AvaTrade review 2020: Should you choose this forex broker?

AvaTrade Account Types

The majority of clients with AvaTrader will be limited to one account type. If you are a client in the UK or Europe then you have the “Retail” account available to your use. If you are a client from outside the UK and Europe, then you will have the “Standard” account. These accounts are the same in that they are a market maker / dealing desk type of account with no commissions.

Standard Account (Australia, South Africa, Japan) / Retail Account (UK, Europe, UAE)

AvaTrade’s Standard and Retail Account are almost the same. The difference is who the account is available for and the level of leverage. The shows the nations each account is available for and the leverage.

The reason there are different account AvaTrade needs to comply with ESMA MiFID requirements for its European clients and FSRA requirements set by the Abu Dhabi Global Market for UAE clients. These countries allow two types of trading conditions, one for retail traders and one for professional traders.

The Standard / Retail accounts allow commission-free trading. For this reason, you will find spreads are wider than STP or ECN style, no dealing desk style brokers which have tighter spreads but added commission costs. To open a trading account, 100 base units (100 USD approx) will be needed.

	AvaTrade Retail Account	AvaTrade Standard Account
Regions	United Kingdom, Europe (Central Bank of Ireland, KNF), Europe, Abu Dhabi (ADGM FSRA)	Australia (ASIC), South Africa (FSCA), Japan (FSA and FFAJ) International (BVI. FCA)
No commissions - Spread Only	√	√
Forex	Up to 1:30 Majors Up to 1:20 Minors / Exotics	Up to 1:400
Products Available	FX, CFDs, Options, Spread Betting (UK only)	FX, CFDs, Options
Min/Max Lot Size	0.1 / 1	√
Negative Balance Protection	√	√
Margin Call	50% of your margin	10% of your margin
Variable Spreads	√	√
Currencies accepted	USD, EUR, CHF, GBP, (GBP is UK only)	USD, EUR, CHF or AUD (AUD is Australia only)
4th Decimal Pricing	√	√
Scalping Hedging Automated Trading (Expert Advisors)	√	√

Other Accounts

Professional Account (UK, Europe, UAE)

Traders in the UK, Europe and UAE) who work in the finance industry, manage a financial portfolio or make regular trades of significant size can apply for a professional account. With this account, you will be able to access leverage in line with that available traders with a Standard Account.

The most interesting feature of this account is that you will keep guaranteed negative balance protection. With most brokers, professional traders will lose negative protections in return for being able to trade with higher leverage

Only for clients in the UK, Europe and the United Arab Emirates
Maximum leverage of 1:400
Margin Call – 10% of your margin
Guaranteed Negative Balance Protection

Islamic Account

A swap-free style account is available for Islamic traders that follow sharia law. With this account, there are no interests paid or received. In its place, the spread is widened by 1 pip for forex pairs when you open your position. If you keep your position open for 10 or more days then you will lose Islamic privileges.

Islamic account features:

Only for Islamic traders who can verify their eligibility
No daily swap fees (or rolling / overnight fees)
1 pip (on top of normal spread) fee to open position
Available for all CFDs except for cryptocurrency
ZAR, TRY, RUB, MXN pairs not available for trade

Options Account

AvaTrade offers Vanilla Options or European style options for 42 forex pairs along with spot gold and silver. With this broker, options trading gives you the right to buy (call) or sell (put) a specified amount for forex, gold or silver at a certain price at an agreed time in future. Options are available for a day, week, one or more months and up to one year,

When trading options, a premium is paid for the right to the options. This is determined by the existing price of the instrument and the length of time in the future the option will expire.

Options account features:

Trade Vanilla Options – Call and Put options
42 Forex pairs Options, Spot Gold, Spot Silver Options
AvaOptions Trading Platform for Web and Mobile

Our Rating

The overall rating is based on review by our experts

6.67

Spreads

5 / 10

Leverage

7 / 10

Trading Platform

4 / 10

Risk Management

10 / 10

Range of Markets

8 / 10

Customer Service

6 / 10

Spreads

Generally, forex brokers offer 3 types of accounts. These are standard accounts which are spread-only, ECN accounts which have commissions added to the spread and fixes spread which means spreads don’t or rarely vary.

