Category: Broker Review

For this Darwinex review, we opened a live account and deposited over €5,000.

We traded the popular instrument in each market to determine the actual spreads and placed 12 trades in total.

We reached out to the broker’s customer service team to resolve the issues we faced.

Finally, we withdrew our funds to assess if the withdrawal process was smooth.

What is Darwinex

Darwinex is a global Forex and CFDs broker founded in 2012 as Tradeslide Trading Tech, a provider of trading technologies. Two years later, the company rebranded to Darwinex, an FCA-regulated Forex and CFD broker.

The broker is licensed in the United Kingdom by the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA). In July 2023, Darwinex obtained Spain’s CNMV license as a part of its post-Brexit part.

Darwinex offers hundreds of instruments to traders in the following categories, Forex pairs, indices, stocks, and commodities.

The broker offers 287 tradable instruments, which is not a lot compared to some of its peers.

Here’s a summary of Darwinex’s main features:

Licenses and Regulations

Darwinex is licensed by two global regulators: the tier-1 UK Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) and tier-2 Spain’s Comisión Nacional del Mercado de Valores (CNMV).

Here are the details of Darwinex’s sole UK license.

Is Darwinex Safe

Yes, Darwinex is safe to trade. The broker is regulated by the top-tier UK Financial Conduct Authority (FCA), which has strict rules and enforcement procedures.

The UK’s FCA guarantees investors’ deposit compensation of up to £85,000 if the broker declares bankruptcy. The broker has gone a step further to get free supplementary insurance covering eligible clients for up to £1,000,000. Spain’s CNMV in its turn guarantees deposit compensation of €20,000 in case the client goes insolvent.

For this review, we opened an MT5 Standard CFD account and an Mt5 standard stock account with Tradeslide Trading Tech Limited, regulated by the UK’s Financial Conduct Authority (FCA). We deposited funds into the account, placed trades, and finally withdrew our funds.

Fees and Commissions

Darwinex charges low fees for trading most of the main instruments on offer, including Forex pairs, indices, and commodities.

However, the broker’s average spreads for trading stocks were much higher than the industry benchmark.

The broker charges low spreads because it charges a commission on all trades, making its fees much higher than other brokers.

Spread Charged in our Trades

For our tests, we traded the most popular instrument in each market. We executed 3 trades for each instrument to get an accurate estimate of the average spread. We tested Darwinex’s MT5 Standard CFD and stock accounts, which charges a spread and commission on all instruments.

We executed all our trades via the MetaTrader 5 mobile app on our iPhone.

A deeper analysis of the spreads charged in our trades revealed that most of the spreads were lower than industry averages. But the broker’s fees were higher because of the additional commissions charged on each trade.

Other fees

Darwinex does not charge other non-trading fees. However, investors pay a 1.2% annual commission on invested equity for using the broker’s copy-trading feature known as a DARWIN. Investors pay a 20% performance fee if they make money with a Darwin strategy, with strategy providers earning 15% and Darwinex taking the remaining 5%.

Darwinex Account Types

Darwinex offers only 1 account type. The account is known as the standard account and is offered on the MetaTrader 4 and MetaTrader 5 platforms.

Here are its features:

Darwinex does not offer (Swap-free) Islamic Accounts.

For our tests, we opened an MT5 standard CFD account and an MT5 standard stock account with Tradeslide Trading Tech Limited, which is regulated by the UK’s Financial Conduct Authority (FCA).

Account Opening

Darwinex account opening is fast and efficient. We completed the entire process digitally within 10 minutes.

Here are the 5 steps to opening a Darwinex account:

1. Select your trading platform, choose a name for your account, your account currency and deposit amount.
2. Enter your username, email and password and choose whether to open an individual or corporate live account.
3. Provide your title, full name, date of birth, nationality, country of birth, phone number and residential address, including postcode, City/Town, State/Province, and Country of Residence.
4. Enter your tax details, current employment status, the value of your savings and liquid investments, and how much you plan to invest.
5. Do you have an account with another broker and how frequently did you trade in the past 3 years?

The registration process took only 10 minutes, and our trading account was approved in one working day.

We registered the account on 26 March 2023, and it was approved on 29 March 2023.

For this test, we opened the MT5 standard CFD account and an MT5 standard stock account.

Deposit and Withdrawal

Darwinex offers fast deposits and withdrawals. Traders can use bank transfers, credit and debit cards, and e-wallets such as Skrill and Trustly to deposit and withdraw funds from their accounts.

However, Darwinex charges a 0.5% fee on Skrill deposits and is one of the few brokers that charge a fee on deposits.

Darwinex Minimum Deposit

Darwinex has a minimum deposit requirement of $/€/£ 500 on its live accounts. Traders should make the next deposits in multiples of 100, as the broker will reject other figures.

