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As a leading Swiss banking group, Swissquote is considered one of the most well-known online financial and trading services providers. The company is listed on the SIX Swiss Exchange since May 2000, but their story originated back in the 1990s, where Marc Bürki and Paolo Buzzi set up a business in financial software.

Swissquote's main vision is to enable private investors to access real-time prices free of charge. They follow a mission of "democratizing banking" by upholding the values of transparency, integrity, and unbiased information for the benefit of clients, in turn allowing them to make independent decisions.

Today, Swissquote is a global financial services provider with official branches in several major areas in the world like the European area, Middle Eastern, and Asian financial centers. From 2017 to 2018, it claims as the first online bank to offer crypto trading and participation in Initial Coin Offering (ICO).

Trading in SwissQuote guarantees a regulated environment, as the broker is licensed in some of the most well-known jurisdictions in the financial industry, including the Swiss Financial Market Supervisory Authority (FINMA) and the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) from the UK.

The broker also has local regulations for other branches in other jurisdictions such as the Malta Financial Services Authority (MFSA), the Dubai Financial Services Authority (DFSA), and the Securities & Futures Commission (SFC) from Hong Kong to enable non-EU traders to register under its account with regulated services.

SwissQuote is notable for its wide variety of trading instruments, such as 8,500+ stocks and more than 800 ETFs. Forex pairs, cryptocurrencies, government bonds, and a range of commodity CFDs are also provided to clients.

The company presents a special deposit protection scheme that amounts to CHF100,000 in the event of bankruptcy proceedings. Traders from other countries are offered many choices of base currencies like EUR, USD, JPY, GBP, CHF, CAD, AUD, TRY, PLN, SEK, NOK, SGD, XGD, HUF, and CZK.

Opening an account in SwissQuote for forex trading is available in 3 different choices:

Standard

• Spreads: from 1.7 pips
• Commission: none
• Minimum deposit: $1,000
• Minimum trade: 0.01 lot
• Leverage: 1:100

Premium

• Spreads: from 1.4 pips
• Commission: none
• Minimum deposit: $10,000
• Minimum trade: 0.1 lot
• Leverage: 1:100

Prime

• Spreads: from 1.1 pips
• Commission: none
• Minimum deposit: $50,000
• Minimum trade: 1 lot
• Leverage: 1:100

Dubbed as the most popular account, Swissquote put Premium account as the recommended choice for forex traders, as it balances a competitive spread and affordable minimum deposit according to their standard.

For the trading platform, traders can choose between MetaTrader or Sawissquote's proprietary product called Advanced Trader. To provide traders with the best experience in trading, the company also puts complementary analytical tools such as Autochartist and Trading Central signals.

For MetaTrader fans with a desire to trade in an advanced trading environment, Swissquote offers the MetaTrader Master Edition.

As the company is more suitable to experienced traders with a medium deposit capability, they do not have a complete educational package to offer to new traders. However, they arrange free webinars for everyone who would like to continually upgrade their trading knowledge. This program is managed by professional figures in the financial industry and is available in 4 languages: English, German, French, and Arabic.

All in all, Swissquote is an ideal broker for traders with enough experience to trade with more than $1,000 as their starting deposit. Its long-standing history and qualified background as a member of a Swiss banking group provide high credibility and a guaranteed trading environment that not many can offer.

However, it is also important to note that Swissquote does not offer various deposit and withdrawal methods, as they mainly focus on bank transfer and credit card payments that they revolutionized in 2018 by launching a multi-currency credit card.

Interactive Brokers is a direct market access broker that provides execution, clearance, settlement, and prime brokerage for customers. Since it was found 41 years ago by Thomas Peterffy, the company has grown internally to become one of the premier securities firms with over $7 billion in equity capital.

First acknowledged as a popular broker for advanced traders, Interactive Brokers launched a second tier of service called IBKR Lite for more casual investors in 2019.

The IBKR Lite provides services on over 125 market destinations worldwide and gives direct access (online) trade execution and clearing services, both to institutional and professional traders for a wide variety of traded products including stocks, options, futures, forex, fixed income, and funds worldwide. Interactive Brokers Group and its affiliates execute over 859,000 trades per day.

Headquartered in Greenwich, Connecticut, Interactive Brokers has over 1,400 employees in the USA, Switzerland, Canada, Hong Kong, UK, Australia, Hungary, Russia, Japan, India, China, and Estonia companies. IBKR is regulated by the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority (FINRA), the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA), and is registered in the New York Stoch Exchange (NYSE).

