An Upfront Broker with No Surprises – Find Out in This Plus500 Review

Plus500 Review

If you search online for online brokers, you will discover that every broker has a different value proposition. While their services are similar, they all seem to be offering something different that no other broker offers. The claims of being the best are not very uncommon. However, there are very few brokers that are as straightforward as Plus500. It remains one of the most upfront brokers that provides all the information to its traders about how it conducts business. Let’s get into to this Plus500 review to know more about it.  

Plus500 – An Upfront Broker 

The first thing you will notice about this broker is that it likes to talk straight. According to the website, there are no surprises for traders when they trade with Plus500. It is a UK based broker that provides CFDs trading services on a variety of asset classes. This London-based company is operating after obtaining proper licenses for its activities. Its services of providing traders with CFD trading are regulated and authorized by FCA (Financial Conduct Authority). The company is present in many countries of the world and is most popular in the European and Asian regions.  

From the statistics, it might seem that the company is quite old but Plus500 came into the market as a broker in just 2008. The company is only a decade old but it has covered a lot of milestone in this short time. Just in 2011, the company was already helping more than two million transactions on its platform. Talk about active customers right now, and the company has more than 317,000 of them. Based on the recent statistics of the company, trades of more than $1270 billion have been conducted using its platform since the launch of the company. Such a huge volume of trades is a result of more than 37 million transactions.  

You can see the numbers and agree that Plus500 is quite impressive when it comes to numbers and statistics. Let’s get to know the company even more as you read on.  

The Boasting Points of Plus500 

So, what are the most important points that Plus500 likes you to focus on to convince you to open an account with it? First of all, it can offer you leverages of 1:300. Huge leverages mean that you will be able to control huge trades.  You don’t have to have all the money in your account to control a big trade. The leverage means that Plus500 will contribute 300 parts for every 1 part that you contribute. It also likes to talk about the tight spreads. However, that’s one thing that’s best understood when you have started trading with the company.  

Here is a part where Plus500 proves to be an upfront broker. Not a lot of brokers are comfortable telling you about how they make money from your trades. On the other hand, Plus500 is very straightforward about. First, the company wants you to be sure that the spreads are tight. Secondly, it wants to you to know clearly that it earns from the spreads. In other words, there are no commissions on your trades. You complete your trades based on the spreads you see on the chart and that’s about it. It also likes to talk about fast order execution, which is an important point to consider knowing that delays can cause you to make losing trades.  

Another thing that you should know about this broker is the fact that it is UK FTSE 250 business. A lot of brokers can talk about regulations but they can’t boast the point that they are officially on the main market of London Stock Exchange for listed companies. For the security of the clients, the broker has provided the information about its SSL protocol as well. What that means is that all the information that you provide on the website gets encrypted and protected. Regulation information, encryption, etc. are some of the most important points to consider for any trader before finalizing a broker.  

Plus500 Trading Platform 

This is one area where Plus500 is completely different from most of the brokers on the market. With even the best and the biggest brokers, you are given access to the MetaTrader platform. Another famous platform is the cTrader platform with a couple of others. These are the platforms that almost every broker is using around the world today. The other big platform that you can use is the MetaTrader 5. These platforms are then available in the web-based format and in the form of smartphone applications. In other words, not a lot changes in terms of your trading experience when you switch from one broker to another.  

On the other hand, Plus500 has worked on creating its own platform. This goes to show how dedicated the broker is to give a personalized experience to its traders. It wants to understand its target audience and create something for them based on that understanding. You will not find many brokers that offer their own platforms to the traders. That’s because developing your own platform is quite expensive not only during the development phase but after the development as well. In addition to developing its own platform, the broker has also made sure to make it available on all the operating systems across a variety of devices.  

Whether you are using a Windows computer, a tablet or a smartphone, the Plus500 platform is there for you. For smartphones, you can take advantage of the platform on Android as well iOS devices. The same software has been designed for iPads as well to give you a smooth trading experience when you move from a smartphone to a tablet. Windows phones are not so popular around the world and the number of users of these phones is very small. Despite that, Plus500 has created the platform for Windows phones as well.  

Last but not least, there is a web-based version of the platform as well. This version has been designed to be compatible with all the major browsers used around the world. A web trader is perfect when you want to be able to access your account details and market analytics from anywhere in the world. You can be on any device and still access the web trader without any compatibility issues.  