AvaTrade only offers the standard accounts which mean trading costs are included in the spread. As a result, spreads will be wider than an ECN pricing account which have tighter spreads but have commissions added to the spread.

Comparing AvaTrades ‘typical’ spreads with other brokers typical or average spreads that brokers provide on their website, one can see that AvaTrade’s spreads are competitive but are rarely best the market. If you are after the lowest possible spreads, then you may be better to consider an ECN broker.


0.90	1.10	2.10	1.50	1.80
0.80	0.90	2.80	1.70	2.30
1.10	1.00	1.30	1.30	1.50
1.40	1.60	3.60	1.70	2.40
1.10	1.20	1.40	1.40	1.30
1.16	1.27	1.50	1.35	1.34
2.00	2.00	3.20	2.40	2.40
1.20	1.40	1.50	1.40	1.60
1.40	1.20	3.10	2.20	3.00

Data taken from broker website. Accurate as at 01/09/2020

Compare No Commission Spreads Between Brokers

Leverage

The margin requirements or leverage available with AvaTrade will vary depending on the type of trading account you are using.

If you are using a Retail account or professional account then leverage must comply with ESMA (the UK and Europe AvaTrade branches) and ADGM (UAE AvaTrade branch) regulations. For this reason, leverage with Retail accounts limits leverage to 1:30 for forex, 1:10 for commodities, 1:5 for individual stocks and ETFs, 1:20 on indices or you must meet qualification requirements for a professional account.

ESMA and ADGM restrict leverage for retail traders as leveraged products are complex instruments that can result in losses that exceed your initial deposit. Professional traders are considered to have the skills and access to capital to properly manage leverage and the high risk of losses which is why increased leverage is available to them,

	Leverage / Margin (Australia, South Africa Japan, Other)	Leverage / Margin Europe(UKm Europe, UAE)	Leverage / Margin Professional (UK, Europe, UAE)
Forex Currency Pairs CFD - Majors	400:1 / 0.25%	30:1 / 3.33%	400:1 / 0.25%
Forex Currency Pairs CFD - Other EUR/RUB, USD/RUB	20:1 / 5.0%	20:1 / 5%	20:1 / 5.0%
Forex Currency Pairs CFD - Other USD/ILS, EUR/ILS, GBP/ILS	100:1 / 1.0%		100:1 / 1.0%
Commodities - Gold Oil (Brent, Crude)	100:1 / 1.0%	20:1 / 5% (Gold only)	100:1 / 1.0%
Commodities - Silver, Platinum, Palladium, Gas, Heating Oil, Gasoline, Cocoa, Copper	50:1 / 2.0%	10:1 / 10% ( including Brent and Crude oils)	50:1 / 2.0%
Commodities -Corn, Soybean, Wheat, Coffee , Sugar	33:1 / 3.0%	10:1 / 10%	33:1 / 3.0%
Stocks - US, European, Asian Stocks	10:1 / 10%	5:1 / 20%	10:1 / 10%
Indices S&P500, NASDAQ100, DJ30	200:1	20:1 / 5.0% - CAC40, DAX30, FTSE100, DJ Euro, Nikkei225, SPI200	200:1
Indices - Other	100:1 / 1.0%	10:1 / 1.0%	100:1 / 1.0%
ETFs	20:1 / 5%	5:1 / 20.0%	20:1 / 5.0%
Bonds	20:1 / 5%	20:1 / 5.0%	20:1 / 5.0%

Crypto

Cryptocurrency leverage for cryptocurrency trading also will vary depending on the type of account you have access to. Leverage for cryptocurrencies is tighter than other financial products because of its highly volatile nature.

