Australian Negative Balance Protection FX Brokers

Plus500 – Top CFD Provider With Negative Balance Protection

Plus500 is an established CFD provider with an excellent range of financial instruments to trade. As well as access to thousands of financial markets, Plus500 offers premium order types and negative balance protection to mitigate the high risk of trading CFDs.

Commission Free Forex Trading

Plus500 offers a simple pricing structure that does not require traders to calculate account and commission fees. Plus500 a market maker broker that matches traders’ orders internally (rather than externally as with NDD brokers), and therefore only offers retail clients one account type. When trading forex, spreads are commission-free with the CFD provider charging no account management fees for deposits or rolling open positions.

Risk Management Tools: Order Types

On top of basic order types such as stop limits, stop losses and trailing stop losses, Plus500 allows customers to place guaranteed stop-loss orders (GSLOs) for a fee. When using a free stop-loss order, traders can protect profits by specifying a price to automatically close a position. As a risk of basic stop-loss orders is the trade not being closed at the price set by the customer, the premium paid for the order guarantees trades will be closed at the specified price, regardless of gapping.

Negative Balance Protection and Margin Calls

Similarly to ThinkMarkets, the Plus500 provides negative balance protection and enforces margin calls to ensure retail clients do not end up with a negative trading accounts balances when markets are volatile. If a trader does not meet a margin call within the required time period, all positions will be closed at the current market price. When trading forex with Plus500 an initial margin between 33-50% is required.

CFD Trading Product Range

Plus500 offers a vast range of CFDs to trade derived from seven asset classes. With over 2,000 financial instruments in total, customers can easily develop trading strategies using the following CFDs:

• 70+ Forex pairs
• 1,800 Shares
• 33 Stock indices
• 92 Exchange-Traded Funds (ETFs)
• 22 Commodities
• 14 Cryptocurrencies
• 743+ Options

As well as commonly traded CFDs, Plus500 offers market access to emerging industries such as Cannabis in addition to share markets throughout 23 countries.

To start trading with Plus500, prospective retail clients can sign up to a demo account with no time limits or restrictions on virtual funds. To access Plus500’s wide product offering traders are limited to the CFD provider’s proprietary trading platform, available as a desktop, webtrader, Android, Windows or iOS trading app.

*Your capital is at risk ‘76.4% of retail CFD accounts lose money’

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Avatrade – Good For Social Trading With Account Protection

AvaTrade is a regulated forex broker that provides negative balance protection and a great selection of copy trading tools.

Whether you are a beginner lacking confidence or an expert wanting to save time researching financial markets, the account mirroring services offered by AvaTrade allows you to fully automate trading while sharing knowledge and strategies with a large forex community. AvaTrade’s risk management policies make them an ideal choice for social trading, not only does one get negative balance protection but AvaTrade uses a 100% margin call and 30% stop out for their MT4 and MT5 trade accounts (standard accounts) and 50% margin call for their MT4 and MT5 Zero accounts. These provide extra protection should one have the misfortune to have poor performing traders signals.

Three of the best social-copy trading systems are offered by the broker to automate Forex and CFD trading. You can choose between MetaTrader Signals, ZuluTrade or DupliTrade, depending on the trading platform you want to use and whether you prefer direct or indirect copy trading tools.

MetaTrader Signals

MetaQuotes proprietary copy trading service available on MT4 and MT5. The automated trading tool allows you to copy to the trades made by successful investors known as signal providers. The MetaTrader Signals community consists of millions of users, with both free and paid trading signals available to copy.

ZuluTrade

ZuluTrade is a social-copy trading provider for MT4 that provides account mirroring services plus a large social network of forex traders. Users can simplify trading by copying the strategies of experienced investors, saving time placing orders and conducting lengthy technical and fundamental analysis.

The social trading service also provides useful risk management tools such as ZuluGuard. ZuluGuard, an account monitoring feature, will close positions if it detects changes to a trader’s performance of which you are copying.