Trade Everything on Plus500 

Being such a popular company and an online broker, Plus500 gives you access to hundreds of financial markets from around the world. The list of forex currency pairs that you can trade on Plus500 is probably one of the longest that you will discover online. You can trade more than 65 currency pairs on the platform. These currency pairs include the major and stable currency pairs, and highly volatile and rare currency pairs as well. The number of indices that you can trade with other brokers is quite small on many occasions, but Plus500 gives you access to more than 25 big indices of the world.  

In the commodities section, you will find the soft commodities, metals, and energies as well. You can trade CFDs of gold, natural gas, oil, platinum, palladium, silver, sugar, soybean, gasoline, copper, cocoa, cotton, coffee, and just about any commodity that you can think of. In short, you have enough options to diversify your investment portfolio and protect your investments from losses. What makes Plus500 special is that you can trade quite a few cryptocurrencies on this platform as well. After researching a few brokers, you will find out that most of them are sticking to Ethereum, Bitcoin, Bitcoin cash, and Litecoin. 

Plus500, on the other hand, offers you quite a few cryptocurrencies to make money on profitable trades. You can trade Bitcoin, Ethereum, Bitcoin Cash, Monero, Ripple, Neo, Litecoin, and some other famous cryptocurrencies. Shares and ETFs can also be shared by traders who sign up with Plus500. To make things even better and to cater to the needs of all types of traders, options are also available for trading.  

Options provide a quick way for traders to make money by predicting the movement of the price of an asset. Options trading is also called binary options trading because it only has one of the two possible outcomes of the trade. You can learn more about options and the assets that you can trade this way on the official Plus500 website.  

Funding Your Plus500 Account 

This is another area where the broker likes to be straightforward about how things work. First of all, the broker has done a huge favor to its traders by not charging them any fees for funding their accounts or withdrawing money from them. In many cases, bank transfers, credit card payments, etc. have service fees associated with them. These fees can be extremely frustrating when they are a percentage of the amount that you are withdrawing from or depositing in your account. You will not incur any fees of this kind when you withdraw funds from your Plus500 account or deposit funds in it.  

There are certain cases where you might have to pay something to the broker. For example, if your account remains inactive for a specific period, the broker might charge you a fee for that. In addition to that, the overnight funding option is there. You have a specific window of time when you have to complete your trade. When you don’t do that, you might incur some fees eventually. Lastly, you have the option of guaranteed stop order. Using this service can widen your spreads and thus you will have to pay more on your trades than what you might have calculated in regular trading conditions.  

As for funding your account, you have a variety of methods available to choose one from. If you find e-transfers to be the safest and quickest, you can Choose Skrill or Neteller. Both these options are quick and you will not incur any service fees from the broker’s side. Credit cards can also be used for funding your account. You can rest assured while providing your credit card information that the website protects everything with SSL protocol. Last but not least, you can go with the easiest and most conventional way of transferring the money to your Plus500 account, which is bank transfer.  

Customer Service from Plus500 

Plus500 provides trading platform to traders from around the world today. Knowing that its traders come from different countries, cultures, and ethnicities, it has to cater to their specific needs in every way possible. The most impressive thing about Plus500 website is that it is available in 32 different languages. There aren’t many broker websites available in so many languages no matter how big they are. The website being available in many languages is definitely impressive. However, there are some areas where the broker can make some improvements. 

When you have an issue regarding your account or anything related to Plus500, the first place for you to go to is the FAQs page. Yes, this page covers a lot of questions and concerns, but it can never come close to getting help from a human on the phone. There is no phone number for you to call and get help from a live agent. However, there is a live chat option. If you want an instant answer to a question, you can talk to a live chat agent on the website. You can also send your queries on an email address. Email and live chat customer support is available for the traders 24/7.  

Final Thoughts 

There should be no doubt in any trader’s mind that Plus500 is one of the best online brokers out there. It is operating with proper licenses and the transparency is there in how it conducts its business. Its trading platform is quite unique and its availability across various operating systems and devices is commendable. A phone number where traders could contact would have been perfect to give its customer support five stars. New traders and experienced ones can benefit from it alike. It is a recommendable and reliable broker for sure.