Category: Broker Review

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

For this Admirals review, we opened a live account and deposited over €4,5oo.

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 determine if the withdrawal process was smooth.

What is Admirals

Admirals is a global Forex and CFDs broker founded in 2001 whose parent company is Admirals Group AS, based in Estonia.

The broker is licensed in Australia, the United Kingdom, Cyprus, Kenya, and Jordan. As a part of its global expansion strategy, Admirals has also acquired South African license in 2022.

Admirals offers thousands of instruments to traders in the following categories, Forex pairs, indices, stocks, commodities, bonds, ETFs, and cryptocurrencies.

The broker offers a diverse product range consisting of more than 8,000 tradable instruments compared to its competitors.

Here’s a summary of Admirals’ main features:

Licenses and Regulations

Admirals is licensed by 6 regulators globally, including the top-tier UK Financial Conduct Authority (FCA), the Australian Securities and Investments Commission (ASIC), the Cyprus Securities and Exchange Commission (CySEC), the Jordan Securities Commission (JSC), the Capital Markets Authority (CMA) in Kenya, and South Africa’s Financial Sector Conduct Authority (FSCA).

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

Is Admirals Safe

Yes, Admirals is safe to trade. The broker is regulated by the top-tier ASIC and the UK’s FCA, which have strict rules and enforcement procedures. The broker is also licensed by Cyprus’ CySEC, Jordan’s JSC, Kenya’s CMA, and South Africa’s (FSCA).

The UK’s FCA guarantees investors’ compensation of up to £85,000 if the broker goes bankrupt, while the CySEC guarantees investors’ compensation of up to €20,000 if the broker becomes insolvent.

Traders have to be registered under the relevant entity to qualify for compensation if a broker declares bankruptcy.

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

For this review, we opened a Trade.MT5 account with Admirals UK Limited, licensed by the UK’s Financial Conduct Authority (FCA). We deposited money into the account, placed trades, and finally withdrew our funds.

We recommend that you open your account with the UK or Cyprus entities since they are the only ones that offer deposit protection to traders if either is available to you.

The FCA offers deposit protection of up to £85,000 if the broker becomes insolvent, while the CySEC offers deposit protection of up to €20,000.

Fees and Commissions

Admirals charges very low fees for trading the main instruments on offer: Forex pairs, indices, stocks, and commodities.

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

Some account types have very low spreads combined with a commission, while other account types have no commissions, but feature wider spreads.

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 Admirals’ Trade.MT5 account, which charges a spread on all instruments. The spreads were quite low, as shown in the table below.

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

A deeper comparison of the spreads charged in our trades revealed that they were well below industry benchmarks. None of Admirals’ average spreads was above industry averages.

Other fees

The broker charges a monthly inactivity fee of €10, if there are no new or running transactions on an account for 24 months. The broker does not charge deposit and withdrawal fees.

Admirals Account Types

Admirals offers 5 account types with slightly different features. The accounts are known as the Trade.MT4, Zero.MT4, Trade.MT5, Invest.MT5, and Zero.MT5 accounts.

See the differences below:

Admirals also offers swap-free Islamic Accounts (Also check Forex Swap-Free Accounts). Such accounts do not attract a swap fee for positions held overnight, but trades held for more than 3 nights attract an administration fee.

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

Account Opening

Admirals account opening is fast and efficient. We went through the entire process and completed it digitally.

Here are the 5 steps to opening an Admirals account:

1. Enter your country of residence, full name, email address, password and phone number.
2. Verify your email and phone number, then choose your account type, currency, and leverage.
3. Enter your date and place of birth and residential address including your city/town, street number, residence, postal/ZIP code.
4. Answer a few questions about your financial position including your income and net worth as well as your investing/trading experience.
5. Verify your account using either a national ID or Passport and a utility bill or bank statement.

The registration process took exactly 15 minutes, and our account was approved on the same day.

We registered our account on 25 February 2023, and it was approved on 25 February 2023.

For this test, we opened the Trade.MT5 account with Admirals UK Limited, which is UK’s FCA regulated.

Deposit and Withdrawal

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

Admirals Minimum Deposit

Admirals has a minimum deposit requirement of $/€/£ 25 on its Trade.MT4, Zero.MT5, Trade.MT5, and Zero.MT5 accounts, while the Invest.MT5 account has a minimum deposit of $/€/£ 1.

Deposit

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

The table below has the details of our deposits:

Admirals does not charge deposit fees for its funding methods. Our Skrill deposit was not instant as we had to wait for 4 hours before the amount was credited to our account. Credit and debit card deposits are free and instant. We did not deposit via bank transfer.

