Hey, I would love some recommendations on Australian or overseas brokers that accept Australian clients.
side topic. due to lock down, there are lots of new traders opening trading account. and is happening from east to west, north to south and everywhere. during covid crisis, humans across various nations behave similarly like - buying tons of toilet paper - hoarding tons of food ended up supermarket shelves are empty - new traders opening trading accounts
yes , i have marked the same issue , during lockdown everything is shut down but Forex activity increases rapidly.
Usually it depends on your what you trade and how you trade it but from the Australian brokers I recommend Global Prime. https://www.globalprime.com/ They only offer 100:1 leverage (you would have to trade very conservatively to be allowed 200:1) because they pass your trades straight through (they will offer a statement showing you which bank filled your order (on request)). Their data feed is very good too, so your stops would not be taken out by fake or overextended spikes. The other one worth exploring is IC Markets, their spread is slightly lower than GP but their data feed is not clean (there will be unusual spikes and questionable bars in their feed). They are market makers (like most other brokers). If your account is in the 5 figures or more and decide to go with any of these 2, send me a PM and I will tell you how to pay lower commissions.
Having known them since 2010 and based on personal experience: https://pepperstone.com/ Easily at the top for execution quality and customer service between the ASIC regulated brokers.
I know them too, I've used them for years and if you are a plain vanilla trader they will be ok. They are similar to ICMarkets but their commissions + spread are a little higher. However, I don't like them because just like IC Markets some of their bars are questionable. For example, the other day I was reviewing my open trades which are duplicated over several accounts and in my pepperstone account 1 EURGBP trade was triggered but it was not triggered in the other accounts. When I looked at the chart closely, the pepperstone daily bar had a tail and it triggered the pending order but when I looked at the Global Prime EURGBP bar, it didn't have that tail, price never went there. As a result, I got into a pepperstone trade which I shouldn't have been in. This is the magic of the market maker brokers imaginary or overextended gap down at daily open, .....imaginary gap up, and other tricks like spread widening up etc etc Its like a casino, the house always wins because they make sure they have all the odds in their favor....... People do yourselves a favor and move to Global Prime. https://www.globalprime.com
Price and bar discrepancies happen because people are trading differently across brokerages. The only thing keeping the prices inline across the brokerages are traders arbitraging that price difference when it appears. < I think, or so have been told.