Deposit

Darwinex’s clients can deposit funds into their trading accounts via bank transfers, debit/credit cards, and e-wallets such as Skrill and Trustly.

Skrill deposits attract a 0.5% fee.

The table below shows the details of our deposits:

Darwinex processes debit/credit card deposits instantly, while Trustly payments are processed in 1 day. Bank transfers may take up to 3 days to appear in your trading account.

Withdrawal

Darwinex does not charge a fee on withdrawals but passes on all associated costs to its clients. Therefore, traders end up paying varying fees on their withdrawals, which was unexpected.

Most brokers charge a fixed fee on withdrawals instead of passing on the merchant fees to their clients.

Hence, each withdrawal at Darwinex attracts a different fee based on the amount withdrawn and the percentage fees charged by the payments company.

Darwinex allows traders to make withdrawals using the same payment methods available for deposits.

We did not encounter any difficulties during the withdrawal process and received our funds within a maximum of two working days.

Markets and Products

Darwinex offers a variety of tradable instruments in the Forex, indices, stocks, and commodities markets.

Here’s the complete list of Darwinex’s product offerings:

The broker offers a limited number of instruments to its clients compared to the leading brokers.

Trading Conditions

The trading conditions at Darwinex are good. Traders can execute most trading strategies since the broker allows high-risk strategies such as hedging and scalping.

Traders can keep their hedging positions open for as long as they want. Darwinex also allows traders to use Expert Advisors (EAs).

Traders cannot change their account’s leverage level after opening the account.

Darwinex Leverage

Darwinex clients have access to standard leverage levels in line with the European Securities and Markets Authority (ESMA) regulations regarding leverage levels offered to retail traders based in the EU.

However, professional traders can access higher trading leverage levels, but they lose out on ESMA protections.

The table below shows the different leverage levels available to clients:

Bonus

Darwinex does not offer a bonus program to its clients.

Trading Platform

Darwinex offers traders a proprietary FIX API trading platform developed by Darwinex Labs ( its Quant team) that is specifically used for copy trading. The API software is used for copy-trading DARWIN assets on the broker’s proprietary marketplace known as the DARWIN exchange.

Investors can use the DARWIN API to buy and sell winning strategies created by professional traders and hosted on the DARWIN exchange.

Darwinex MT4 MT5

The broker also offers the MetaTrader 4 and 5 platforms for traders who want to trade their independent strategies. The MT4 platform offers traders a wide range of analytical tools and indicators, while the MT5 has additional features that deliver a better trading experience.

Darwinex further offers tools for automated trading in the form of auxiliary libraries that can be added to the MetaTrader and DARWIN platforms. These tools include ZeroMQ to MetaTrader and Zorro to MetaTrader bridging solutions.

Traders who prefer to copy the strategies developed by professionals will be at home on the DARWIN proprietary marketplace, while self-directed traders have to use the MT4 and MT5 platforms.

We found the MT5 platform to be great for traders who prefer to trade the popular MetaTrader platforms.

Research and Tools

Darwinex provides its clients who use its copy-trading platforms excellent research tools to sift through the over 2000 strategies (Darwins) and find the ones that fit their investor profile.

Traders can use the broker’s marketplace to research the performance rankings of each Darwin based on criteria such as the Darwinex score (D-score) to identify the best-performing strategies.

Darwinex provides little in the form of traditional market research for self-directed traders except for occasional news articles on its blog.

The broker also offers a community forum where traders can discuss trending topics and learn from each other.

Education

Darwinex offers minimal education in the form of training videos and tutorials. These are found within its proprietary trading platform.

Customer Service

Darwinex’s customer service team was helpful and gave us direct answers to our questions. However, the broker does not offer support via live chat, unlike most brokers.

You can reach Darwinex’s customer service team via email. The customer service team answered our email query within 10 hours, which was okay.

Here are the results of our test below:

Conclusion

In summary, we had a positive experience with Darwinex starting from the account opening to the deposit, trading and withdrawal processes.

We had to open an MT5 standard CFD account and an MT5 stock account to get access to Forex pairs and stock CFDs, which were limited in number. The broker charges low fees on Forex, indices and commodities trades, while its fees for stock trades were higher than industry averages.

Darwinex offers instant deposits and a user-friendly client portal. However, Skrill deposits attract a 0.5% fee, hence, we recommend traders use credit/debit cards to deposit.

The broker passes on the fees charged by payment processors to its clients when processing withdrawals. Therefore, card withdrawals attract a 1.2% fee, Trustly bank transfers attract a €/£3.5 fee, while Skrill withdrawals attract a 1.2% fee.

Darwinex does not offer support via live chat, which is inconvenient when one needs a quick reply to a query. The broker’s email responses were not as fast as some of its peers.

We recommend Darwinex to traders who want to copy strategies developed by other successful traders. Traders who run scalping, hedging and automated strategies will also feel at home with this broker.