Withdrawal

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

Admirals does not charge a fee on deposits, as well as on withdrawals, unlike most brokers who have withdrawal fees.

We did not encounter any difficulties during the withdrawal process, which was quite smooth.

Markets and Products

Admirals offers a wide selection of tradable instruments in the Forex, indices, stocks, commodities, bonds, ETFs, and cryptocurrencies markets.

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

The broker offers a significant amount of stocks CFDs to its clients.

Trading Conditions

The trading conditions at Admirals are great. Traders can execute most trading strategies given that 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. Admirals also allows traders to use Expert Advisors (EAs) for automated trading.

*The broker allows hedging strategies on all account types except for the Invest.MT5 account.

Leverage

Admirals clients have access to different leverage levels based on the entity under which their account is registered.

Traders can also change their account’s leverage levels after registration.

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

Bonus

Admirals does not offer bonuses to its clients (See No Deposit Bonus Forex for finding brokers that offer bonuses).

Trading Platform

Admirals offers the popular MetaTrader 4 (MT4) and MetaTrader 5 (MT5) platforms to its clients. Clients can trade via the broker’s website and the mobile and desktop MT4 and MT5 applications. The broker does not have a proprietary trading platform.

Traders who prefer the MetaTrader platform can choose between the MT4 and MT5 platforms. However, traders who prefer to trade on proprietary platforms have to find an alternative broker.

We found the MT5 platform to be satisfactory for traders who prefer to trade on a modern platform, while the MT4 platform is outdated.

Research and Tools

Admirals provides market research via the in-built features on the MetaTrader platforms. Clients can access premium research from Trading Central via the MetaTrader Supreme Edition, an available add-in on the platforms.

The broker has a Premium Analytics section, which gives its clients access to the Dow Jones News calendar, signals from Trading Central, and sentiment trackers from Acuity Trading. All these are freely available to their clients.

Admirals also has a Trader’s Blog where it publishes fundamental and technical analysis articles covering significant market moves several times each month. The broker also has a Forex Calendar and a Trading Calculator.

The broker also produces a weekly trading podcast that discusses past and coming fundamental events and provides market analysis and trading strategies.

Education

Admirals has a great beginners course titled Forex 101 that consists of nine in-depth lessons that acquaint new traders with the Forex markets’ dynamics. Traders have to sign up for a free demo account to gain access to lessons 4-9; the first three lessons are freely available.

The broker also hosts free weekly educational webinars that build on the course content. The course also focuses on risk management as a key pillar of trading, which is commendable.

Admirals also provides several detailed articles and tutorials that cover various trading topics. Traders also have access to a complete guide to the Forex markets called Zero-to-Hero.

Customer Service

Admirals’ customer support team was very helpful and gave us direct and accurate answers to our questions. We first contacted the support team via live chat and received a prompt and accurate answer to our question.

You can reach the Admirals customer service team via email and live chat. Our live chat query reached the customer support team within 2 minutes, which was quite impressive.

Our second query was submitted to the customer support team via email. We received a clear, detailed and accurate answer within an hour. We were impressed by the fast response time.

Here are the results of our test below:

Conclusion

Finally, we had a smooth experience with Admirals starting from the account opening, to the deposit, trading and withdrawal processes.

Admirals has high execution speeds and very low spreads on all instruments. Additionally, the broker does not charge fees for its deposit and withdrawal methods.

Traders should also avoid depositing funds into their trading wallets, which requires approval from the broker’s finance department. We encourage traders to deposit funds directly into their trading accounts, which is instant.

We recommend Admirals to all types of traders, from beginners to experienced professionals. This is a truly safe broker, given that it does not have an offshore license. The UK and Australian entities accept clients from all countries globally. Hence, clients from every country are truly protected.

We recommend Admirals for traders who are

• Experienced traders
• Beginners
• Run Scalping
• Hedging
• EAs trading
• Trading through MT4 / MT5
• Looking for a wide range of instruments

Admirals might not be a fit if you are

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

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

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

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

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

What is Markets.com

Markets.com is a global Forex and CFDs broker founded in 2008 as GFC Markets but rebranded to Markets.com after its parent company Safecap Investments Limited merged with Playtech Plc (LON: PTEC).

The broker is licensed in the United Kingdom, Australia, Cyprus, South Africa, and the British Virgin Islands.

Markets.com offers thousands of instruments to traders in the following categories, Forex pairs, indices, stocks, commodities and cryptocurrencies.

The broker offers a wide range of over 2,200 tradable instruments compared to most of its peers.

Here’s a summary of Markets.com’s main features:

Licenses and Regulations

Markets.com is licensed by 5 global regulators, including the tier 1 UK Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) and the Australian Securities and Investments Commission (ASIC).