	Leverage / Margin Australia, South Africa, Japan, Other	Leverage / Margin UK, Europe, UAE	Leverage / Margin Professiona (UK, Europe, UAE)
Ethereum	20:1 / 5%	2:1 / 50%	20:1 / 5%
BTCUSD	25:1 / 4%	2:1 / 50%	25:1 / 4%
BTCEUR , BTCJPY	20:1 / 5%	2:1 / 50%	20:1 / 5%
Bitcoin Cash, litecoin, Ripple	10:1 / 10%	2:1 / 50%	10:1 / 10%
Bitcoin Gold, Stellar, Dash, NEO, EOS, IOTA	5:1 / 20%	2:1 / 50%	5:1 / 20%
Crypto 10 Index	10:1 / 10%	2:1 / 50%	10:1 / 10%

Options

Leverage for options is consistent with leverage available for spot forex, spot gold and spot silver.

	Leverage / Margin Australia, South Africa, Japan, Other	Leverage / Margin UK, Europe, UAE	Leverage / Margin Professiona (UK, Europe, UAE)
Major	100:1 /1%	30:1 /3.33%	100:1 /1%
Minors	100:1 /1%	20:1 / 5%	100:1 /1%
Spot Gold / Silver	20:1 / 5%	20:1 / 5%	20:1 / 5%

Trading Platforms

One impressive aspect of AvaTrade offer is a large range of trading platforms.

MetaTrader 4 and MetaTrader 5

The popular MetaTrader 4 (MT4) is available and still a leader when it comes to platforms for trading forex despite its age. This platform is used by more traders than any other so brings with a strong reputation and large community which can help for social trading, sharing ideas, buying and selling signal and advisors and finding skilled developers to write scripts.

The successor MT4 is MetaTrader 5. While not yet as popular as MT4, it brings with it more powerful processing capability, a greater range of trading tools and the ability to trade exchange-traded derivatives such as stocks and ETFs. If you are new to trading and deciding between MT4 and MT5, then MT5 can be a smart choice as MT5 offer a longer-term solution as MT4 will phase out since MetaQuotes no longer offers new development for MT4.

Mobile Trading – AvaTrade Go

AvaTradeGo is not a “true” trading platforms in the sense trades are not executed by the platform itself. Rather AvaTradeGo is a mobile app that allows you to manage your MetaTrader 4 trading account with the ability to trade using the MetaTrader underlying platform.

Available via iOS and Android the platform allows you to easily see your trades, create watch lists, analyse charts and obtain live feeds and prices in order to make trading decisions. The platform does have a few useful custom resources such as

“Market Trends” With this feature, you can monitor social trends happening in the AvaTrade community
AvaProtect™ (see risk management)
Step by step guidance on opening trades
Easy switching between demo account and live account for backtesting and practice before trading CFDs.

AvaTrade Options

AvaOption is AvaTrades solution for options trading. Like AvaTradeGO, it is built on the MetaTrader 4 platform but offers extra features essential for trading options. Trading of options can be complicated so AvaTrades features that simplify the trading process offer helpful benefits.

Tools to simplify the trading process include

14 in-built trading strategies for options which make the execution trades possible with one click.
Graphical tools in the form of current and historical implied volatility curves to demonstrate the risks and potential rewards
Special pages that summarise portfolio risks including Delta, Theta and Vega

The default options trading strategies feature is very useful. With this tool, your order ticket will be populated with details related to the options contract which you can then modify by changing the price and expiration date.

This feature is available for both mobile and web browser.

Robo Trading

In addition to expert advisers for trading automation via MetaTrader 4 and MetaTrader 5, AvaTrade offer DupliTrade (with MT4), ZuluTrade and MQL5 – Signal Service.

These are all social trading or copy trading tools which have features that allow you to automate the trading process by mirroring other traders

Financial Instruments

AvaTrade offers a solid range of financial derivatives for trading. AvaTrade contract for difference (CFD) range stands out because they offer bonds / treasuries, and options which are only available with a few brokers.