We recommend Darwinex for traders who are

• Experienced traders
• Run Scalping
• Hedging
• EAs trading
• Copy Trading
• Trading through MT4

Darwinex might not be a fit if you are

• Beginners
• Real Stock / Futures Trading
• Commission based trading
• Looking for a wide instrument range
• Prefer other platforms rather than MT4

For this Pepperstone review, we opened a live account and deposited over €6,000.

We traded the popular instrument in each market to determine the actual spreads and placed 12 trades in total.

We contacted the broker’s customer support team to resolve the challenges we faced.

Finally, we withdrew our funds to test if the withdrawal process was smooth.

What is Pepperstone

Pepperstone is an Australian Forex and CFDs broker founded in 2010.

The broker is licensed in Australia, the United Kingdom, Cyprus, Germany, Bahamas, the UAE and Kenya.

Pepperstone offers the following tradable instruments: forex pairs, indices, stocks, commodities, ETFs, cryptocurrencies, and a currency index.

The broker’s product range is quite limited as compared to some of its peers.

Here’s a summary of Pepperstone’s key features:

Is Pepperstone Regulated

Pepperstone is licensed by 6 regulators worldwide including the top-tier UK’s FCA, Australia’s ASIC, Cyprus’ CySEC, Germany’s BaFin, Dubai’s FSA, the Bahamas’ SCB and Kenya’s CMA.

Here’s a full list of the licenses held by Pepperstone’s subsidiaries:

Is Pepperstone Safe

Yes, Pepperstone is safe to trade. The broker is regulated by the top-tier UK’s FCA and Australia’s ASIC, which have stringent rules and enforcement processes. See the list of Nigerian forex brokers like Pepperstone.

The FCA guarantees traders registered under the UK entity deposit compensation of up to £85,000 in case the broker declares bankruptcy.

The CySEC also guarantees investors deposit compensation of up to €20,000 if they are registered under the Cyprus entity, and the broker goes under.

We did not encounter any major challenges when trading with Pepperstone.

Pepperstone UK

For this review, we opened an account under Pepperstone Limited, the UK entity regulated by the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA). We deposited funds into the account, placed trades, and finally, withdrew our funds.

We recommend that you open your account under the UK entity since it offers the highest deposit protection compensation of up to £85,000 guaranteed by the UK’s FCA, which is the best in the industry.

You can also open your account with the Cyprus entity, given that the CySEC guarantees investors compensation of up to €20,000.

Pepperstone Fees and Commissions

Pepperstone charges low fees for most of the instruments on offer except for cryptocurrencies.

The broker’s average spreads for the popular instruments in each market were below industry averages.

However, we found the spreads on Bitcoin trades to be way above industry averages, making the broker unfriendly to cryptocurrency traders.

Pepperstone Spread Charged in our Trades

For our tests, we chose to trade the popular instrument in each market. We placed 3 trades for each instrument to get a full picture of the average spread. We tested the Standard Account with Pepperstone Limited, which charges a spread on all tradable instruments. The spreads varied slightly as shown in the table below.

We tested all our trades via the MetaTrader 5 mobile application on our iPhone. Pepperstone offers the popular MT4 and MT5 platforms in addition to the cTrader platform.

Looking at the spreads charged in our trades, we found that most were lower than industry benchmarks. However, the Bitcoin spreads were more than double the industry average, which stood out. Spreads on all the other assets were lower than the average spreads charged by its peers.

Other fees

Pepperstone does not charge other non-trading fees such as account inactivity fees or deposit and withdrawal fees.

Pepperstone Account Types

Pepperstone offers 2 account types with separate fee structures, that is, the Razor and Standard accounts. See the differences below:

Pepperstone also offers swap-free Islamic Accounts that charge an administration fee for trades held for over 3 nights instead of the typical swap fee.

For our tests, we chose to open a Standard Account.

Account Opening

Pepperstone account opening is quite straightforward. We tested the entire process while opening our account, and it was fully digital.

Here are the 5 steps to opening a Pepperstone account:

1. Enter your country of residence, preferred language, client type, full name, email address, and phone number.
2. Enter your personal address including country of residence, State, city, Street name and number and ZIP code.
3. Provide your nationality and specify if you are a US citizen for tax purposes, your education level, employment status, nature of your business, and employer’s name.
4. Answer questions about your annual income, savings and investments, source of funds and trading objectives, and your expected deposit over 12 months.
5. Verify your identity and residential address using either a National ID or Passport and a bank statement.

The registration process took a total of 20 minutes, and our account was approved on the next day, as expected.

Our account was approved after submitting all the required documents. We were allowed to choose the entity under which we wanted to register our account.

We chose to open a standard account with Pepperstone Limited, which the UK’s FCA regulates.

Deposit and Withdrawal

Pepperstone offers fast deposits and withdrawals. There are various options for funding your account, including bank wires, credit and debit cards, and e-wallets such as PayPal.

