AVAtrade

Avatrade Review

AvaTrade is the trading name of AVA Trade EU Ltd, a global provider of online trading services that has its administrative headquarters located in Dublin, Ireland. They have been operating in the industry for more than a decade, giving them substantial experience that has led to an enviable reputation. AvaTrade is licensed and regulated by the Irish Financial Services Regulatory Body, as well as being authorised by the FCA.

This online broker has come a long way since its inception in 2006, and now has a number of offices worldwide including in China, Australia, Nigeria, Spain, Italy and Japan. It boasts trading volumes of more than $60 billion per month. AvaTrade offers a wide range of trading instruments including foreign currencies, commodities, indices, and stocks.

• AvaTrade EU Limited is an Irish private limited company (company number 460012) based in Dublin, Republic of Ireland, which controls AvaTrade’s operations within the European Union.
• Ava Capital Markets Australia Pty Limited is an Australian private limited company (ACN 72 143 340 907) based in Sydney, Australia, which controls AvaTrade’s operations within Australia.

Avatrade homepage

Avatrade trading platforms to suit all kinds of trading styles

AvaTrade is committed to empowering all sorts of people to trade and invest, which is possibly why they offer such a wide range of platforms. This includes options not just for manual trading but for automated trading too. Each available platform has its own set of instruments to choose from as well as multiple analytical tools, charts, and indicators. Here is a list of what is currently available:

• AvaTrader – A fully customisable platform that is very user-friendly, and comes complete with all the necessary tools, whether trading on a desktop computer, tablet or mobile phone.
• MetaTrader 4 – The most popular trading platform is always going to be a welcome addition. It offers power, flexibility, single-screen trading, free auto trading, and EA compatibility, along with MQL5 support.
• MT4 Floating Spreads – Using the powerful and customisable MT4 trading platform, the trader can choose from more than 60 currency pairs, variable spreads from as little as 0.9 pips, and leverage of up to 400:1.
• AVAOptions – This is AvaTrade’s newest platform, which includes risk management and strategy tools to maximise the experience.
• Automated Trading – Includes Mirror Trader and ZuluTrade, which enable traders to copy the trades of experienced traders even when they might be away from their computer.
• Mac Trading – A web-based trading platform that just requires a log-in via the AvaTrade website.
• Web Trading – Trades can be executed from any browser, with more than 200 financial products including commodities, indices, stocks and currencies.
• AvaTrade Mobile Trading – Wherever you might be, AvaTrade mobile can be used with iPhones, iPads, and Android devices.

As you can see, there is a great variety of trading platforms to suit any preferences, and all include a vast array of trading tools and tradeable instruments.

AvaTrade offers two main account types.

With AvaTrade you have the choice of trading with a real-money account, and there is also a demo account that will be funded with $100,000 of virtual funds.

Registration is easy, with only a couple of decisions that need to be made before you can start trading. The first decision is to decide on the currency for your deposit, and then how it will be made. A range of currencies is available including AUD USD, GBP, EUR and JPN.

The payment methods supported are debit and credit cards, bank wire transfers, Skrill, Neteller, WebMoney and PayPal. The payment method chosen will apply to both deposits and withdrawals. The minimum deposit for a real-money account is just $250.

The standard live trading account is split into four different levels, each with its own selection of benefits.
To celebrate the 2016 Olympics, AvaTrade has introduced a new account bonus.

Make a deposit of between 300 and 2,999 and the bonus is 30%; between 3,000 and 9,999 the bonus rises to 40%, and for deposits in excess of 10,000 a staggering 50% bonus is given. The promotion is valid for all customers who make a deposit during the promotion period but is not valid for auto trading or floating spread accounts. There are minimum trading volume requirements that will have to be fulfilled if a withdrawal is requested.

what to trade with Avatrade

• Forex – more than 54 currency pairs and crosses, including exotic currencies.
• Commodities – a selection of 17 commodities, with several softs on offer as well as the more typical energies:
• Indices – a selection of 20 indices, almost all equity indices, offered mostly from several developed nations but also including China and a global Cannabis Index:
• Stocks –64 major individual stocks are offered from the U.S., the U.K., Germany, France, and Italy:
• Options – 46 currency pairs and the major precious metal Gold:
• Exchange Traded Funds (ETFs) – 5 major ETFs are available:
• Bonds – 2 very major government bonds may be traded:

Unique Features

There are two standout features that we discovered during this AvaTrade review: firstly, its strong regulatory regime in two major industry centres which enjoy high levels of regulatory protection (the Republic of Ireland and Australia); secondly, AvaOptions, with AvaTrade is one of the very few retail Forex / CFD brokerages which enables its clients to trade Forex options.

Regulation in the European Union member state of the Republic of Ireland is significant, as, under Irish regulations, depositors may be protected by deposit insurance in case of a regulated deposit-taking institution’s insolvency or other resulting inability to access deposited funds. The protection can be up to the high amount of €20,000 per depositor.

AvaOptions is a platform allowing you to access trading in vanilla Forex options, plus options in the precious metal Gold. You may trade any combination of call and put options, allowing the construction of relatively sophisticated options trading strategies such as strangles, straddles, and spreads. Expirations are offered between 1 day and 1 year from the present. This kind of retail access to Forex options is exciting and novel. There is a good case to argue that buying out of the money Forex options is the most profitable long-term trading strategy in currency trading. Forex options have gotten a bad name in recent years due to the market in “binary options”, but what AvaTrade offer here is light-years away from that.

Customer Support

For most clients, customer support won’t be much of an issue. Having said that, it is comforting to know that if you do need help, you will be able to get hold of someone competent quickly who will take responsibility for fixing whatever your problem is.

AvaTrade’s customer support service has a good reputation, partly because they are a well-regulated and global Forex / CFD brokerage, and partly because support is given with a wide variety of languages provided from native speakers – in over 15 different languages.

AvaTrade’s customer support desk is available 24 hours a day, on regular weekdays: basically, if the Forex market is open, AvaTrade’s support is open.

Traders can contact representatives at different departments in several international locations via email or telephone. Live chat is also available