To open a ZuluTrade social-copy trading account with AvaTrade, an initial minimum deposit of $500 is required. Alternatively, traders can explore the third party provider using a demo account funded with a virtual account balance of $100,000.

DupliTrade

Compared to ZuluTrade a significantly higher minimum deposit of $2,000 is required to sign up to DupliTrade. The MT4 add-on allows you to search and copy expert strategy providers that match your preferred asset classes, timeframes and risk levels.

To see if DupliTrade is the right account mirroring service for you, MT4 traders can sign up to a 30-day demo account.

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easyMarkets – Best Forex Broker With Risk Management Tools

Compared to other brokers, easyMarkets offers a wealth of risk management tools. On top of negative balance protection, the ASIC regulated broker offers free guaranteed stop-loss orders, dealCancellation and Freeze Rates through their proprietary web trading platform and mobile trading apps and MetaTrader 4 (MT4).

• Guaranteed Stop Loss Orders: MT4 and the easyMarkets proprietary trading platform
• dealCancellation: easyMarkets platform
• Freeze Rates: easyMarkets platform only

Spreads

easyMarkets fixed spreads can be wider than other top forex brokers. For instance, Pepperstone offers standard account holders average spreads of 1.0 pip on the EUR/USD forex pair, and Razor account holders 0.0 pips. easyMarkets on the other hand offer minimum spreads starting from 1.2 pips on their proprietary platform and 0.9 pips when using MT4.

Free Guaranteed Stop Loss Orders (GSLOs)

When trading with easyMarkets it is free to place a Guaranteed Stop Loss Order (GSLO). Many competing brokers such as Plus500 offer this GSLO order types but charge significant fees. The risk management feature ensures orders are executed at the exact price set by the trader with no chance of slippage.

dealCancellation

dealCancellation is a unique risk management tool offered by easyMarkets allowing traders to cancel orders after they have been executed. For a small fee, customers can reverse trades within a one, three or six-hour window, significantly reducing the high risk of forex trading. The premium feature allows clients to take advantage of volatile markets as the order can be cancelled within the time limit chosen.

Fees are based on recent market volatility and whether you have chosen a 1, 3 or 6 expiration period. Please note, you are not able to add dealCancellation to open trades, you must select the feature when first placing an order. dealCancellation is only available on day trading products such as oil, silver gold and forex pairs.

Freeze Rate

As well as cancelling orders, easyMarkets offers a Freeze Rate feature to customers. As CFD and forex markets are highly volatile, the Freeze Rate tool allows you to lock in the current market price you see, while providing a few seconds to press buy or sell.

Education

To learn about different risk management techniques, trading strategies and technical analysis, traders can utilise easyMarkets range of educational tools. Whether you are just learning how to trade forex and wanting to figure out how CFDs work or requiring advanced resources, there are plenty of resources freely available on the broker’s website, including webinars, a glossary and articles how to start trading as well as outlining technical and fundamental analysis techniques.

Trading Platforms

Opening a forex trading account with easyMarkets provides you access to their proprietary trading platform as well as MetaTrader 4 (MT4). While the easyMarkets platform offers extensive risk management tools explained above, MT4 allows users to perform sophisticated technical analysis plus develop automated trading strategies using Expert Advisors. Another key difference between the two platforms is market access. MT4 offers forex pairs, commodities, indices, metals and cryptocurrency, while those using the proprietary platform can also trade options.

Both the easyMarkets and MT4 platforms are offered as a web trader, mobile or tablet app, with a PC desktop option also available with MT4.

View easyMarkets Review >>Visit easyMarkets>>

XM – Top Forex Broker With Protection and a Low Minimum Deposit

XM is a global broker with unique risk management features that complement the broker’s negative balance protection provision. While trading accounts are protected from entering negative balances, features such as low minimum deposits and flexible leverage allow traders to efficiently manage their exposure to large losses.

Trading Platforms

XM customers can choose either MetaTrader 4 and MetaTrader 5 as their trading platform. Traders wanting to focus on foreign exchange markets may prefer MT4 as it is predominately a forex platform, while those looking to develop trading strategies that include Share CFDs are required to use MT5.