Minimum Deposit for Pepperstone

Pepperstone has a minimum deposit of AUD $200 for both its Razor and Standard accounts.

Deposit

Pepperstone clients can deposit funds into their trading accounts using debit/credit cards, bank transfers, and e-wallets.

The payment options available to a trader depend on the entity under which their account is registered. The Australian entity provides the most payment options, followed by the UK entity, which provides three payment options.

The details of our deposits are shown in the table below:

All the deposit methods offered by Pepperstone are instant and free. However, a bank transfer could take a few business days to reflect in your trading account.

Withdrawal

Pepperstone processes client withdrawals via the payment methods available for deposits, making it convenient for clients to withdraw their funds.

Given that we registered our account under the UK entity, we had access to three payment methods: credit/debit cards, PayPal, and bank transfers.

We withdrew our funds via credit card and PayPal since we had not used bank transfers to deposit.

We noticed that the withdrawals were not instant and took between 1 and 2 days to arrive in our accounts.

Our withdrawals took between 1 and 2 days to arrive in our accounts, which as fine.

Markets and Products

At Pepperstone, you can trade CFDs on Forex pairs, stock indices, stocks, commodities, cryptocurrencies and a currency index.

Pepperstone CFD Review

Here’s the complete list of Pepperstone’s product offering:

Trading Conditions

The trading conditions at Pepperstone are good. You can run most trading strategies since the broker allows high-risk strategies such as hedging and scalping.

There are no time limits for how long you can keep your hedging positions open. Pepperstone also allows traders to use Expert Advisors (EAs).

Leverage

Pepperstone offers different leverage levels to its clients depending on the entity under which they registered their account.

Traders cannot change the leverage level of their account after registration.

The table below outlines the different leverage levels available to clients:

Trading Platform

Pepperstone offers the popular MetaTrader 4 (MT4) and MetaTrader 5 (MT5) platforms to its clients, as well as TradingView and the cTrader platform.

The broker does not have a proprietary trading platform. Traders can trade via the broker’s web platform provided by MetaTrader, as well as via the mobile and desktop MT4, MT5 and cTrader applications.

Pepperstone MT4

The lack of a proprietary trading platform may dissuade some traders, but the MT5 and cTrader platforms are great.

Pepperstone’s web platform can be customised to a great extent and generates a detailed fee report. However, it is a bit dated and can be slow at times.

Research and Tools

Pepperstone provides research tools via the in-built features on the MetaTrader 4 platform. However, the platform’s news feature is quite basic, and it does not provide fundamental data or trade ideas.

The broker provides trade ideas via Autochartist, a feature that is accessible within the secure client area. Traders can also download the plugin and connect it to the trading platform to get notifications on the go.

Pepperstone also offers detailed market analysis written by its in-house experts, such as its daily newsletter, “The Daily Fix”, and a “Chart of the Day” series.

The broker also offers the Smart Trader tools that work on the MetaTrader platform and include sentiment trackers, a correlation matrix, and a trade simulator, among other tools.

Education

The broker offers platform tutorial videos, educational videos, and webinars to suit all types of traders. Beginner traders also get to benefit from the detailed educational articles that are part of the brokers “learn to trade” section.

Pepperstone also have a YouTube channel that offers dozens of educational videos that cover different topics suitable for all levels of traders from beginners to advanced traders.

Pepperstone Demo Account

Pepperstone offers a demo account that allows traders to test their strategies and familiarise themselves with the markets without risking their own money.

Clients who deposit over $2500 get access to premium educational content and trading signals from BK Forex.

Customer Service

Pepperstone’s customer support team was helpful and provided direct and relevant answers to our questions. Our first interaction with the customer service team was via live chat we received an accurate answer to our question.

You can contact Pepperstone via email and live chat. We were connected to the customer service team almost instantly via the live chat function since we waited for less than one minute.

Our email query was answered within two hours, which was quite impressive, and we got a clear, direct and accurate answer to our question about the withdrawal process.

See the results of our tests below:

Conclusion

Overall, our experience with Pepperstone was smooth from the account opening, to the deposit, trading and withdrawal processes.

The broker offers a small number of tradable instruments compared to other brokers. We traded across 5 markets and apart from Bitcoin, the spreads on all instruments was lower than the industry average. Pepperstone allows scalping and hedging but forbids the changing of leverage after one has opened an account.

The responses from the customer service team were fast and they gave us high-quality answers to our questions. We encourage traders to use the live chat function when they encounter any issues given the prompt feedback we got using this method.

We recommend Pepperstone to open account with the UK, Australia or Cyprus entities if any is available to you. And traders who are

• Beginning traders
• Experienced traders
• Scalping or Hedging trader
• EA trader
• Trading CFD

Pepperstone might not be a fit if you are

• Trading Futures or Real Stocks

For this GO Markets review, we opened a live account and deposited over €4,500.

