I was looking the net the other evening searching for a fresh forex trading robot and by accident I came across a web page that listed all the fx brokers in Australia. I did a quick calculation and found that there are in fact twenty six forex brokers in Australia, a complete joke for a country with a population of only 22 million people. Why Australia I questioned myself, is it the good weather or the fact that Australians are punters? Who knows and who really cares, at the end of the day currently all Australians have choice and that’s what is important.
With all these forex brokers to choose from I thought that I’d take the leading 3 fx brokers in the nation and place them side by side. A number of you could possibly question why I would just take the very best three brokers. Well the easy answer to this is that many of the other fx brokers on the list in my view are not worth dealing with anyway. A few of you might argue that this is only my opinion and since all of the forex brokers aren’t included in this evaluation it’s bias, now that could be possible that’s why I ask all of you to conduct your own reviews also.
So here is my unbiased review of who I think are the very best three fx brokers in Australia. Before I commence, it needs to be noted that each of these brokers were given a score in three straightforward categories. The categories that I chose were, service, pricing and order execution latency. The brokers that I reviewed were Go Markets, Axi Trader and IC Markets, all 3 forex brokers are well-known Australian headquartered forex brokers. I must also point out that just one of these brokers is a real ECN broker the other 2 are market maker fx brokers. It is also worth mentioning that I performed this test over a two week time frame and deposited $1,000.00 into a trading account with every one of these forex brokers.
Service Go Markets = The service that I experienced whilst fx trading with this forex broker was not as terrible as what the notion various forum posts that I had read created. They were polite and rather helpful, they even rang me within one hour of me submitting my account request to let me know what to perform next. One thing that I’ll say is when I questioned their support staff about market related queries it seemed like they were way out of their depth. All in all though if you’re a DIY forex trader Go Markets service does the job. I am giving them 4 stars for their service.
Axi Trader = I understood very little regarding this forex broker going into this review, however I quickly came to understand that this broker really didn’t want my business. I opened an account online but it took them 2 days to get back to me, some 5 days later the account documents were submitted, this was a tell tale indication that this company actually didn’t care. One night I called them to ask a handful of support questions only to be informed that I could not chat to any person and I ought to call back in one hour, fortunately my queries did not relate to an existing open position. There were also several pricing discrepancies that I questioned them about that they could not answer. I think you get my point, I’m giving Axi Trader 2 stars for their service.
IC Markets = I first heard about this broker a while ago when they released the first ECN forex offering in Australia so I was very excited about opening a trading account and giving them a go. The process was somewhat painless, I managed to open an account in a couple of minutes with a sales rep phoning me almost immediately after to direct me through the rest of the process. Their rep was really obliging and polite on the telephone throughout the entire process. After forex trading for a few days I decided that I’d test them with several market related and Metatrader 4 technical questions, much to my amazement the support person knew what I was talking about. It fast became apparent that this company employs fx traders not telesales people. Chatting to someone who trades was a refreshing change for me. I can’t help but give IC Markets five stars for their service.
Pricing Go Markets = Over my 2 weeks of fx trading and keeping track of Go Markets prices I amazed to see that there was so much deviation in the spreads offered, this mostly occurred in EUR/USD. In the same foreign exchange pair I saw two spread blowouts and a variety of unusual spread changes that weren’t present on the other broker platforms. Although I’ve witnessed much worse over the past 17 years of forex trading, I would not endorse Go Markets to any person who is planning to scalp the forex market since the spread blowouts are extremely concerning. Regrettably, I can only give Go Markets one star for their pricing, this is a real pity as I found their client service was well above par.
Axi Trader = Axi Traders pricing was in fact better than what I had expected, this came as a real surprise to me given their poor level of service. Their EUR/USD pricing was good given that they’re a market maker broker, though I did detect that the pricing on many of the exotic CHF and NZD based currency pairs left a great deal to be desired. I didn’t notice any extreme pricing blowouts throughout my two weeks of testing however I have heard from other people that this is a real problem with Axi Trader especially in the exotic foreign exchange pairs. But if your trading EUR/USD Axi Trader isn’t too bad it is only whenever you venture outside this pair expect to see some rather average pricing. I would give Axi Trader 3 stars for their pricing as they did not impress me on the exotic foreign exchange pairs.
IC Markets = IC Markets were really the only true ECN forex provider out of the three tested, this being the case I expected allot from this broker, and they delivered. After two weeks of dealing with with this forex broker I was hooked, their pricing with the commission charges added across all the key currency pairs was anywhere between 20-50% superior than that of the other fx brokers tested. There were even situations where I saw negative and 0 spreads. When you compare Go Markets and Axi Trader who are both market maker brokers to a real ECN broker you’re able to really see the price differences, this obviously translates to a big benefit when you’re trading actively and scalping the market. Without a doubt IC Markets gets 5 stars for their pricing and takes the cake on the pricing front.
Order Execution Speed Go Markets = Because I was conducting this assessment from Australia I believed that Go Markets execution speed would be the best of the group without a doubt. As with many of the fx brokers tested I pinged their servers in addition to timed my deal reporting fills with a simple robot running on my Metatrader 4. Go Markets execution speeds weren’t as fast as what I initially expected reporting a 400 millisecond delay. As a discretionary fx trader this latency would be tolerable, however if you’re using an expert advisor the faster the execution the better. Go Markets gets 3 stars from me for their execution speed.
Axi Trader = I pinged Axi Traders Metatrader 4 server a number of times and every time I got separate results. I found this behavior quite abnormal and after some homework I realised that they were using several servers with unreliable connection speeds, a bit of a nuisance really. To be fair I made a decision to take the average execution speed that I managed to achieve. On average their execution speed was 330 milliseconds. I was very disappointed with the unpredictable connection speeds achieved with Axi Trader this would especially effect anybody who is using an expert advisor. Axi Trader gets 1 star for their unpredictable execution speed.
IC Markets = Normally the execution speeds of ECN broker platforms are a little slower that those of market maker brokers, the main reason for this is because trade fills need to be confirmed by other contributors in the ECN network. It was because of this that I anticipated the execution speeds of IC Markets trading platform to be the slowest of the lot, however the results of my testing were a pleasant surprise. The average execution speed was 183 milliseconds, two times as fast as Go Markets and 1.8 times faster than the speeds accomplished at Axi Trader. I was very impressed by IC Markets ECN execution speeds particularly given I had gone into this trial thinking that they might be the slowest forex broker of the lot. IC Markets will get 5 stars and wins the speed test by a big margin.
Conclusion Go Markets are a very good forex provider if your brand new to forex trading and need to get your feet wet, their service is fantastic but you will be let down by their pricing and execution speeds, not so much of an issue if you are a long term trader but not so good for scalpers and EA traders. Axi Trader is good for infrequent traders, their prices are a little better than the average forex provider but they’re let down by their poor service and totally unreliable execution speeds. IC Markets were the broker that really stood out from the group, their service was exceptional, coupled with the best pricing that I’ve ever witnessed and lightning fast execution speeds makes them my number one pick of these three Australian based brokers.
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