Interactive Brokers offers a wide range of product-centered tools like the OptionTrader and Probability Lab for simplified single and complex multi-leg option trading; FXTrader for forex trading, Mutual Fund/ETF Replicator for helping traders find a lower cost on ETF alternatives, also fixed-income screeners for corporate and agency bonds. Overall, trading with Interactive Brokers would be provided with the most useful and updated tools to maximize trading and investing goals.

As a popular and regulated broker in the US, Interactive Brokers has won some awards. Recently, they were awarded by the Barrons as the 2019 Best Online Broker, which is categorized as the best broker for mobile, international, and frequent traders. Besides, they also won an award as Top Performing Broker by the Preqin Service Providers, and Best Overall Broker by Investopedia (Best for Low Costs, Best for International Trading, Best for Options Trading, Best for Day Trading, and Best for Penny Stocks). The awards are not only achieved during 2019. Since 2005, Interactive Brokers has won lots of awards regarding its best services for clients.

To optimize clients' trading speed and efficiency, Interactive Brokers provides some powerful suites of trading platforms. Below is the list:

• Client Portal
  A one-stop destination to check quotes and place trades, see account balances, Profit and Loss, as well as key performance metrics, funding, and reporting.
• Desktop TWS
  A flagship platform designed for active traders and investors who trade multiple products and require power and flexibility. Opening an account in Interactive Brokers and using this platform allows traders to utilize the most advanced algorithms and trading tools, as well as a library of tools and asset-based trading layouts for optimum customization.
• IBKR TWS for Mobile
  The IBKR TWS for Mobile is made for traders who want to easily trade and monitor their IBKR account on-the-go from either iOS or Android device (tablet or smartphone).
• IBoT
  IBoT is a robot for finding information and placing orders using clients' own words. IBot is available on TWS for Desktop, IBKR Mobile, and Client Portal.
• IBKR WebTrader
  IBKR WebTrader is made for traders and investors who prefer a simplified interface.
• IBKR APIs or IBKR Pro
  This trading platform is provided especially for traders and investors who want to write their trading software or automated trading programs; third-party software users.

Overall, Interactive Brokers has always been a great choice for those who want to find out a credible and regulated broker for trading. Offering lots of trading platforms, Interactive Brokers has committed to provide their best services for both novices and professionals, since it is suited to every clients' needs.

OctaFX is one of the most famous brokers in the world and has won many awards for its very comfortable trading atmosphere and proximity with customers. OctaFX was founded in 2011 with headquarters in Strovolou 47, Kyros Tower, Nicosia.

Prestigious awards that have been received by OctaFX include the Best ECN/STP 2019 and the 2019 Best Broker in Asia given by FX Daily Info. The Global Banking and Finance Review magazine also gave the Best Broker award in Asia in 2018 to this broker. More than that, there were also awards from European CEO Magazine (Best FX Broker 2018 and Best Trading Conditions).

For traders in most countries, OctaFX is under the authority of Octa Markets Incorporated and is registered in Saint Vincent and the Grenadines. This broker also provides various facilities, such as providing support services by live chat and WhatsApp in Indonesian. Not only that, deposits and withdrawals of funds can be done through various local banks. OctaFX does not charge commissions for every deposit and withdrawal of funds made by traders.

OctaFX offers different types of accounts that are carried out with market execution (STP/ ECN) and floating spreads from 0.2 pips. A variety of forex strategies, ranging from Scalping, Hedging, and the use of Expert Advisors are permitted in all accounts at OctaFX brokers.

There is also a fixed exchange rate offer when opening a Micro MT4 account. All deposits made in IDR will be calculated at the rate of USD1 = Rp10,000 and will be entered into the trader's account balance. Also, Swap-free accounts are available for Muslim traders who want to avoid overnight interest.

Trading in OctaFX is also suitable for novice traders. Because OctaFX offers low spreads, which are floating starting from 0.0 pips. The required initial deposit is also low, only USD50. The currencies used on the account are US Dollars and Euros.

OctaFX gives a bonus of 50% each time a trader makes a deposit. That way, the capital gained by the trader becomes bigger. Opportunities to open positions increased and deposit bonuses can be withdrawn on the terms and conditions.

If traders are still confused about calculating profits, the OctaFX platform provides a trading calculator for each account type. Traders only need to enter the currency pair being traded, the amount of leverage, the number of lots, and the type of currency used in the account.

Opportunities to get profits are also getting bigger with the Autochartist feature. Traders will get notifications quickly when there is a profit signal in trading. The accuracy of the trend prediction reaches 83%.

Traders do not need to worry about the safety of funds at this broker. OctaFX uses segregated accounts and protects personal data and online financial transactions with SSL technology. This is adjusted to the international accounting standards and regulations.

