Plus500 Review

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Founded in 2008, Plus500 is a multi-regulated and leading online trading broker providing a large range of 2,000+ CFD instruments for trading on an easy to use proprietary trading platforms. They offer commission free trading with tight spreads, a choice of convenient account funding options and highly rated 24/7 customer support. This broker has been around since the start of online trading and has established itself as one of the market leaders in every aspect. They have continued to improve their services and develop innovative technologies for the modern trader, to make sure that everyone can get institutional access to the global markets. Whatever your prior experience, they aim to make online trading as easily accessible as possible.

81% of retail investor accounts lose money when trading CFDs with this provider. You should consider whether you can afford to take the high risk of losing your money.

Summary

Plus500 is a leading broker offering online trading services to clients across the globe on a great selection of more than 2,000+ instruments in multiple asset classes including CFDs on Forex, Commodities, Stocks, Shares, Indices, Metals, Energies, Options & ETFs. There is a great variety of markets for everyone to trade, regardless of your interests. The broker puts emphasis on innovation, being among the first to launch new trading instruments to meet customers desires, engage them and gain their loyalty, evident when they were the first online broker to offer Cannabis Stocks.

Plus500 Features

Plus500 was founded in 2008 and is listed on the London Stock Exchange’s Main Market for Listed Companies, as part of the FTSE 250 Index. I like how they are regulated in multiple jurisdictions by some of the most respected regulatory authorities in the world. They are one of the largest online brokers and consistently continue to expand their geographic reach with investment in and the development of their marketing machine to efficiently attract new clients. Due to the online technology deployed, they can expand into new regions without needing a physical presence there.

Trading Conditions

The broker incorporates the latest innovative trading technologies to provide clients with free real time quotes, tight spreads, no commission fees, maximum leverage of 1:30 for EU/UK traders, fast and reliable order execution, flexible platforms and 24/7 global customer support. They charge zero fees for deposits, rolling your trades and opening / closing positions.

Plus500 Zero Fee Charges

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AvaTrade is an award-winning and multi-regulated broker offering a great selection of trading instruments including Forex, Cryptos, Stocks and Commodities. You can trade on all of your devices via user-friendly platforms with excellent trading conditions and no commission fees.

Between 74-89% of retail investor accounts lose money when trading CFDs with this provider.

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Regulation

Plus500 is a trademark of Plus500 Ltd. Plus500’s subsidiaries are fully authorised and regulated in the jurisdictions in which they operate. You can compare the different features of each and choose which is the most suitable for your needs. I like that they are regulated in multiple jurisdictions as it gives me confidence that they are a broker who can be trusted. In terms of regulation, I haven’t seen many brokers which can compare but AvaTrade are certainly up there.

Plus500 Ltd operates through the following subsidiaries:

• Plus500UK Ltd authorised & regulated by the FCA (#509909).
• Plus500CY Ltd authorised & regulated by CySEC (#250/14).
• Plus500SG Pte Ltd, licensed by the MAS (#CMS100648-1) and IE Singapore (#PLUS/CBL/2018).
• Plus500AU Pty Ltd (ACN 153301681), licensed by: ASIC in Australia, AFSL #417727, FMA in New Zealand, FSP #486026; Authorised Financial Services Provider in South Africa (FSCA), FSP #47546.
• Plus500SEY Ltd is authorised and regulated by the Seychelles Financial Services Authority (FSA Licence No. SD039).

Plus500 Regulators

You do not own or have any rights to the underlying assets. Please refer to the Disclosure documents available on the website. Due to ESMA restrictions, leverage is limited to 1:30 for UK/EU clients. ESMA restrictions only apply to customers of Plus500UK Ltd and Plus500CY Ltd.

Funds

Plus500UK hold client funds in segregated bank accounts according to the Financial Conduct Authority’s client money protection rules. These means that funds cannot be used for any other purpose by the company such as hedging, speculation or running costs.

Clients of Plus500UK Ltd could be eligible for compensation from the Financial Services Compensation Scheme (FSCS) if Plus500UK Ltd become insolvent or ceased trading. Clients who had funds held in segregated accounts could have their share of the pool returned minus administrative and handling costs.

One of the benefits of trading with a regulated firm is that you are more likely to be trading with a reliable and reputable broker in a regulated environment, which has stringent rules and regulations to help protect the interests of retail clients.

Countries

Plus500 is available in more than 50 countries and in more than 30 languages. There are some countries where they cannot offer trading services due to strict regulatory requirements, this includes the United States. If your country is not accepted, please feel free to browse our broker reviews for an alternative option.

