Best broker for Australians

sd

It really depends on your needs .

Retail ? Institutional ? Products ?

the best hands down

www.invast.com.au

www.thinkforex.com

Hands down? really?

In my experience with invast...

-spreads are too big.
-during times of volatility slippage is excessively painful.
-different servers have different price action printed on charts, suggesting a B-book server/s for clients they trade against.

Over the years I've tried many Australian brokers and Invast are average. Hands Down average.
Needless to say I don't have an account with Invast anymore.

I do however still have an account with Global Prime. I don't have anything negative to say about Global Prime. Some might argue commissions are a bit high, But I disagree and think their commissions are fair value for the service they offer.

i use them for CFDs.

what bout IC Markets?

Definitely a retail broker with about $5000 balance at the moment.

I am not a scalpor, more like a position trader.

But rock solid platform, broker and regulation is very important to me.

In addition to GlobalPrime, what about
pepperstone.com,
rubixFX.com
icmarkets.com?

AxiTrader which is regulated in the UK and Australia.

Thank mitch,

Have you personally used Axitrader?

Any more recommendations here? I'm in the same position as the OP, have been demo trading for about 12 months and am at the point where I want to go live. Small account at first but would like a TRUSTWORTHY broker that will let me trade micro lots. Also, do you guys prefer standard or ecn accounts?

Am currently looking at ICmarkets (but have been reading a lot of negatives lately) and FP Markets.

Cheers

Don't ever go with ICmarkets. I have personally experience with them and they suck. Overcharged me for an insane 50x the actual dividend for shorting the ASX200 cfd over 3 days (equiv of ~200pts move on the index, or a nearly 5% move!!!). Then when I went to withdrawal and close the account, they outright stole $20 from the account balance. (There should of been no withdrawal fees as it was to an HSBC Australian bank account). I was like fck it, I'm not gonna argue with these thieves over $20. Good riddance.

Another guy in our trading group who had an account once had a 6 lot long gold position, ICmarkets created a fake bs spike down in gold from $1200 to $700 which never happened. Stopping him out of all his positions. Never refunded when confronted about it, made some excuse about "liquidity providers".

FP Markets might be decent. I had a share account trading with them years ago before moving to Bell Direct but they were pretty good for what its worth. Let us know if their fx offering is the same.

On another note I had a SL slipped for a crazy 200pips (!!) on my pepperstone acc the other day. Spreads spiked to 50p, pa went past SL which turned yellow but never closed for some reason. Thank god I used the minimum lot size possible else I would of been killed.

Pepperstone is also disappointing to say the least.



Screenie:

I'd be happy to recommend Vantage FX. Been trading a larger account with them for years and their business is going from strength to strength.

Global Prime are small fry and IC Markets tight spreads are fake once you trade any sort of size.

I had a small account with Vantage back when they offered MT5. After about a week I notice during the Europe session they were offering negative spreads on certain pairs. Not one to turn down free money, I opened and closed positions over and over - increasing lot size as the account grew. It didn't take long before the account grew from a couple of hundred dollars to almost 5000, at which time the platform froze. It froze while I was in like a 2 lot trade. I couldn't close it so I range them up and they were friendly enough and said they'd close it for me but they couldn't unfreeze the platform but they'd get the IT guy to look at it the next day.
Next day I was informed it was a third party price aggregation feeding incorrect quotes, and they had to reverse all the trades, except the last 2 lot trade which closed at a loss. At the end of it I lost my original couple of hundred dollars bringing my account balance to zero.
Shortly after they stopped offering MT5.
Anyway, I stopped trading with them because I didn't have faith they were going to honor the quotes they were giving me after that.

did you trade big sizes with ICMarkets and what kind of spreads did you get with those big sizes ?

Surprised no one's mentioned Vantage in here! Spreads just as low as IC's these days and much less slippage ... not to mention they pay interest on balances. Vantage is boss.

You can easily open an account with any broker in the world. I would open with a UK broker as it gives you better protection. Australia does not have a deposit guarantee fund. So if an Australian broker goes bust then your money is gone.

JayTee - true I didn't see ECB's post!

Vantage segregates accounts - it is impossible for you to lose your money if something goes wrong with the company - client money is not theirs. No Australian broker went bust during the CHF debacle ... UK, EU and US firms did. Also I think Aussies like to use Aussie brokers because deposits and withdrawals are so damn easy and quick.

The best broker is non... they all have some scamming paths that they take to try and squeeze some profits from traders, after all they are in existence to make money not to lose money and those that think brokers don't need to cheat because they make it from spreads are fools and have no clue about trading. There is no such existence as an honest scammer, they all want your money at the very least part of it.
So it is all about who is the least scammer lol so all named above are good scammers and not as much as others.