We traded the popular instrument in every market to discover the actual spreads and placed a total of 12 trades.

We reached out to the broker’s customer support team to resolve the challenges we faced.

Finally, we withdrew our funds to determine if the withdrawal process was smooth.

What is GO Markets

GO Markets is a global forex broker founded in 2006 with its headquarters located in Australia.

The broker is licensed in Australia, Cyprus, the UAE, Mauritius, and Seychelles.

GO Markets offers hundreds of tradable instruments in the following categories, Forex pairs, indices, metals, commodities and shares.

The broker offers a limited number of tradable instruments as compared to industry leaders.

Here’s a summary of GO Markets’ main features:

Licenses and Regulations

Go Markets is licensed by 5 global regulators, including the top-tier Australian Securities and Investments Commission (ASIC), the Cyprus Securities and Exchange Commission (CySEC), the UAE Securities & Commodities Authority (SCA), the Financial Services Commission (FSC) of Mauritius, and Seychelles’ Financial Services Authority (FSA).

Here’s a full list of the licenses held by GO Markets’ subsidiaries:

Is GO Markets Safe

Yes, GO Markets is safe to trade. The broker is regulated by the top-tier Australian Securities and Investments Commission (ASIC), which has strict rules and enforcement procedures.

The broker is also licensed by Cyprus’ CySEC, the UAE’s SCA and Seychelles’ FSA. The CySEC guarantees investors’ deposit compensation of up to €20,000 if the broker goes bankrupt.

We had a smooth experience when trading with GO Markets.

For this review, we opened an MT4 standard account with GO Markets Limited, licensed by the Cyprus Securities and Exchange Commission (CySEC). We deposited money into the account, placed trades, and later withdrew our funds.

We recommend that you open your account with the Australian or Cypriot entities if they are available to you. Australia’s ASIC does not offer deposit compensation but is regarded as a tier 1 regulator because of its strict rules.

Meanwhile, the CySEC offers deposit protection of up to €20,000 if the broker becomes insolvent.

Fees and Commissions

GO Markets charges both low and high fees for trading the main assets on offer. The fees charged for trading Forex pairs, and commodities, are lower than industry benchmarks.

However, the average fees charged on indices such as the FTSE 100 are much higher than industry averages.

Two of the three accounts offered by GO Markets charge both a commission and a spread on trades. Only the Standard MT4 account charges a spread only with zero commissions.

Spread Charged in our Trades

For our tests, we traded the most popular instrument in each market. We placed 3 trades per instrument to get an accurate estimate of the average spread. We tested GO Markets’ Standard Account on the MT4 platform, which charges a spread on all instruments.

We executed all our trades via the MetaTrader 4 mobile app on our iPhone.

A deeper look at the spreads charged in our trades revealed that they were mixed. The spreads on Forex and commodity trades were lower than industry averages. However, the spreads on indices were much higher than industry benchmarks, as shown below.

Other fees

GO Markets does not charge any other non-trading fees such as deposit and withdrawal fees or account inactivity fees.

Account Types

GO Markets offers 3 account types with slight differences. The accounts are known as the Standard account, the GO Plus+ account and the Pro account.

Here are the differences outlined below:

Go Markets also offers a demo account that allows traders to test their strategies and get to know the markets without risking their own money.

For our tests, we chose to open the Standard MT4 Account.

Login Account

GO Markets account opening is quick and seamless. We went through the entire process and completed it digitally.

Here are the 5 steps to opening a GO Markets account:

1. Enter your country, first and last name, email, referrer ID, promo code, and phone number.
2. Provide your date of birth and tax details, including clarifying if you are a US citizen or a politically exposed individual.
3. Enter your education level, employment status, and the nature of your business.
4. Answer detailed questions about your trading experience covering topics such as different order types, the margin required for different lot sizes, and the impact of market moves on profits and losses.*
5. Enter your income sources, estimated annual income, net worth, the purpose of your trading, how much money you intend to invest.
6. Verify your account.

The registration process took 27 minutes, and our account was approved in 2 hours.

GO Markets is the only broker we have found asking detailed trading questions to verify your trading experience.

We provided our ID and a bank statement to verify our account.

For this test, we opened the Standard MT4 Account with GO Markets Limited, which the CySEC regulates.

Deposit and Withdrawal

GO Markets offers free and fast deposits and withdrawals. Traders can deposit and withdraw from their accounts via bank transfers, credit and debit cards, and e-wallets such as Skrill, PayPal, and Neteller.

Minimum Deposit

GO Markets has a minimum deposit requirement of A$200 on its GO Plus+ and Standard accounts. The Pro account has requires a minimum deposit of US$3,000.