Platforms

Plus500 have their very own proprietary trading platform available for desktop, web and mobile. Their simple and intuitive trading platform is amongst the highest rated trading apps on the Apple App Store and Google Play with its user-friendly interface and advanced features enabling users to trade whilst they are on the go from within the palm of their hands. Each platform has the same functionality without any limitations. The mobile platform is beneficial for those who need to access their account and trade whilst on the go.

Plus500 Trading Platform *Illustrative Prices

The Plus500 trading platform is a simple and intuitive platform, which enables clients to trade on over 2,000+ instruments across multiple markets with competitive spreads and no commission charged. It has a clean look and feel to it whilst it is also very user friendly making it suitable for traders of all skill levels. I found it to be very easy to use and had no problem browsing the markets via the intuitive interface. I like how you can quickly and easily place trades on just a few taps.

Plus500 WebTrader *Illustrative Prices

You can search for instruments by name and load charts of those that that you wish to view. There are buy and sell buttons for entering positions with prices updated in real time. Order types supported are market orders, limit orders, stop loss, trailing stop and a guaranteed stop facility. Users can set email, SMS and push notifications to receive alerts based on specified market events such as a price movements and sentiment changing. This is great as it means you don’t need to stare at the charts all day long waiting for a signal. The upper bar of the platform gives an overview of the status of your current portfolio.

Plus500 WebTrader Account Snapshot

The Plus500 platform has a good variety of charting tools. It can display charts in multiple timeframes from tick to weekly and in multiple chart styles from candles to bars and lines. Most of the common technical indictors are available such as Bollinger Bands, moving averages, MACD, RSI, etc. There are drawing tools for marking support and resistance levels, plotting Fibonacci retracements and more. You can save chart templates to conveniently load for using again later.

Plus500 WebTrader Chart Tools *Illustrative Prices

There is a built-in economic calendar that displays news events and the expected impact they can have on the markets along with actual, previous and forecasted results. News can be filtered by date and impact. This calendar is very useful as part of a fundamental analysis.

Plus500 WebTrader Economic Calendar *Illustrative Prices

Logging into the platform is secured with two-step authentication. They also offer Google and Facebook authentication which can prove to be more convenient for some users. The trading platform is available to clients across the globe in a great choice of 32 languages including English, Chinese, Russian, Spanish, French, German and more.

Whilst most brokers tend to offer the popular MetaTrader trading platform, the Plus500 platform is very modern and polished, with all of the functions most traders will ever need all from one clean and easy to use interface. The only issue I see is that you would need to learn another platform from scratch if you decided to change brokers down the line. On the other hand, MetaTrader is available through many trading brokers, including Pepperstone.

Tools

The broker has a very good selection of trading tools built into the platform alongside the commonly used charting tools such as technical indicators and drawing objects. These tools can help with trading efficiency. I think most of you will be able to get by with the built-in tools but it is always nice to have the option of more.

Economic Calendar

With data powered by Dow Jones, the economic calendar can be used as part of a fundamental analysis. It keeps you up to date with the latest market news events with a rating on the impact each event can have from low, medium to high. You can see the name of the release, country, related instruments, date and time, level of impact and the actual/previous/forecasted result. The calendar can also be switched to display corporate events which is a useful feature not offered by many other brokers. I am always checking the calendar to help me with my trade decisions. I think it is a vital tool that every trader should reference in order to know what is going on around the world.

Risk Management Tools

There are some simple yet powerful free tools that can be used for risk management.

Plus500 Risk Management Tools *Illustrative Prices

Set Price Levels

You can add to your new or existing trades a close at profit (limit) and close at loss (stop loss) order that allows you to specify price levels for closing trades in profit or loss. This price level may not be exact if slippage occurs.

Plus500 Set Price Levels *Illustrative Prices

Guaranteed Stop

A guaranteed stop order can be placed on your position to specify the limit on your potential loss. This is not affected by slippage and is only available on some instruments. It can only be placed on a new position or pending order. There is a non-refundable additional spread charge for using a guaranteed stop.

Plus500 Guaranteed Stop *Illustrative Prices

Trailing Stop

Trailing stops can be placed to automatically limit a positions loss whilst locking in profits. The position will remain open if price keeps moving away from the trailing stop loss but will close when it turns around and triggers the stop loss. Slippage may cause it to not close exactly at the trailing stop price. Trailing stops are often used as a way to ride a market move whilst trying to maximise the potential of a position. They can also be useful for those who are not able to constantly check a positions status.

