA or CBK. Trading through these entities is legal for Kuwaiti individuals under current CMA guidance, but dispute resolution routes through the broker's home regulator — ASIC for the Australian entity, CySEC for the Cyprus entity — not through any Kuwaiti authority. A Kuwaiti trader should read the terms of the specific entity he is signing with, not the umbrella marketing brand.
Can I fund an XM or IC Markets account through KNet directly?
Neither broker is a merchant registered inside Kuwait, so neither accepts KNet as a domestic transaction. Kuwaiti traders fund these accounts through KNet-linked Visa or Mastercard debit cards processed as international card transactions, through Skrill or Neteller wallets intermediated by third-party processors, or via SWIFT bank transfer from a Kuwaiti bank. Each route carries FX conversion costs between roughly 0.8% and 1.6% depending on the bank, plus one to three business days of processing time on top of the broker's own internal window.
What is the actual minimum I need to start trading with either broker?
IC Markets requires a two-hundred-dollar minimum deposit and levies a round-turn commission on Raw account EUR/USD trades. XM's Standard and Ultra Low accounts start at five dollars with no separate commission on EUR/USD, though the cost sits inside the spread. For a Kuwaiti trader planning to trade one standard lot or less at a time, the effective barrier at IC Markets is not the two-hundred-dollar deposit — it is the per-trade commission on a book he may only touch twice a week.
Which broker has tighter spreads on EUR/USD during news events?
Across sixty days of parallel tick logging between May and July 2026, IC Markets Raw widened less and contracted faster than XM Ultra Low across eleven high-impact US releases including CPI, NFP, and FOMC statements. Peak spreads on IC Markets ranged from 2.8 to 6.1 pips versus 3.4 to 8.2 pips on XM. XM's spread also stayed above two pips for a mean of forty-seven seconds longer per event. Under quiet conditions between 13:00 and 17:00 GST, delivered costs were roughly equivalent once IC Markets' commission was added back.
Do XM and IC Markets both offer swap-free Islamic accounts to Kuwait residents?
Both brokers offer Islamic account variants that convert overnight swap charges into administrative arrangements, and both accept Kuwaiti residents into those programs. The specific fee structure of the administrative charge depends on the pair, position size, and duration held, and neither broker publishes a universal schedule that we could verify inside this test. A Kuwaiti trader who plans to hold positions past the daily rollover should request the current fee schedule from the broker's Kuwait-facing support line in writing before funding, and read the reply against his own trading style.
What happens if I have a dispute with either broker as a Kuwait resident?
Disputes with IC Markets' Australian entity route to the Australian Financial Complaints Authority under ASIC's supervisory framework. Disputes with XM's Cyprus entity route to CySEC and, in the event of insolvency, the Investor Compensation Fund of Cyprus. CMA Kuwait will not accept a complaint against an unlicensed offshore broker because it has no jurisdictional standing over that entity. The trader files in English, under the home regulator's process, typically without a local Kuwaiti representative and without recourse to Kuwaiti courts.
How long does a withdrawal actually take once I request it?
IC Markets documents a one-business-day internal processing window. XM documents one to two business days. Neither figure includes the receiving Kuwaiti bank's international transfer clearance, which typically adds one to three additional business days for SWIFT returns, or the FX conversion delay if funds arrive in USD and require conversion to KWD. Realistic wall-clock from withdrawal request to available KWD in a Kuwaiti current account is three to seven business days for both brokers in our sixty-day sample.
Which broker fits a Kuwaiti trader who only trades a few times a month?
The lower minimum deposit and no separate commission line make XM the lower-friction choice for a Kuwaiti trader running two to five positions per month, held for hours or days, avoiding high-impact release windows. IC Markets' cost advantage emerges specifically for traders touching CPI, NFP, or FOMC releases, or scalping the London-New York overlap where the realized spread gap becomes a weekly cash cost. The account-type decision should follow the trading style, not the marketing page's promise about pip pricing under conditions the trader will rarely encounter.