GOMarkets Review Deposit

GO Markets’ clients can deposit funds into their trading accounts via bank wire transfers, debit and credit cards, and e-wallets such as Skrill, PayPal, and Neteller.

The table below shows the details of our deposits:

We were unable to fund our account using Neteller as our deposit attempt failed. We got the following error message from Neteller: “Unfortunately, we could not process the payment.”

Withdrawal

GO Markets allows its clients to make withdrawals via the same payment methods available for deposits making it easy for investors to access their funds.

GO Markets does not charge a fee on withdrawals.

We had a few challenges while withdrawing our funds. We made an 1800 EUR withdrawal via Skrill and a 3030.25 EUR withdrawal via credit card. We received EUR 3,000 to our credit card and EUR 30.25 to our Skrill account.

However, our EUR 1800 was pending for several days until we sent a follow-up email, and the broker released the funds on the same day.

Markets and Products

GO Markets offers various tradable instruments in the Forex, indices, stocks, and commodities markets.

Here’s the complete list of GO Markets’ product offerings:

The broker’s collection of stock CFDs is adequate, but some competitors offer thousands of tradable instruments. However, traders located in the European Union do not have access to stock CFDs.

Trading Conditions

The trading conditions at GO Markets are great. Traders can execute most trading strategies since the broker allows high-risk strategies such as hedging and scalping.

GO Markets also allows traders to run automated strategies powered by Expert Advisors (EAs). Traders can use the VPS service to run non-stop automated strategies remotely.

There are no time limits for how long traders can keep their hedging positions open.

*Traders registered under GO Markets International Ltd cannot deploy scalping strategies as the strategy is not allowed.

Leverage

GO Markets offers its clients various leverage levels based on the entity under which their account is registered.

Traders are also allowed to change their account’s leverage levels after registration.

The table below shows the different leverage levels available to clients:

Bonus

GO Markets does not offer bonuses to its clients (Find brokers offering Welcome Bonus Forex $50).

Trading Platform

GO Markets offers the popular MetaTrader 4 (MT4) and MetaTrader 5 (MT5) platforms to its clients. Clients can access the two platforms via the desktop and mobile MT4 and MT5 applications.

The broker’s WebTrader platform offers the premium MT4 and MT5 Genesis advanced plugins available only on Windows computers. Clients also have access to social trading features via the Myfxbook integration.

We found the MT5 platform to be a bit more modern than the MT4 trading platform, which feels a bit dated.

Research and Tools

GO Markets provides market research via the features found on the MetaTrader platforms such as Trading Central., which provides trade insights from analysts, pattern recognition indicators and much more.

Traders also have access to Autochartist for real-time trading alerts and volatility analysis on both the MT4 and MT5 web platforms. Algorithmic traders also get access to a Virtual Private Server (VPS) and a-Quant daily trading signals based on machine learning/artificial intelligence.

The broker also provides the advanced MT4 and MT5 Genesis add-ons, a series of expert advisors (EAs) that can be easily added to a live trading account. The add-on helps traders who are not coders to use automated strategies.

MetaTrader’s charting resources are okay, but the platform’s design and functionality are a bit outdated.

The broker also provides news, podcasts, an economic calendar and much more.

Education

GO Markets offers several learning resources within its education centre. The broker provides over a Forex Trading Handbook that offers an introduction to the Forex markets for beginner traders.

The broker also offers a series of MT4 tutorials that explains all the platforms features helping new traders understand how to use the platform.

Traders also have access to a series of free Forex education courses split into two tracks, with the ‘First Steps in Forex’ course catering to beginner traders. The ‘Next Steps in Forex’ course caters to intermediate traders.

Customer Service

GO Markets’ customer service team was very helpful and gave us direct and accurate answers to our questions. Our first contact with the team was via live chat, where we asked about the 30% bonus, the order execution types and withdrawal fees.

We received a fast response from the agent, who clarified that there was no ongoing promotion. The order execution type is market execution, and the brokers do not charge a fee on deposits and withdrawals.

You can reach the GO Markets customer support team via email and live chat. We asked our second query via email to know how long it would take to receive our Skrill and credit card withdrawals.

We got a response in four hours saying that Skrill and Neteller withdrawals are instant and should take a maximum of 10 minutes, while credit cards withdrawals are processed within 24 hours and should reflect in our account within three days.

Here are the results of our test below:

Conclusion

Overall, our experience with GO Markets was good, from the account opening to the deposit and trading process.

The broker doesn’t charge a deposit or withdrawal fee, but we could not use Neteller as a payment method despite the broker offering it as an option. Our Skrill withdrawal was delayed due to technical issues.

The broker’s customer support team was accommodating and responsive, as evidenced by the swift live chat responses. The email response times were average.