The broker is also regulated by the Cyprus Securities and Exchange Commission (CySEC), South Africa’s Financial Sector Conduct Authority (FSCA), and the B.V.I Financial Services Commission (FSC).

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

Is Markets.com Safe

Yes, Markets.com is safe to trade. The broker is regulated by the top-tier ASIC and the UK’s FCA, which have stringent rules and enforcement mechanisms. The broker is also licensed by Cyprus’ CySEC, South Africa’s FSCA and the B.V.I’s FSC.

The UK’s FCA guarantees investors’ deposit compensation of up to £85,000 if the broker goes under, while the CySEC guarantees investors’ deposit compensation of up to €20,000 if the broker becomes insolvent.

The broker is also a subsidiary of Playtech Plc, a publicly listed company. Hence, it is considered to be very safe given the transparency required of public companies.

For this review, we opened an MT5 CFD account with Safecap Investments Limited, regulated by the Cyprus Securities and Exchange Commission (CySEC). We deposited funds into the account, placed trades, and finally withdrew our funds.

We recommend that you open your account with the UK or Cyprus entities since they are the only ones that offer deposit protection to traders if either is available to you.

Markets.com Fees and Commissions

Markets.com charges mostly high fees for trading the main instruments on offer, including Forex pairs, indices, stocks, and commodities.

The broker’s average spreads for trading the popular instruments in most of the markets listed above were much higher than those charged by its peers.

The fees for trading indices, stocks and commodities were much higher than industry averages. However, the fees for trading Forex pairs were lower than the industry average.

Spread Charged in our Trades

For our tests, we traded the most popular instrument in each market. We placed 3 trades for each instrument to arrive at an accurate estimate of the average spread. We tested Markets.com’s MT5 CFD account, which charges a spread on all instruments. The spreads were quite high, as shown in the table below.

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

A deeper comparison of the spreads charged in our trades revealed that most of the spreads were higher than industry benchmarks. Only one of Markets.com’s average spreads was below industry averages.

Other fees

Markets.com charges a monthly inactivity fee of $10 after three months if there are no new or running transactions on an account. The broker does not charge deposit or withdrawal fees.

Account Types

Markets.com offers 5 account types that offer slightly different features. The accounts are the CFD, investment strategy builder, MT4 CFD, MT5 CFD, and share dealing accounts.

See the differences below:

Markets.com also offers swap-free Islamic Accounts to Muslim clients. Such accounts do not have a swap fee for positions held overnight, but trades held for over 3 nights are charged an administration fee.

For our tests, we chose to open the MT5 CFD Account with Safecap Investments Limited.

Account Opening

Markets.com account opening is fast and seamless. We completed the entire process digitally within a few minutes.

Here are the 5 steps to opening a Markets.com account:

1. Enter your email and password, confirm the password, choose your account type and account currency.
2. Provide your full name, phone, date of birth, residential address including ZIP code/post code, city, country, and citizenship status.
3. Enter your country of tax residency, TIN number, do you have another tax residency and are you a US citizen?
4. Provide details of your profession and financial position including your education level, employment status, annual income, savings and investments, purpose and nature of trading, and the source of your trading funds.
5. Enter the number of trades you took over the past two years in Forex, shares, bonds, indices, and commodities including the number of leveraged trades.

The registration process took only 6 minutes, and our trading account was approved on the same day.

For this test, we opened the MT5 CFD account with Safecap Investments Limited, regulated by CySEC.

Deposit and Withdrawal

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

The broker does not charge a fee on deposits and withdrawals.

Markets.com Minimum Deposit

Markets.com has different minimum deposit requirements depending on the account type chosen by a client. The investment strategy builder account has a minimum deposit of $/€/£ 10 while the CFD and MT4 CFD accounts have a minimum deposit requirement of $/€/£ 100.

The share dealing account has a minimum deposit of $/€/£ 200 while the MT5 CFD account has a minimum deposit of $/€/£ 500.

Deposit

Markets.com’s 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:

Markets.com does not charge a fee on deposits. The broker asked us to provide our ID in order to process our PayPal deposit. Our Skrill deposit was also scrutinized to ensure that we were using our own account.

We deposited a total of EUR 5,000 into our account, but EUR 3,000 was to our CFD account denominated in Pounds, which reduced our total deposit to EUR 4,862.53 after the necessary conversions.

Withdrawal

Markets.com allows its clients to withdraw funds from their accounts using the same payment methods available for deposits, which makes it easy for traders to access their funds.

Markets.com does not charge a fee on withdrawals unlike many brokers who have withdrawal fees.