While AvaTrade has a good collection of stocks compiled from NYSE, NASDAQ and LondonStock Exchange along with Indices and ETFs covering the US, Europe and Asia, the absence of options from Australian markets is noticed. No share options from the ASX is available now ASX200 indices.

The table below shows the range of CFDs available for trade.

	Available	Notable Markets	Spread Range
Forex	55	Majors, Minors, Exotics
Stocks	6192 MetaTrader 4- 64 Other Platforms - 6192	US, Europe and Asian Markets	Most between 0.13% and 0.19%
Commodities	26	8 x Oil (Brent, Crude, Heating) Gas, Gasoline 3 x Gold, 3 x Silver, Copper, Palladium, Platinum 7 x Soft Commodities	Gold - 0.34 Oils - 0.03 Heating Oil, Gasoline - $0.0015 over market Brent Oil, Gas -$0.02 over market Silver - 0.029
Indices	23 MetaTrader 4- 20 Other Platforms - 23	12x MSCI, 2x DOW Jones, 4x ProShares 4 x Direxion Daily 2 x S&P 500	0.25 to 3 over market
ETFs	31 MetaTrader 4- 5 Other Platforms - 31	12x MSCI, 2x DOW Jones, 4x ProShares, 4x Direxion Daily, 2x S&P 500	Most between 0.13% and 0.19%
Bonds	2	EURO-Bund, Japan Govt Bond	Euro-Bund - 0.03 Over Market Japan Govt Bond - 0.06 Over Market
Cryptocurrencies	14 10 Cryptocurrencies 3 Crypto currency crosses 1 crypto index		0.5% to 2% over market
Options	44 42 - Forex Options 1 Gold, Silver

Cryptocurrencies

AvaTrade offers some 13 different types of cryptocurrency assets. Most interesting is the availability of crypto pairs to different currencies and a cryptocurrency index.

Available Cryptos:

Cryptos	BitCoin Cryptos & Indices
Ripple	Bitcoin USD (BTCUSD)
Stellar	Bitcoin EUR (BTCEUR)
Dash	Bitcoin JPY (BTCJPY)
NEO	Bitcoin Cash
EOS	Bitcoin Gold
MIOTA	Crypto 10 Index
Litecoin

Options

AvaTrader allows vanilla options trading for 42 currency pairs plus gold and silver via their AvaOptions platform. Options period can be set for up to one year will be cash-settled using the intrinsic value and closed when expired using intrinsic value.

Risk Management

AvaTrade offers a range of Risk Management Tools that take go beyond the standard tools many brokers offers. These include:

Negative Balance Protection for all clients

AvaTrade offers guaranteed negative balance protection to all clients. While most CFD brokers only offer it to retails clients in the UK and Europe to meet regulation requirements, AvaTrade offers negative balance protection to all their clients including professional traders.

Negative balance protection is an excellent feature for retail traders who are gaining trading experience and learning how CFDs work.

Margin Call (MC3) / Stop Out

AvaTrade will exit you from your trades when your equity falls below margin requirements.

AvaTrade has the following policies

Retail Accounts 50% of the required margin
Standard Account, Professional Account – 10% of the required margin
AvaOptions – Net Liquidation Value drops below 25% of Required Margin

AvaProtect

AvaTrade offers a unique feature on its AvaTradeGo mobile trading platform that is similar to easyMarkets dealCancellation. AvaProtect is an order type that protects you against any losses for a period of time for a small fee.

Introduced in Jan 2020, AvaProtect is an opt-in feature that allows you to buy guaranteed protection for a pre-determined timeframe. Should this trade prove to be a losing one during this defined period, you will be reimbursed in liquid cash for any of these trades losing trades. Protection of up to 1 million is available and can be used with retail, standard and professional accounts.

