easyMarkets

Safety starts with proper licensing, and when evaluating a broker this becomes one of the most important things to look at. Since more regulators mean more oversight and tighter controls, the more regulators are regulating the broker, the better for traders. 

easyMarkets is regulated by four independent authorities:

• Cyprus Securities & Exchange Commission “CySEC” (Cyprus) – license 079/07
• Australia Securities and Investments Commission “ASIC” (Australia) – license 246566
• Financial Services Authority of Seychelles “FSA” (Seychelles) – license SD056
• Financial Services Commission “FSC” (British Virgin Islands) – license number SIBA/L/20/1135

After seeing how many authorities there are overseeing this broker it is easy to deduce that easyMarkets is not a fly-by-night affair.

Policies 

Policies define how the broker serves its customers and what it focuses on. easyMarkets is part of the Compensation Fund, meaning that there is some insurance protecting traders. Additionally, they save all clients’ funds on segregated accounts, which is critical as it limits the broker’s access to client funds and guarantees that even if the company goes out of business, traders get their funds back.

There is another crucial thing to look for when selecting a broker and that is negative balance protection. Because leveraged trading is a risky business that can amplify profits and losses hundreds of times, traders face the possibility of losing more money than they had in their accounts to start with. In order to protect traders from this, negative balance protection is employed, and easyMarkets has this in place.

The number of trading instruments offered by easyMarkets is moderate. Despite this, there are still various instruments available for trading spanning different asset classes. Forex, cryptos, and share CFDs are all present and will enable traders to find something worthwhile. There are 63 Forex pairs, which is a good amount when looking at currency trading platforms. From the table above, it is clear that the broker mainly focuses on Forex and despite having some CFDs available, they are limited.

Forex trading 

Forex is one of the biggest international financial markets and there are trillions of dollars traded daily. easyMarkets has 63 currency pairs available, and although some other brokers have more pairs for trading, this is not a small number when it comes to currency pairs. It includes many minor and exotic pairs along with all the majors. The leverage offered on FX trading is 1:500 and as a micro account is available with easyMarkets, it will enable traders to easily trade any of these currencies with a small amount of starting capital. 

Share CFDs trading 

There are 64 shares as CFDs available on the easyMarkets platforms. Contracts for difference or CFDs offer unique speculative abilities to traders by allowing them to short-sell any share and make a profit even if the market is in a downtrend. There are shares as CFDs from major exchanges such as the USA and Europe, and easyMarkets offer their clients negative balance protection when trading CFDs together with competitive spreads and fast execution, making them really attractive for experienced traders. 

Cryptocurrency trading 

Although there are only 20 cryptocurrencies available, this is actually a decent amount for this kind of broker. Other popular cryptos offered by the broker include 

• Ethereum
• Litecoin
• Ripple
• Litecoin
• Stellar
• Bitcoin Cash

No slippage, tight fixed spreads, advanced stop-loss technology, and instant execution are advantages when trading cryptos on easyMarkets platforms. 

Indices

Indices are great to measure the overall market’s direction and can also be a nice instrument for trading. There are 15 indices offered by easyMarkets, with the lowest spread starting from 0.005 for USX/USD. Traders can trade EU, UK, US, AU, and Asian Indices and can use the deal cancellation feature to limit losses. Below, is the list of indices offered by the broker

• US 500SPI
• US 30DOW
• US TechNDQ
• UK 100FTS
• Germany 40DAX
• EU Stocks 50ESX
• Swiss 20SWI
• AustraliaASX
• Japan 225NKI
• Hong Kong 50HSX
• China 50CNX
• India 50IND
• USD IndexUSX
• France40cCAC
• Italy40cMIB

Fixed spreads with deal canceling abilities can assist traders to limit losses and increases profitability. 

Commodities trading 

Copper, crude, natural gas, and agricultural commodities together with metals are among the commodities offered by easyMarkets. Gold and other precious metals along with things like coffee, and other commodities are great instruments for trading in when looking for safe-haven assets during an economic crisis and as a way of hedging your capital against inflation. easyMarkets offers 31 different commodities to their clients. Noteworthy features of easyMarkets commodity trading are deal cancellation, award-winning support, and instant execution. Spreads are very competitive for commodities and start from 1 pip, making it cheap to trade favorite commodities.

Every trader needs a different type of account according to their trading style, capital, and other requirements. 

The account types offered at easyMarkets are VIP, Premium, and Standard. The different types of accounts have different terms and spreads, with a different minimum deposit size required for each account as well. The minimum deposit for a VIP account is $10,000, for Premium accounts, it drops to $2,000, and just $25 is needed to open a Standard account. All the spreads are fixed except for MetaTrader 5, where spreads are dynamic. The VIP account offers the lowest spreads for all trading platforms, from 0.3 pips for MetaTrader 5 (MT5), and it seems like the best option for low spreads is to use MT5 when trading. The leverage is also highest for MT5 with the 1:500 option. Another difference between account types is that live support is not available for easyMarkets web traders and TradingView platforms, and is only for VIPs. For TM4 and MT5 accounts, all support is accessible without interruption. . 

Demo account

When starting to learn how to trade or when developing a new trading strategy, it is essential to be able to trade as if you are trading in a real market. A demo account does exactly that and offers virtual funds to trade with on a simulation of the real markets. Everything is real, except there is no actual money involved. This does a few things; enables beginners to learn trading skills without losing money, offers the ability to check how well the strategy behaves in real markets and offers a glance at the fees and spreads of the broker. 

EasyMarkets has a Demo account, and its registration is similar to that of a live account. Only a few things are required, like email and phone number, and you are free to start testing any trading in a simulated real-time market environment. 

 VIP Account

VIP accounts can be opened with a minimum deposit of $10,000 and offer the best overall terms for traders. Spreads are minimum and start from 0.7 pips for MetaTrader 4 (MT4) and from 0.8 pips for the web trader and TradingView, the spread is lowest for MT5 starting from 0.3 pips. So, in order to receive maximum value, it is better to trade on the MT5 platform. Since TradingView is popular among many traders, it is possible to analyze charts on TradingView and then open an actual trade on the MT5 platform for lower spreads. If the strategy that you want to use is a scalping one, this becomes a bit challenging, but still possible with the right approach. Trading oil-related pairs is the cheapest on easyMarkets’ VIP accounts, with spreads starting from 0.04 USD. Maximum leverage accessible is 1:200 for MT4 and TradingView, 1:400 for MT4 platforms, and 1:500 for MT5 platforms.

Premium Account

Following the VIP account, the Premium account requires a minimum deposit of $2,000 to get started. It offers medium spreads, fees, and overall features. Minimum spreads start from 1.5 on web trader and TradingView and 1.2 for MT4, it is dynamic and starts from 0.3 pips on MT5. 

 Standard Account

The Standard account is the cheapest to start trading as it requires only $25 to open an account. There are no commissions related to account opening, activating, or depositing, making it easier for beginners to start learning trading skills. The spreads are high though with 1.8 and 1.7 pips for easyMarkets web trader, TradingView, and MT4. These spreads are fixed and offer stability during trading. For MT5, the spreads start from 0.3 pips and are dynamic. This could be misleading as it is not clearly indicated if the minimum spread on MT5 includes all three accounts or only VIPs. When starting with low capital, MT5 seems a bit better on easyMarkets as it is offering the lowest spreads and highest leverage of 1:500. The leverage for the web trader and TradingView for Standard accounts is 1:200 and for MT4 it’s 1:400, wish is similar to the other account types.