WikiFX Released the Real Trading Data of over 100 Brokers

WikiFX strives to handle investors'questions about brokers since its establishment, narrowing the gap between investors and brokers. In order to better serve our users and help them find out the reliable brokers, WikiFX team opened the real trading account at different Forex platforms and provided investors with brokers'merits and demerits and features by personal experience.

WikiFX team registered the accounts with real ID at over 100 platforms and recorded their minimum deposit amount, trading instruments and exchange loss, which will be presented clearly on recent WikiFX Journal (Chinese edition).

WikiFX spent a large amount of money on this project. Apart from the US $1,000 each account, we spent extra US $25,000 in order to observe the changes of various indicators of brokers under different market situations, such as the fluctuation in non-farm payroll period. All reached approximately one million CNY.

To ensure the objectivity and impartiality of the test results, we applied the EA programme of MQ4. This fully automated trading system combined with our full-time close monitoring of the market ensure all brokers are tested under approximately the same conditions and same trading time, and we managed to maintain the same amount of orders on 98% of the platforms (the 2% irregularity is due to occasional connection breakdown that blocked placing orders). As for Zhixuan and HX which didn't support EA trading, we assigned 2 employees to conduct manual transactions according to the preset EA trading process, so as to ensure the same process with that of other platforms.

Notably, when conducting the project, WikiFX found that one broker was suspected of escaping. The illegal broker has already been listed in our blacklist permanently, and investors can see it in the report from WikiFX Journal.

The cover story of July's WikiFX Journal epitomizes over 3 months of dedicating efforts from WikiFX team and presents investors an utmost close-up of real Forex trading. From the report, you can know not only the “hard power” of brokers regarding varieties, account services, trading restrictions, transaction speed and slippage, but also the “soft power” of brokers in terms of spreads, overnight interest, quotes and connection-failures.

With detailed and reliable data, concise and clear charts and objective analysis, this report will help you find the appropriate Forex broker.

Extracted report:

Part 1: Trading

1.1 Instruments:

The different types of instrument that a broker offers include currency pairs, commodities, stock index futures, and digital currencies.

Method and principle:

WikiFX team made a survey based on varieties of mainstream trading instruments. For broker, the trading instrument available is marked with “√”, while non-available one is marked with “×”.

Photo of WikiFX Journal (Chinese edition) in July

Conclusion:

Our survey shows all brokers offer the trading of the currencies in G7 and spot gold and silver, while some do not provide trading of CNH, international crude oil futures and stock index futures; digital currencies trading is not available at most platforms.

In terms of trading types, most investors may be attracted to brokers who offer a wider variety of choices in trading. But investors need to be careful with items such as digital currencies, as its compliance and regulation status require further discussions.

1.2 Trading restrictions

The specific functions of trading accounts that each broker offers also vary: some support EA trading while others don't; some allow scalping while other prevent such practice; some may have restrictions on position-holding time. Investors should thus pay attention to these restrictions to best suit their investment objectives.

Method and principle:

WikiFX team surveyed the trading account services available at each broker, focusing on EA, scalping and time in position. For broker, the trading service available is marked with “√” in the table while non-available one is marked with “×”.

Photo of WikiFX Journal (Chinese edition) in July

Conclusion:

WikiFX found through the research that except Zhixuan and HX, all brokers support EA trading. Scalping is available at all brokers and there's no limitation of position-holding time.

The brokers didnt show much difference in this aspect, though not supporting EA trading is a disadvantage for a broker to some extent.

Part 2: Forex Quotation

2.1 Spread:

When forex rate changes, the spread is the difference between the bid price and the ask price. As a trader trades one currency with another, the price of the one is given on the base of the price of another. In order to trade conveniently, currency pairs appear, such as AUS/USD( AUS is regarded as “base currency”, while USD is “counter currency”)

For instance, EUR/USD=1.45020/1.45050, the bid price of EUR is 1.45020, while the ask price of USD is 1.45050, therefore spread=1.450050-1.45020=0.0003 (aka 3 pips)

The bigger the spread, the higher the cost. The bigger spread indicates that a trader will pay more when buying, while get less when selling. It becomes difficult to make profits. Therefore, the spreads offered by brokers will have a significant influence on customers'decision to choose their brokers.

Method and principle:

We placed 506 real orders of EURUSD by MT4 trading software, covering the release time of both US non-farm payrolls data and the Federal Reserve interest rate. The 24 hours real time monitoring quotation is displayed continuously, and the related data reaches up to 85,587,192.

Photo of WikiFX Journal (Chinese edition) in July

Conclusion

According to the testing, we concluded that three brokers with the smallest average spread are MC, ETX and ACY respectively and the Forex quotations on their MT4 are close to that of real-time.

According to the average spread list during the interest rate release time, the top 10 Forex brokers are APJFX, ZFX, JunoMarkets, AISA, AUSFOREX, ALPHA TRADEX, LCG, CHARTER, Westfield, GCM respectively. The average spreads of the ten brokers are less than 2.5 pips.

According to the data during the US non-farm payrolls data release time, there are 7 forex brokers with average spread less than 10 pips, who are MC, BlackBull, ETX, NORDFX, OctaFX, Alpari and ACY respectively.

The report was extracted from the real trading date of brokers, and more information can be seen at WikiFX Journals (Chinese Edition).