While this is a great tool, if you are using MetaTrader 4 or 5, you will not be able to access this tool as its only available with AvaTradeGO.

Minimum Deposit / Funding

The minimum deposit to open an account and start trading with AvaTrade is $100.

Deposits

AvaTrade range of options for deposits is limited. While some brokers offer 5 to 20 options for deposits, AvaTrade stick only offers essential options. While this may not suit everyone, most traders should be fine with this.

Deposit options

All Nations – Credit Card/ Debit Cards (Visa, MasterCard)
Australia – Poli
UK and Europe – Skrill / Neteller
Asia – WebMoney

When making deposits, there is a minimum deposit requirement of 100 units (i.e AUD/USD/EUR 100). If you are only planning to trade small amounts, then this may be an issue for you. The transfer time when

Credit Card / Debit Card – instant transfer
Bank Transfer / Wire Transfer – up to 7 days transfer
e-Payment – transfer within 24 hours

Withdrawals

AvaTrade follows strict Know Your Customer (KYC) process for withdrawal, this is to keep AvaTrade compliant with anti-money laundering processes.

Withdrawals will be returned to your account within 24-48 hour once KYC verification is complete. If you made your deposit with credit or debit card then 200% of the amount your first deposit must be returned to the credit or debit card before you can withdrawal to other accounts. If you made your deposit with other methods, then 100% must first be returned to that account.

Other Cost

AvaTrade has a quarterly inactivity fee of $25 admin fee when there is no trading activity on the account for 3 months

Customer Service and Customer Support

AvaTrade customer support team are available via live chat, webmail (via contact us page) and phone 24/5. The support team is multi-lingual, with a local number for phone support available in 21 European countries, Australia, 2 African countries, 7 Asia countries, 4 South American nations, 2 Countries in the Middle East and Mexico in North America. There have no contacts in the USA and Canada.

Education and Learning Tools

AvaTrade offers an exceptional range of educational resources to help you develop your trading skills, regardless at what level you trader you may be.

If you are new to trading you will find the “Trading For Beginners” education very helpful. Here you will find 59 chapters or webpages explaining a wide range of trading concept. This content is a mix of written, AvaTrade produced youtube video and even infographics. These 59 chapters are neatly divided into 3 sections:

What is – What is forex, what are options
Banks – European Central Bank, Bank of England
How to – How to trade stocks, how to trade online

Once you have completed the above you can move onto Professional Trading strategies. This follows the same format as Trading For Beginners but covers more advanced trading concepts. Here you can find 27 topics including chapters for just about every type of technical indicator you should know.

If you prefer something a little more structured and stored on your hard drive, a free ebook called “Forex First Steps” can be emailed to your inbox by completing the registration form.

AvaTrade also offers videos and webinars if you prefer to learn visually. Topics covered include:

Beginner (9 videos)
Assets and tools (12 videos)
Trading strategies (10 videos)
Advanced trading tools (14 videos)
Trading platforms (7 videos)
Trading safely (3 videos)

AvaTrade also has a section in their education suite explaining to the order types available with MetaTrader and types of economic indicators.

Market Research and Analysis

AvaTrade’s range of in-house developed Market Analysis is limited however a blog is released each business day looking at market events that may concern your trades and an economic calendar is available.

The Sharp Trader

AvaTrader runs an online commercial trading academy for those wanting to learn to trade. While most people will need to pay to access this content, AvaTrade clients can access this content for free.

Here you will find trading academies for Beginners, Intermediate and Advanced traders plus a Trader’s Gateway including a TV channel and in-depth technical analysis and fundamental analysis content. If you want to take your trading to the next level. You will benefit from this content.

Regulation

AvaTrade is part of the AVA Group of companies and was founded in Dublin, Ireland 2006. They have 5 offices around the world including Ireland, Australia, Japan, Abu Dhabi and the British Virgin Islands.