Plus500 Trailing Stop

Real Time Alerts

With Plus500 you can get real time alerts via email, SMS and push notifications. Alerts are freely available on all devices and easy to set. You simply click the alert icon on the trading screen. Alerts can be viewed, edited and removed from accessing the alerts tab. I like to use the alerts to inform me when a certain price has been reached so I can manage by trades accordingly. This is much better than needing to watch the charts and wait for price to move to that level.

Plus500 Real Time Alerts *Illustrative Prices

Price Alerts

You can set price alerts to get notified when an instrument reaches a specific price. This helps to react to price changes as and when they happen.

Plus500 Price Alerts *Illustrative Prices

Change % (Daily or Hourly)

This gives an instant alert when an instruments price increases or decreases by a set percentage amount over a daily or hourly basis.

Plus500 Change % Alerts

Traders Sentiment (Buyers % vs. Sellers %)

This will send an automatic alert when the percentage of Plus500 buyers and sellers of a certain instrument reach a specified amount. Sentiment analysis is often used as part of a contrarian trading strategy.

Plus500 Traders Sentiment Alerts

Education

Plus500 have some helpful trading videos and articles to help you expand your knowledge. There is also a series of FAQs, explaining the various markets and services that they offer.

Trader Guides

You will find a good selection of trading guides on the brokers website. There are ‘how-to’ videos which are useful to learn more about online trading with Plus500’s intuitive platform. They cover a range of different topics such as an introduction to CFD trading, trading strategies and more. I found them easy to follow and very informative. I think this could be especially beneficial for beginners.

Plus500 Trader’s Guide

News & Market Insights

There is also a really insightful news and insight section on the website. Here you will find some interesting articles that can help keep you informed with some of the latest market news and the impact that it can have on various instruments.

Markets

Plus500 have a huge selection of more than 2,000+ trading instruments in multiple markets including CFDs on Forex, Commodities Cryptos (Availability subject to regulations as cryptocurrencies are not available to retail clients in the UK), Stocks, Shares, Indices, Metals, Energies, Options & ETFs. If you like to diversify your portfolio, IG have an even more impressive range of instruments with more than 17,000 to choose from.

Forex CFD Trading

Forex (foreign exchange) is a global market for trading different countries currencies. It is very important for international trade and investment which requires the use of capital in the form of swapping one currency for a certain amount of another currency.

When trading with Forex CFDs, traders speculate on the price changes between the exchange rate of currency pairs. For example, in the EUR/USD pair the value of one Euro (EUR) is determined in comparison to the US dollar (USD), and in the GBP/JPY pair the value of one British pound sterling (GBP) is quoted against the Japanese yen (JPY).

Plus500 offer leveraged trading on 70+ major, minor and exotic forex currency pairs. These include the EUR/USD, GBP/USD and EUR/GBP.

Index CFD Trading

The majority of indices are based on a basket of company shares and a performance indicator of a countries economy or industry sector. E.g. The Nasdaq 100 represent the top 100 companies on the Nasdaq Stock Exchange. When you take a position on an index, you are speculating on if the cumulative share prices of those companies will rise or fall.

Plus500 offer leveraged trading on the most popular global indices including USA 500, US-TECH 100, UK 100, Europe 50 and France 40.

Cryptocurrency CFD Trading

Cryptocurrencies are decentralised virtual currencies based on complex mathematical algorithms. With Plus500’s trading platform you can trade Cryptos as contract for differences (CFDs) by speculating on their price movements, without actually owning them. Availability subject to regulations as cryptocurrencies are not available to retail clients in the UK.

Plus500 were the first online broker to offer Bitcoin trading and have since expanded their offering to over 10 Cryptocurrencies including Bitcoin and Ethereum. Crypto trading is available 24/7 with up to 1:2 leverage.

Commodity CFD Trading

Plus500 offer a range of popular commodities as CFDs to buy or sell without needing to own the underlying asset. This includes gold, oil and silver. The world’s major exchanges for trading commodities are mainly located in the United States:

• Chicago Board of Trade (CBOT) – a commodity futures exchange based in Chicago and operated by CME.
• Intercontinental Exchange (ICE) – an exchange based in Atlanta, focused on energy commodities.
• New York Mercantile Exchange (NYMEX) – an exchange located in New York City and operated by CME.

Stocks CFD Trading

Plus500 offers CFD shares trading with leverage and competitive spreads, from all of the popular markets such as USA, UK, Germany and more.

