Over the last few years, the forex market has been getting a lot more and more popular. Traders from all over the world join the exchange market everyday. As a result, many companies that offer forex services, which are called forex brokers, are founded daily. For beginners, choosing a good broker to start trading with might prove to be difficult as there’s a lot to choose from. That’s why today, we’ll compare some of the best forex broker of 2018 and rank them based on 8 different categories so that you can decide for yourself which one is more suitable for your needs. Do note in mind that this article is targeted at and is exclusively for Asian traders.
To start off, how can we evaluate a broker? The answer is by evaluating the way that they treat their traders. A good broker must provide their traders with excellent trading conditions as well as customer services. Furthermore, and the most important thing is that they need to be absolutely transparent and safe. Long-time profit for the traders without a doubt should always be of the utmost importance, because at the end of the day, customers signed up and do the trading because they want to have profit. Although profit is the ultimate goal, you shouldn’t be fooled by the bonuses or promotions from small brokers. People need to understand that they can’t make profit instantly in the forex market. It takes times, effort, and strategy. That’s why the top biggest brokers offer little bonus for traders. On the other hand, trading with small brokers is riskier because they are often less secured and unprofessional.
We hope that after this article, you can choose a broker that suits your conditions and trading tactics.
1. REGULATION
It is very crucial for a forex broker to have license(s) from a trusted organization. The license shows that that the broker has standards, reputation, and capability. There are some known and reliable, trusted certificates such as ASIC (Australia), CySEC (Cyprus), FSA (Japan), CFTC (United States), NFA (United States), and FCA (United Kingdom). A license can guarantee the safety of traders, however it is strictly limited regional us. For example, a broker that has the FCA certificate which is only valid in the UK cannot protect their clients in Asia. Therefore, being regulated by many organization doesn’t make that broker better. But still, it’s better to know that your broker has one or two licenses instead of none.
Owning a license, however, does have it downsides. Specifically, they will have to offer higher spread, lower leverage, lesser trading tools, and higher minimum deposit. It clearly shows that having multiple licenses isn’t good for business at all. One trusted certificate should always be enough.
In addition, since almost all big brokers have at least one reliable license, we can’t tell for sure which one is better in this category. But do note that those organizations only give license to big international brokers, so unless you are out of options, don’t trade with the small, unregulated ones.
2. TRANSPARENCY & SECURITY
It is highly recommended to know as much as possible about the broker you’re doing business with. The forex market is a large and complicated place, there are risks of being scammed everywhere so it’s best that you choose a broker who is not reluctant to show their financial reports and performances. There has been only two big brokers who have made their business records public, which are Exness and FxPro. Their financial reports and other information are publicly available and accessible right on their website. Exness even went the extra mile with the transparency when they revealed their financial information, specifically how much money that they have in the bank. Currently, their fund is 4 times the deposit of their clients so you need not to worry about losing money due to technical problems or crisis when trading with Exness. Moreover, most brokers offer the service of compensating their clients when there are unexpected issues. One last thing to mention is that you should always check the audit of your broker to make sure that the company is thoroughly audited annually.
3. TRADING VOLUME
Why should you review the trading volume of a broker? It’s quite simple. The more people who choose to trade with that broker, the more trusted they are. If traders from all around the world choose to trust them, why shouldn’t we?
Here are some of the monthly trading volume of big forex brokers.
Exness: $323 billion per month.
Hot Forex: $280 billion per month.
Forex.com: $185 billion per month.
FXCM: $108 billion per month.
4. CUSTOMER SERVICE
The forex field is relatively difficult to everyone, so the broker’s customer service is always necessary since new traders constantly need help and instructions. A good broker is one that should always be available to offer help at all times. Furthermore, language barrier should also be taken into notice. Not all traders are native English speakers so it’s better for a broker to be able to help their customers in different languages. There are some big brokers that have outstanding customer support (24/7 service, multiple languages) like Exness, FBS, FxPro, and XM.
5. COST & FEE
By cost and fee, we mean the spread and commission that a broker charges traders. Traders obviously don’t wish to be charged abundantly when trading so forex brokers should keep their spread and commission as low as possible. For the most popular currency pair, which is EUR/USD, some big brokers’ spread is as low as 1.1 pip, like Exness, Hot Forex, and FBS. XM and FXTM’s spread is a little higher, which is 1.7 pip.
Most brokers don’t charge any commission for the regular accounts. When it comes to ECN account, the spread is almost none, so they have to charge commission. Exness is the leading broker in this field. They charge only $2.5 for each lot, which is the lowest price of all.
6. WITHDRAWAL/TRANSFER SYSTEM
Withdrawal time is always the concern of traders. For internal brokers, the time is shorter but still unreliable. When trading with overseas brokers, it is safer but the withdrawal process can take a tremendously long time. You need to consider for yourself a broker who has a more efficient and quicker withdrawal/transfer system so that you can follow through with your trading strategy. We highly recommend Exness because they leave all the withdrawal/transfer work for the machine, so the time to perform these tasks is only a matter of milliseconds. When it comes to withdrawal or transfer time, Exness has no competitor in this field.
7. LEVERAGE
All traders love brokers with high leverage. The higher, the better. However, as we mentioned above, forex brokers in Japan, United States or United Kingdom have to offer low leverage because they are strictly regulated by these countries. Therefore, traders usually don’t come to brokers with too many licenses. Here are some brokers with the best leverage:
Exness: For accounts with less than $1000 and having traded more than 5 lots, the leverage is unlimited. For accounts with over $1000, it is 1:2000 top.
Hot Forex: 1:1000 top.
FBS: 1:1000 top.
XM: 1:888 top.
8. MINIMUM DEPOSIT
When you are just a small or even a beginning trader, this one right here is very important. You don’t want to put too much money in your account when you’re just getting started because 90% of new traders will lose all their money in the beginning. Brokers that offer accounts which only require a small amount of deposit is more suitable for you. Here are some brokers that we recommend for beginners/small traders:
Exness: only $1.
FBS: only $1.
Hot Forex: $5.
We hope that after this, we have provided you enough information so that you can decide which broker is more suitable for you. Each broker always has their own strength and weakness. It is entirely up to you to decide who to go with.
IC Markets & XM Broker, in my opinion.