Every trader all wants to trade with the best brokers. But I am sure that not everyone is capable of finding the best brokers for themselves. There are many standards available to evaluate a broker. After spending a lot of time trading with many brokers, I have finalized three standards: credibility, trading cost and customer services. And from these standards, these are my top 5 brokers:
- Exness reviews: 9/10
- HotForex reviews: 8.5/10
- XM reviews: 8/10
- FBS reviews: 7.5/10
- FxPro reviews: 7/10
CREDIBILITY
It is important for traders to know if the broker they are about to trade with is reliable or not. And regulation is the best way to do so. Regulations are all provided by trusted organizations. They are the ones that decide merits, standards, conditions of brokers that have their regulations to ensure that traders are all protected under their regulations. However, having a lot of regulations can be bad for brokers as it will negatively impact their trading conditions as it will lead to lower leverage, higher commission rate and higher spread. And all of these will cause brokers to appear less competitive than others. So it is better for brokers to only have just one or maybe two regulations. The regulations that my top 5 brokers have are as follows, all of them are from famous and trusted organisations:
|
Broker names |
Regulations |
|
Exness |
CySEC, FCA |
|
HotForex |
CySEC, FSCA, FCA |
|
XM |
CySEC, FCA, ASIC |
|
FBS |
CySEC, IFSC |
|
FxPro |
CySEC, FCA, DFSA, FSB |
TRADING COST
After checking the reliability of the broker, next is checking its trading cost. There are many factors to calculate trading cost, most the most common and important ones are spread, commission rate and minimum deposit rate.
Spread, which is measured in pip, is the difference between the Bid and Ask price. It is a common cost that brokers will charge you. Therefore, high spread can increase your trading cost. That is why many traders prefer brokers with lower spread. Here are the spreads of my top forex brokers:
- Exness: 0.7 pip
- Hotforex: 1.1 pip
- FBS: 1.1 pip
- XM: 1.7 pip
- FxPro: 1.7 pip
Each broker usually offers two types of account which are regular and ECN account. Most of the brokers will not charge spread for ECN account, they will charge commission instead because they mostly get income from the commission and spread. Below is the commission rate that my top 5 brokers are charging for ECN accounts:
- Exness: $2.5
- Hotforex: $6
- FBS: $6
- XM: $6
- FxPro: $45
The last factor is the minimum deposit which is required to open a new account. Beginners to forex trading generally want to put just a small amount of money because they know that they are likely to fail in the early stage of their trading careers. Experienced traders also care about this as well because they want to test new brokers. Below are the minimum deposit requirements the top brokers on my list require:
- Exness: $1
- FBS: $1
- Hotforex: $5
- XM: $5
- FxPro: $500
CUSTOMER SERVICES
This is another very important factor traders take very seriously because they always need much support due to how complicated forex trading is. Therefore, customer service is something that brokers need to be available most of the time. Moreover, local offices are also necessary because it is better to have face-to-face support. In addition, Asian traders sometimes find it hard to communicate in English so again, brokers should offer local language support. Finally, brokers should also offer local banks to cooperate with them so that traders will be able to minimize their depositing and withdrawing fees.
With those factors, top 5 brokers in customer care are as follows:
- Exness: 9/10
- HotForex: 8.5/10
- XM: 8/10
- FBS: 7.5/10
- FxPro: 7/10
For Thailand readers, click here for ฟอเร็กซ์ โบรกเกอร์