Another advantage offered by OctaFX is the Trade & Win program. Opening an account in OctaFX would open the opportunity to collect trading lots, which can be accumulated into a variety of attractive prizes. Traders only need to open a real account on MetaTrader4 or MetaTrader5 through OctaFX and simply exchange the prize lot in this promotion. Prizes that can be obtained by traders include T-shirts, Android Smartwatches, smartphones, and laptops.

Traders need not worry about missing out on promotions. Because OctaFX often bonuses and other promotions. This broker holds a trading contest every week on a demo account with real prize funds that can be used for trading.

One example of a prize contest is OctaFX Champion - MT4 Demo Contest. With a total prize of USD 1,000, there are places for 4 winners in each contest period. OctaFX broker also provides contests on the cTrader platform, titled cTrader Weekly Demo Contest. As the name implies, this trading contest is held on a demo account for 1 week and uses cTrader as the platform.

eToro established in early 2007, with a mission to make trading accessible to anyone, anywhere, and reduce dependency on traditional financial institutions. The company has head offices in the United Kingdom, Cyprus, USA, and Australia.

eToro (Europe) Ltd operates as a Financial Services Company authorized and regulated by the Cyprus Securities Exchange Commission (CySEC) under license no. #109/10. Meanwhile, eToro (UK) Ltd is authorized and regulated by the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) under the license FRN 583263.

As for eToro AUS Capital Pty Ltd, the legal standing is acknowledged by the Australian Securities and Investments Commission (ASIC) to provide financial services under Australian Financial Services License 491139.

A broker that belongs to the 4-digit type, eToro offers both short-term options for day traders and long-term options for investors, such as their innovative CopyPortfoliosTM, a fully managed thematic portfolio.

Since 2007, eToro has been at the forefront of the Fintech revolution. The most recent was launched in 2017, which is CopyPortfolios powered by Machine learning Al. Beyond developing CopyPortfolios, the company integrated Microsoft's machine learning technology into Momentum DD.

The new CopyPortfolio investment strategy uses artificial intelligence to find the steadiest traders who are most likely to generate a double-digit return and bundle traders into one fully-managed portfolio. eToro has hundreds of financial assets for trading across several categories including stocks, commodities, crypto assets, currencies, indices, and ETFs. Each asset class has characteristics and can be traded using a variety of investment strategies.

Some positions on eToro involve ownership of underlying assets, such as non-leveraged positions on stocks and cryptos. Employing CFDs will enable a variety of options, such as leveraged trades, short (sell) positions, fractional ownership, and more. For example, traders can invest as little as USD100 in gold, even if a single unit of gold cost USD1,000. Some of eToro's most popular CFD commodities include gold, oil, natural gas, silver, and platinum.

Currencies are traded on eToro only as CFDs. Also, CFDs enable Sell (short) positions and leveraged trade, even for assets that don't offer the option in traditional trading. Some of the popular currencies include EUR/USD, GBP/USD, AUD/USD, USD/JPY, and USD/CAD.

Furthermore, An Exchange-Traded Fund (ETF) is a financial instrument comprising several assets grouped to serve as one tradable fund. After opening an account in eToro , traders can invest as little as USD250 in an ETF that costs USD500. Some of the popular ETFs on eToro include SPY, VXXB, TLT, and HMMJ.

However, eToro also offers additional functions using CFD trading. All leveraged ETF positions in the UK are under FCA regulations. Meanwhile, all CFD positions executed by eToro Australia are under ASIC regulations.

The company has other advantages. In all financial assets that can be traded, eToro does not charge any deposit or trading frees other than spreads.

eToro charges a USD25 fee for withdrawals and the minimum withdrawal amount is USD50. Long (Buy), non-leveraged crypto, stock, and ETF positions are not executed as CFDs and do not incur any fees. eToro does charge overnight or weekend fees for CFDs positions, such as leveraged positions and short (sell) orders.

Fee updates always apply to open positions. Fees are subject to change at any given time and could change daily, without prior notice, depending on market conditions.

As a beginner, trader can use CopyTrading eToro. Different from the features of other brokers, traders can copy the strategies of professional traders without fee or profit-sharing. Therefore, 100% profit is fully owned by traders. For example, while trader A who is copied by trader B, produces a profit of 10% this month, then trader B also gets a profit of 10%.

The company is the world's leading social trading network. Since eToro operates in complete transparency , each trader has valuable information on their eToro profiles, so other traders that are interested to copy their trades can have assistance in creating their best portfolios.

Another feature that is unique to eToro is the personalized, social News Feed. Just like on any social media, traders can post their updates on feed, comment on other's posts, and gradually create a feed that is tailor-fitted to trader's trading and investing interests. On eToro social trading platform , traders will also get notifications when a trader writes a new post and many other important updates.