We did not encounter any difficulties during the withdrawal process, which was quite smooth. However, our PayPal withdrawal of EUR 2,000 was split into two with EUR 1,633.67 going back to our credit card and EUR 366.33 being sent to our PayPal account.

We finally received the entire withdrawn amount with the broker explaining that the above split was in-line with its withdrawal policies.

Markets and Products

Markets.com offers a massive number of tradable instruments in the Forex, indices, stocks, commodities and cryptocurrencies markets.

Here’s the complete list of Markets.com’s product offering:

The broker offers a significant number of stocks CFDs to its clients.

Trading Conditions

The trading conditions at Markets.com are excellent. 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 would like. Markets.com also allows traders to use Expert Advisors (EAs).

The broker allows hedging strategies on all account types.

Leverage

Markets.com clients can access different leverage levels depending on the entity under which they register their account.

Traders can also change their account’s leverage level after opening the account.

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

Bonus

Markets.com offers a 20% deposit bonus to its clients registered under the Australian and British Virgin Islands entities.

The bonus program is based on the following criteria:

Markets.com Trading Platform

Markets.com offers traders two proprietary trading platforms known as Marketsx and Marketsi. The broker also offers the popular MetaTrader 4 (MT4) and MetaTrader 5 (MT5) platforms.

The Marketsx and Marketsi platforms have premium features such as Trading Analysts Recommendations, Bloggers Opinions, Insider Trades, Hedge Funds Investment Confidence, Trends In Trading, Advanced Alerts, Acuity News Alerts, Acuity News Trading Sentiment, Signals, Advanced Charting, Related Instruments, Financial Commentary, Thomson Reuters Stock Report and Dow Jones News.

The MT4 and MT5 platforms offer the standard features that made them extremely popular among investors but offer none of the above premium features, which are only found on the broker’s proprietary platforms.

Traders who prefer to trade on proprietary platforms can choose between the Marketsx and Marketsi platforms. Traders who prefer the MetaTrader platform can choose between the MT4 and MT5 platforms.

We found the MT5 platform to be satisfactory for traders who prefer to trade the popular MetaTrader platform, while the Marketsx platform was the best of the two proprietary platforms.

Research and Tools

Markets.com provides its clients with trade ideas that indicate clearly where to buy or sell a certain instrument and the expected price targets. However, the broker does not provide the reasoning behind the trade signals.

The broker also provides stock trading recommendations from analysts and experts at top-tier banks such as J.P.Morgan and Goldman Sachs. The analysts are ranked according to their past performance, helping traders chose the best performing experts.

Traders get access to the insider trades sentiment section that has a record of trades made by company insiders such as CEOs and top managers. The hedge fund sentiment section provides details of portfolio adjustments made by the top hedge fund managers in the past quarter.

We found the broker’s fundamental company data to be quite shallow as important financial ratios and past earnings results are not provided.

The broker’s Marketsi platform is licensed from Saxo Bank and bears a close similarity to Saxo’s TraderGO platform. However, the news feed is quite different.

Education

Markets.com has an entire section known as the Knowledge Centre that provides ongoing education to traders. The centre has Analysis, News, XRay, and Webinar segments. The XRay segment is a live stream service that offers daily market analytics and discussions of market-related developments.

However, the XRay service is only available on Markets.com’s proprietary trading platforms. The broker’s news segment offers fresh content and discussions of breaking news stories and their impact on the affected assets.

The broker offers 60-minute webinars that are useful for beginners and a few introductory articles on market fundamentals. We think this section could be more detailed to be at par with industry leaders.

Customer Service

Markets.com’s customer service team was accommodating and gave us direct answers to our questions. We first contacted the team via live chat and received a prompt but inaccurate response to our question.

You can reach Markets.com’s customer service team via email and live chat. The customer service team answered our live chat query within 1 minute, which was very impressive.

We submitted our second query to the customer support team via email and received a clear and direct answer within two hours.

Here are the results of our test below:

Conclusion

Finally, we had a positive experience with Markets.com starting from the account opening to the deposit, trading and withdrawal processes.

Markets.com has spreads that are higher than industry averages, except for Forex spreads, which were below industry benchmarks. The broker’s response time for live chat requests was quite fast with email queries being answered quickly as well.

However, traders should ensure that their queries are well understood by the customer support agents, especially for live chat requests.

The broker offers fast deposits, but traders must provide documents proving their ID and residential address. Traders should be aware that inter-account transfers from GBP denominated accounts to EUR accounts will result in lower amounts than expected.

We recommend Markets.com for traders who are

• Forex traders and Stock traders
• Beginners in trading
• Experienced traders
• Scalping or hedging traders
• EA trader
• High-risk strategies trader

Markets.com might not be a fit for

• Comission based trading
• Trading Futures or Index