Room: ZTrade USA

Plus500 is a CFD service, and  a UK based broker that is authorized and regulated by the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA), and also regulated in Australia by ASIC. Plus500 is authorized to offer trading in Contracts for Difference (CFD), Indices, Commodities, Stocks and Exchange Traded Fund (ETF). Serving over a million clients, Plus500 is one of the fastest and largest growing brokers in Europe and Asia. Unlike most of the leading Forex brokers around, Plus500 boast of an in house developed trading which clean cut and simple to operate for those looking for no frills trading. In fact, one of the main key attractions about Plus500 is the low spreads that they offer to their clients (starting from 2 pips).

Trading Platform

Although extremely popular in Europe and Asia, Plus500 differs from the other leading Forex brokers in the sense that Plus500 offer just one trading platform to their clients. The platform is in-house developed and comes in 3 different versions:

• As a downloadable package
• As web-based trading platform
• As a Mobile trading platform

The platform works seamlessly between all the different versions and thus making the switch from one version to another version effortless. Despite the fact that MetaTrader 4 is the leading trading software for Forex, Plus500 is still able to capture a sizeable market due to the fact that they focus on ‘no frills’ trading. Many traders prefer to trade without the headache of suffering from informational overload. The trading platform just provides the essential information needed for a trade in one screen. Traders don’t have to switch from one window to another searching for critical information. No doubt this is a great help to those who are new to Forex trading.

Types of Trading Accounts

As with the philosophy behind their trading platform, Plus500 offers just one type of trading account. However, a minimum deposit of 100 EUR is required for traders who want to sign up with Plus500. An unlimited free demo account is also provided to those who signed up with Plus500. An unlimited free demo account is actually quite a rarity even among the leading Forex brokers.

Commissions and Spreads

As in the industry standard, Plus500 do not charge any commissions on trades executed by them. They only charge limited spreads from as low as 2 pips for the trades they execute for their clients.

Customer Service

Although Plus500 only provide Customer Support with email, it is available 24/7. Replies are normally answered within 30 minutes.

Reliability

When considering the reliability of a broker, one of the most important things is to check if they are regulated or not. In this respect, it is reassuring to see that Plus500 is regulated by the FCA in London. The FCA is one of the most important financial regulatory bodies not only in the City of London but also within the European Union (EU).

As for funding the trading account, Plus500 make things easy by providing several methods of depositing funds. Fund transfer can be done with major credit cards, wire transfer, Paypal and money booker.

Pros:

Some of the highlights of Plus500 include:

• Clutter free interface for the trading platform
• Competitive low fixed spreads
• Easy withdrawal of profits
• Large number of tradable instruments
• Low minimum deposit required to open a trading account
• Regulated by the FCA
• User Friendly trading platform

Cons:

Although Plus500 do have many plus points going for it, it does have one major disadvantage notably the lack of customer support via Phone.

Conclusion

With so many Forex brokers around today, it is quite surprising to see that many of them still do not attempt to get themselves regulated by the proper financial authorities. With the number of scam sites existing on the internet, it never hurts to deal with a broker that is properly regulated like Plus500.