We recommend GO Markets for traders who

• Experienced traders
• Beginners
• Intermediate
• Run Scalping
• Hedging
• Use automated trading strategies
• Trading through MT4/MT5 platform

GO Markets  might not be a fit if you are

• Stock / Futures Trading
• Commission based trading
• Prefer other platforms than MetaTrader

For this IC Markets review, we opened a live account and deposited over €5,000.

We traded the popular instrument in each market to identify the actual spreads and placed 12 trades in total.

We contacted the broker’s customer support team to resolve the challenges we faced.

Finally, we withdrew our funds to discover if the withdrawal process was smooth.

What is IC Markets

IC Markets is an Australian Forex and CFDs broker founded in 2007 headquartered in Sydney, Australia.

The broker is licensed in Australia, Cyprus, Seychelles and The Bahamas.

IC Markets offers hundreds of tradable instruments in the following categories, Forex pairs, indices, stocks, commodities and cryptocurrencies.

The broker offers a diverse range of products compared to its competitors.

Here’s a summary of IC Markets’ main features:

Licenses and Regulations

IC Markets is licensed by 4 regulators worldwide, including the top-tier Australian Securities and Investments Commission (ASIC), the Cyprus Securities and Exchange Commission (CySEC), Seychelles’ Financial Services Authority (FSA) and The Securities Commission of The Bahamas (SCB).

Here’s a full list of the licenses held by IC Markets’ subsidiaries:

Is IC Markets Safe

Yes, IC Markets is safe to trade. The broker is regulated by the top-tier ASIC, which has stringent rules and enforcement mechanisms. The broker is also licensed by Cyprus’ CySEC, Seychelles’ FSA and The Bahamas’ SCB.

The CySEC guarantees investors’ deposit compensation of up to €20,000 if the broker goes bankrupt. Traders have to be registered under the Cypriot entity to qualify for compensation in case of bankruptcy.

We did not encounter any major challenges when trading with IC Markets.

For this review, we opened a standard MT5 account with IC Markets (EU) Limited, licensed by the Cyprus Securities and Exchange Commission (CySEC). We deposited money into the account, placed trades, and later withdrew our funds.

We recommend that you open your account with the Australian or Cyprus entities if either is available to you. While Australia’s ASIC does not offer deposit compensation, it is regarded as a tier 1 regulator because of its stringent rules.

On the other hand, the CySEC offers deposit protection of up to €20,000 if the broker becomes insolvent.

IC Markets Fees and Commissions

IC Markets charges low fees for trading most of the main instruments on offer. The fees charged for trading Forex pairs, indices, commodities and cryptocurrencies were much lower than industry averages.

However, the average spreads charged on stock trades were in line with industry charges.

Most of the account types offered by IC Markets have very low spreads and do not charge a commission. Only the Raw Spread Account charges a commission.

IC Markets Spread Charged in our Trades

In our tests, we traded the most popular instrument in each market. We placed 3 trades per instrument to get an accurate estimate of the average spread. We tested IC Markets’ Standard Account on the MT5 platform, which charges a spread on all instruments. The spreads were generally low, as detailed in the table below.

We executed all our trades via the MetaTrader 5 mobile app on our iPhone.

A deeper look at the spreads charged in our trades revealed that they were mostly below industry standards. Only the average stock trading spreads were in-line with industry benchmarks.

Other fees

IC Markets does not charge any other non-trading fees such as deposit and withdrawal fees or account inactivity fees.

IC Markets Account Types

IC Markets offers 4 account types with slightly different features. The accounts are known as the standard account, cTrader raw spread account, the raw spread account, and the Islamic account.

See the differences below:

IC Markets offers swap-free Islamic Accounts to Muslim clients only. These accounts do not attract a swap fee for positions held overnight. However, trades held for more than 3 nights attract an administration fee.

For our tests, we chose to open the Standard MT5 Account.

Account Opening

IC Markets account opening is quick and seamless. We went through the entire process, and completed it digitally.

Here are the 5 steps to opening an IC Markets account:

1. Enter your full name, country of residence, mobile phone number, and email address.
2. Choose your account type, enter your date of birth and address including the city, state/province and ZIP code.
3. Select your trading platform, account type, and choose the base currency of your account.
4. Provide your trading experience, select your security question and input the answer.
5. Enter your employment information, source of wealth, trading experience, investment objectives and goals and your risk tolerance.
6. Verify your account.

The registration process took exactly 14 minutes, and our account was approved in one working day.

We were asked to provide the front and back pictures of our National ID/ Passport/ Drivers’ License.

We also provided a utility bill as proof of residence accompanied by a credit card/ bank statement as an additional verification document.

For this test, we opened the Standard MT5 Account with IC Markets (EU) Limited, which is regulated by the CySEC.

Deposit and Withdrawal

IC Markets offers free and fast deposits and withdrawals. Traders can deposit and withdraw from their accounts using the following payment methods, bank transfers, credit and debit cards, and e-wallets such as Skrill, PayPal, and Neteller.

