The company is regulated by the Australian Securities and Investment Commission (ASIC) and by the Cyprus Securities and Exchange Commission (CySEC) in Europe. FPmarkets is a trading name of First Prudential Markets Pty Ltd. and First Prudential Markets Ltd. However, the regulation section of the website shows there is a company called FP Markets LLC that is registered in Saint Vincent and the Grenadines. Customers should pay attention to which one they are dealing with.
The brief information on the website shows that this broker has been on the market since 2005 and has collected 36 awards. We did some research and found that in 2019 First Prudential Markets received a 3-stars ‘Outstanding Value’ award from Canstar, so probably the information about the awards was not 100% correct.
This broker claims customers have access to more than 10,000 financial instruments for trading, which is a huge number indeed. Instruments are distributed in equities, futures, ETFs, currency pairs and commodities. They can be traded using either the well-known MetaTrader platform version 4 or 5, or the company’s own platform called ‘Iress’. The Iress terminal gives access to the DMA (Direct Market Access) execution systems that show the ‘live pricing’ in full market depth. FPmarkets claims that 100% of client orders on DMA products are hedged in the underlying market. There is a warning on the site about platform fees. If you want to use the ‘Iress Trader’ platform, you must pay a USD55 monthly fee. However, the mobile version is free of charge.
Australian-regulated brokers can still offer more attractive leverage than European-regulated ones that must meet ESMA’s requirements. Using this advantage, FPmarkets.com allows currency pairs to be traded with leverage of 500:1, if your account is fed with USD10,000 at least. Despite the advantages of this large leverage value, the risk of heavy loss increases pretty much. The average spread for EUR/USD is 1.45 pips and 0.27 USdollars for Gold.
As an addition, FPmarkets provides a so-called MAM/PAMM account. That means clients can choose a money manager whose trades are fully or partially copied to their subaccounts, by paying a commission.
The Order execution policy warns about slippage existence during market volatility. It shows that stop loss orders are not guaranteed and they will be fulfilled at the first available price. The Disclaimer section warns that there is no negative balance protection, so be careful with this broker – you may not only lose your initial investment, but you may be obliged to pay a further amount to cover losses. This means you can lose more money than you have invested.
Lately, FPMarkets has launched a feature called Traders Hub, which contains technical and fundamental analyses made by the company’s experts, economical calendar and education section with books and video lessons.
In general, if you are looking for higher levels of leverage and trading with an ASIC regulated broker, FPmarkets might be the right choice. However, be careful because the larger the leverage, the greater the risk of major losses. Moreover, there is no protection against negative balance of your account.