AvaTrade offers is a regulated broker with a number of tier-1 oversights. These include (entity followed by the regulator and licence number):

AVA Trade EU Ltd – Europe, Central Bank of Ireland under license #C53877.
AVA Trade EU Ltd – Poland, Polish Financial Supervision Authority (KNF)
Ava Capital Markets Australia Pty Ltd – Australia, Australian Securities and Investment Commissions (ASIC) under license #406684.
Ava Trade Japan K.K – Japan, FSA under license #1662 and the FFA under license #1574.
Ava Capital Markets Pty Ltd – Financial Sector Conduct Authority (FSCA) South Africa, FSB under license #45984.
Ava Trade Ltd – International. British Virgin Islands Financial Services Commission (No. SIBA/L/13/1049)
AvaTrade Middle East Ltd Abu Dhabi Global Market Financial Services Regulatory Authorities (ADGM FSRA) Category 31A licence (No. 190018)

Regulation is important as it ensures your funds are safe and the broker is acting in a professional manner that is respectful to clients in terms of their business conducts, financial products and trading conditions.

AvaTrade will not accept clients from the following countries –

Belgium
Brazil
Canada
Iran
New Zealand
North Korea
Singapore
Turkey
United States

AvaTrade FAQ

Is AvaTrade a Market Maker?

AvaTrade uses a market maker model (sometimes called dealing desk or A-Book broker). This means the broker is trading with their own liquidity and are the counterparty to your trades. Benefits of trading with a market maker typically (but not always) include no commissions as costs are included in the spread, better risk management tools and superior forex and CFD education. Other market makers include Plus500, eToro, easyMarkets, IG, CMC Markets.

Is a No Dealing Desk or ECN broker Better than a Market Maker?

A broker that uses a no dealing desk model simply connects traders with liquidity providers using ECN, STP or DMA with no human intervention. This type of trading model will usually have lower spreads than a market maker model as quotes come directly from the liquidity provider and commissions are used meaning broker does not widen the spread to cover costs. Typical examples of ECN or no dealing desk brokers include Pepperstone, IC Markets, FP Markets, Fusion Markets, Go Markets.

Is AvaTrade Legitimate and trustworthy?

AvaTrade is a multi-regulated broker which means you can have confidence in the brokers’ products, professionalism as a business and will keep your funds and data secure. The broker is regulated with tier-1 regulators in Australia, Ireland, Poland, South Africa, Japan and Abu Dhabi.

Is AvaTrade a Good Broker?

While the answer to this question is subjective, AvaTrade has a number of features that do make them stand out in crowded online brokerage industry. Features include:

Regulated with tier 1 regulators in 6 countries
Offers MetaTrader 4 and 5 trading platforms
Offers options and a platform designed for options trading
Offers a diverse range of trading products
Commission-free spreads
Extensive education
Good robo-trading tools

Conclusion

AvaTrade has a number of features that lead us to look at them favourably. The broker can be trusted as they are overseen by tier-1 regulators in 6 different countries and offer a diverse and interesting collection of CFD products including over 50 forex pairs, options for forex, bonds and a large collection of cryptocurrencies in addition to shares, indices and ETFs. The other features the broker offers than increase their appeal include the availability of MetaTrader trading platforms, handy social trading tools, negative balance protection, AvaProtect for risk management (if you are using AvaTradeGo and a wealth of educational tools. As a market maker, the broker only has a commission-free trading account, which means you are after the highest possible spreads then you may prefer a broker that uses an STP or ECN trading model. This would be its main weakness.

🗺️ Regulation Country	Europe, UK, Australia, UAE, South Africa
💰 Trading Fees	No Commissions
📊 Trading Platforms	MT4, MT5, AvaTradeGo, AvaOptions
💰 Minimum Deposit	$100
💰 Deposit/Withdrawal	$0
🛍️ Instruments	Forex, CFDs, Crypto, Options, Bonds
💳 Credit Cards	Yes

AvaTrade Review

Summary Of AvaTrade

AvaTrade Account Types