FP Markets Review
- Widest range of equities CFDs available in Australia
- Extremely competitive DMA pricing
- High quality educational resources
- Access to a wide range of charting and analysis tools
- Award winning customer support and satisfaction levels
- Higher bottom line cost than some CFDs brokers targeted at beginners and low value account holders. This con should be taken within the context of the fact FP Markets is a DMA specialist.
- Not the widest range of forex pairs for specialist forex traders
Founded in 2005, First Prudential Markets, better known as FP Markets, is one of Australia’s oldest and most experienced CFDs brokers. The company’s head office is in Sydney, Australia, and also has a regional office in Beijing and representative office in Shanghai.
FP Markets is well regarded in the industry and has won numerous awards, 35 in total over the past eight years, including:
- Most Satisfied Clients six years running by Investment Trends
- Outstanding Value CFD Provider by Canstar Cannex 5 Stars
- Recommended CFD Broker by Smart Investor
- and
- Cheapest Non-Advisory Phone Broker by Money Magazine
CFDs across forex, Bitcoin, commodities, indices, equities, futures and share trading are offered by FP and a Direct Market Access brokerage service is provided. The company works with both retail and professional clients.
FP Markets is well known for its educational resources as well as research content. A high level trading course broken down into beginner, intermediate and advanced modules and based on a combination of video tutorials and e-book content. Research and news content includes daily market and weekly report videos and analysis of particular markets and instruments. Regular webinars on current and general topics are also broadcast.
Platform
FP Markets offers two trading platforms, IRESS, which is positioned for more experienced or professional investors and MT4, the industry standard and favoured by retail investors.
IRESS: an Australian-built trading platform, IRESS is built on HTML5 code and offers traders DMA trading, a customisable interface and advanced charting and analysis tools. The trading platform itself is compatible with Windows and Mac devices and is downloaded software rather than web based. Key features are transparent pricing and Level 2 market depth data. Access to pre and post market auctions is also a major attraction of the platform. Advanced orders management, a live news feed and heat maps are additional value added features.
As well as a proprietary charting package, IRESS also provides 59 technical indicators and over 50 different drawing tools. Over 10,000 instruments are priced and tradable and the platform also offers mobile apps in Android and iOS.
MT4: most traders will be familiar with the MetaTrader 4 platform, which is the retail-facing industry standard for CFDs trading. Charting tools and indicators are a prominent feature and a newish feature is trading signals, which allows users to follow or copy trades of signals providers. Signals providers either offer their signals for free or for a subscription.
Access to the Traders Edge suite of MT4 tools is also provided. An economic calendar, trade alarms and news terminal are just a few of the additional tools.
FP Markets also offer a Virtual Private Server facility for Forex traders who wish to run automated algorithmic trading robots. A VPS means that trading is not interrupted in the case of internet outages or technical issues with the machine a trading platform is being run on.
Multi Account Manager (MAM) and Percent Allocation Management Model (PAMM) services are also available to professional traders managing 3rd party funds.
Markets
FP Markets offers a wide range of instruments across forex pairs, commodities, indices and equities. Over 50 FX pairs are offered by FP as well as a strong range of commodities and indices, both DMA and as CFDs. However, it is equities CFDs that are the major USP of FP Markets, with the broker’s range the broadest available from any Australian CFDs broker and one of the best internationally. Bitcoin trading s a new addition to FP’s asset list, with leverage of up to 10:1 provided.
For forex and other CFDS, leverage of up to 500:1 is available and non-leveraged CFDs are also an option. FP additionally provides a share dealing service.
Fees
FP Markets is one of the most competitively priced DMA brokers on the market and has won numerous awards for its cost effectiveness. In terms of absolute cost, there are certainly far cheaper market maker brokers, and the higher costs inherent in DMA trading may not be suitable for beginner traders or those with trading accounts with limited capital. FP is very much a DMA specialist broker and has few rivals on cost there. A full breakdown of fees and spreads can be found at: https://www.fpmarkets.com/about-us/fees-and-charges/
Security & Fairness
FP Markets is regulated by the Australian Securities and Investments Commission (ASIC), which is a strict regulatory regime and requires strict segregation of client funds from business cash flows as well as regular auditing of capital reserves. In terms of transparency, as a specialist DMA broker, FP Markets meets the highest standards in this area. Trading costs are also among the best available anywhere for DMA trading.
Support
FP Markets provides support via telephone and email as well as a live chat interface present on the broker’s website. The broker has won multiple industry awards for the quality of its customer support and overall client satisfaction levels. Certainly a strong point.
Conclusion
For more experienced or professional traders seeking a DMA broker, especially those more specialised in equities trading, FP Markets is one of the best choices available on the market. Beginner traders with smaller accounts may find a market maker broker a better initial fit but should still take advantage of FP Markets’ excellent educational resources and demo account.
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