The broker charges a high fee of AUD $20 for international bank withdrawals.

IC Markets Minimum Deposit

IC Markets has a minimum deposit requirement of $/€/£ 200 on all accounts.

Deposit

IC Markets’ clients can deposit funds into their trading accounts via bank transfers, debit/credit cards, and e-wallets such as Skrill, PayPal, and Neteller.

The table below shows the details of our deposits:

IC Markets does not charge fees on all deposit methods.

Withdrawal

IC Markets allows its clients to make withdrawals via the same payment methods available for deposits making it easy for investors to access their funds.

IC Markets does charge an AUD $20 fee on international bank transfer withdrawals.

We did not have any challenges during the withdrawal process, which was quite smooth.

Markets and Products

IC Markets offers a wide variety of tradable instruments in the Forex, indices, stocks, commodities and cryptocurrencies markets.

Here’s the complete list of IC Markets’ product offering:

The broker’s collection of stock CFDs is quite substantial. However, traders registered under IC Markets (EU) Ltd do not have access to cryptocurrencies.

Trading Conditions

The trading conditions at IC Markets are great. Traders can execute most trading strategies since the broker allows high-risk strategies such as hedging and scalping.

IC Markets also allows traders to use Expert Advisors (EAs). The broker notes on its website that majority of the trades executed by its clients are done via automated systems.

There are no time limits for how long traders can keep their hedging positions open.

Leverage

IC Markets offers its clients different leverage levels based on the entity under which they registered their accounts.

Traders are also allowed to change their account’s leverage levels after registration.

The table below shows the different leverage levels available to clients:

Bonus

IC Markets does not offer bonuses to its clients.

Trading Platform

IC Markets offers the popular MetaTrader 4 (MT4) and MetaTrader 5 (MT5) platforms to its clients. Clients can access the two platforms via the desktop and mobile MT4 and MT5 applications. The broker also offers the cTrader platform as well as copy-trading systems attached to each platform.

IC Markets MT4

Algorithmic traders will find a home with IC Markets, which offers fast execution speeds and guarantees no requotes on submitted trades. The broker’s cTrader platform offers the cAlgo app that algorithmic traders can use. The cTrader Copy app allows for social copy trading.

Traders who prefer a modern platform should try the MT5 platform since the MT4 platform is a bit dated.

Research and Tools

IC Markets provides market research via the features found on the MetaTrader platforms. Clients have access to technical research from Trading Central.

The broker also has a market analysis section that contains technical and fundamental analyses from its in-house experts covering different instruments.

IC Markets has a distinct lack of in-depth video content, which could be a major drawback for traders who learn better via video lessons. The broker also does not provide any fundamental data to its clients; hence, they rely on other sources to catch the latest macro releases.

MetaTrader’s charting resources are okay, but the platform’s design and functionality are a bit outdated.

The broker also has a news feed section called Market Buzz, which delivers news from other websites, but can get crowded with persona tweets.

Education

IC Markets offers a great forex trading course for beginners that covers topics such as technical analysis and trading psychology. The broker provides over a dozen articles under each category.

IC Markets Demo Account

Traders can also open a demo account to practice trading on the broker’s platforms and test their trading strategies. The broker also provides tutorials on how to use its platform as well as general educational videos.

However, the videos are located in the broker’s video channel instead of on its website, which can be quite confusing.

IC Markets’ education offering lacks depth, and we would like to see the broker add more content on intermediate and advanced topics. We would also like to see the broker increase the amount of video content to match some of its competitors.

Customer Service

IC Markets’ customer service team was quite helpful and gave us direct but sometimes inaccurate answers to our questions. Our first interaction with the team was via live chat, where we asked about the instruments we could trade via our MT5 account.

We received a prompt response, but the customer support agent seemed unsure about the answer. It took a while for the agent to confirm that we could trade the instruments we had asked about. The answer was not as instant as we had expected.

You can reach the IC Markets customer support team via email and live chat. Our second query was via email where we wanted to know when our account would be approved.

The broker responded quite fast and asked us to submit the query via our registered email, which we had already done. They later apologised and quickly approved our account.

Again, we saw that the support agents were struggling with information that should be easy to find, but they always got it right in the end.

Here are the results of our test below:

Conclusion

Overall, our experience with IC Markets was good. The forex broker provides relatively low spreads and breakneck execution speeds.

The broker offers a wide range of deposit and withdrawal methods that are instant and free. The broker’s customer support team was quite responsive and finally resolved our issues.

We also recommend IC Markets to all levels of traders from beginners, intermediate and advanced traders who can all benefit from its services.

We recommend IC Markets for traders who are

• Beginners in trading
• Experienced traders
• Run Scalping
• Use Hedging
• Run Automated Trading Strategies

IC Markets might not be a fit if you are

• Trading Futures or Real Stocks
• Commission Based Stocks