While many top brokers offer fixed leverage, traders can utilise XM’s flexible leverage feature in conjunction with negative balance protection to manage the high risk of trading. Customers can choose their desired leverage on a scale from 1:1 to 500:1 depending on the volume they are trading with the ability to request changes to their preset leverage level at any time.

Account Types

To start trading with XM, clients can choose from three account types with different base currencies, lot sizes, spreads and minimum deposits. All account types are commission-free and receive negative balance protection.

Micro Account

• Contract Size: 1 lot = 1,000
• Minimum deposit = $5
• Spreads as low as 1.0 pip
• Base currencies: AUD, EUR, GBP, HUF, PLN, RUB, CHF, JPY and USD

Standard Account

• Contract Size: 1 lot = 100,000
• Minimum deposit = $5
• Spreads as low as 1.0 pip
• Base currencies: AUD, GBP, EUR, HUF, PLN, CHF, RUB, JPY and USD

Ultra-Low Account

• Contract Size:
  • 1 lot = 100,000 for Standard Ultra
  • 1 lot = 1,000 for Micro Ultra
• Minimum deposit = $50
• Spreads as low as 0.6 pips
• Base currencies: AUD, USD, GBP, EUR, CHF, PLN and HUF

The ability to make low minimum deposits and open smaller trades with XM means that if negative balance protection is triggered and all open positions are closed, meaning a trader avoids losing deposits with losses are minimised.

Deposits and Withdrawals

XM mostly charges no fees to deposit or withdraw funds from a trading account with a wide range of payment methods available. As well as bank transfer, debit card and credit card (Visa and Mastercard), traders can use the following e-wallet options: Neteller, Skrill, MuchBetter Wallet and Trustly.

When trading forex and CFDs with XM, the majority of funding methods are fee-free. Yet, if you withdraw less than $200 via bank transfer you will incur a $15 withdrawal fee.

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Admiral Markets – Good Range of Account Types With Protection

Admiral Markets is an ASIC regulated broker offering negative balance protection, a choice of account types and trading platforms plus excellent education and customer support.

Account Types

To help reduce the high risk of trading, Admiral Markets provides all account types with negative balance protection when trading CFDs and forex pairs.

Although not an Australian regulatory requirement… Negative balance policies help ensure they have the best possible trading experience – Jens Chrzanowski, easyMarkets Board Member

When trading with Admiral Markets, customers can choose between the following account types:

• Trade.MT4
• Zero.MT4
• Trade.MT5
• Zero.MT5

‘Trade’ account types offer commission-free spreads starting from 0.5 pips, while ‘Zero’ accounts holders pay a flat rate commission fee of USD $1.8-3 per lot yet trade spreads as low as 0.0 pips.

Admiral Markets offers an Islamic account for traders following Sharia Law, although swap-free accounts are only available when using an MT5.Trade account type.

While Trade account holders cannot access spreads as narrow as Zero accounts, they can trade a wider range of asset classes. As shown below, MT4.Zero and MT5.Zero account types can only trade four different asset classes, while MT4.Trade gain access to 8 and MT5.Trade 11.

Educational Resources

Although negative balance protection reduces the high risk of CFD trading, traders’ should develop their understanding of forex markets while following risk warnings. To avoid trading recklessly, customers can utilise the broker’s wide range of beginner to advanced educational materials to help reduce your reliance on negative balance protection. Admiral Markets educational resources include:

• Webinars hosted by analysts, expert traders and forex professionals
• A library of articles and tutorials covering analysis, automated trading, psychology among other topics
• Youtube videos and tutorials

Customer Support

In addition to educational resources, good customer support helps traders expand their knowledge of forex trading. The broker’s customer service team can be contacted via live chat, email, phone or social media platforms, all providing quick and efficient responses. For clients experiencing technical issues, Admiral Markets provides remote support through guided assistance and screen sharing.

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