CFD trading on shares is a form of trading that allows traders to speculate on the prices of publicly-listed companies from exchanges including the New York Stock Exchange, London Stock Exchange, NASDAQ and Tokyo Stock Exchange without needing to own each underlying stock.

Options CFD Trading

Plus500 offer flexible call and put options trading with leverage on Germany 30, Oil and Facebook.

When trading options, traders speculate on the future price (strike price) of an underlying instrument such as a stock, index or commodity. If you enter a position on a call or put option, you are entering a contract on the price you believe the underlying instrument will reach (or surpass) at the expiry date.

ETFs CFD Trading

Plus500 offer leveraged trading on the most popular Exchange Traded Funds (ETFs) like VXX Volatility and SPDRUSA500.

ETF CFDs traders can diversify and trade an entire market as though it were a single stock or commodity.

Accounts

The broker offers a demo trading account and standard or professional real trading accounts. I think it is good how they keep things simple with account types. However, some brokers do have various accounts depending on whether you want low spreads, fixed spreads or no commission fees. This is because certain conditions can be better for different strategies. If you want more options, IC Markets have various account types that can cater to different trading systems.

Standard Account

There is only one standard account type for all clients compared to other brokers who offer different flexible account types to suit various different needs of traders. The standard account requires a $100 minimum deposit and gives clients access to all platforms, tools and trading instruments. There is a $10 monthly inactivity fee if you do not login to your trading account for 3 months.

Demo Account

The demo account is quick to get started with and enables you to test the Plus500 platforms and features before opening a real account. This can be a great way to practice your trading strategies risk free and make sure the broker has products and services that meet your individual needs.

Professional Account

There is the professional account which eligible clients can apply for. To qualify you must have had sufficient trading activity in the past 12 months, a financial portfolio of over half a million and relevant financial sector experience. Keep in mind that certain protections may not be available if you qualify as a professional trader.

Account Signup

Applying for a Plus500 account only takes a few minutes. There is a short online form to complete that will give you instant access to the Plus500 platform and your account. From within your account you can upload documentation for KYC procedures. This can be a passport scan for identification and utility bill as proof of address. Once verified, you can choose from any of the convenient funding methods to fund your account and commence trading. I had no problem completing the process and received my details within minutes.

Support

Plus500 offer 24/7 customer service via online chat and email. Their customer service is rated excellent with 91% of customers happy with the service as verified by live chat. This is above the global benchmark of 86% with hundreds of thousands of ratings and a typical response time of just 34 seconds. I have always received great support from them in the past and would not hesitate to reach out to them again in the future if need be.

Funding

The broker has a decent selection of funding methods including credit cards, bank transfer, PayPal or Skrill. I like the digital wallet options as I find this to be one of the quickest ways to get access to my funds for trading. This is important if there is some market news that I want to quickly try and take advantage of. In this case, I wouldn’t want to wait around days for a bank transfer to clear as the opportunity may have been missed by then.

The method you choose may depend on how long it takes to process. Bank transfers may take a few business days to clear whilst some methods such as card payments and online payment processors can be instant. They cover most payment processing fees although third party charges such as bank fees are not covered. Please note that some methods may only be available to specific countries.

Accounts can be opened in a limited range of currencies which are GBP, EUR, USD. The different currency options are beneficial as currency conversion fees do not apply when using an account in your own currency. I think they could improve by adding support for more currencies.

Conclusion

Overall, I have been aware of Plus500 since I first started trading many years ago. They have grown into one of the most well-known and respected online brokerage firms. The fact that they have been around for so long and continue to innovate, shows that they are one of the best brokers out there. I like how they are very well regulated and have a large range of trading instruments across different markets. You can trade with minimal hassle on a clean and user-friendly trading platform that can be used on desktop, web and mobile devices. The practice account is very useful to familiarise yourself with their offering whilst support is on hand to help with all general and technical questions. Spreads offered are competitive and no commission fees are charged. There are some versatile funding methods and they keep things nice and simple with one trading account to fit all. On top of this, beginners get plenty of educational resources and there are some excellent tools to help with your market analysis.

$100

Founded in 2008, Plus500 is a regulated and leading online trading broker providing a large range of 2,000+ CFD instruments for trading on their simple and clean proprietary trading platforms with very competitive trading conditions.

81% of retail investor accounts lose money when trading CFDs with this provider. You should consider whether you can afford to take the high risk of losing your money.

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