Recommend a broker please

[stankom]

Hi everyone.

I am based in the UK and have a small account (c. £12k).

I trade conservatively, rarely risking more than 1% for one trade. I sometimes have very wide stops, as my trading horizon can be weeks to months. Therefore I need a broker that offers low leverage.

I have used IG spreadbetting until now, but today I discovered that OANDA offers extremely low leverage and I am truly impressed! However, the downside is that they do not offer many markets to trade - I often want to hold positions in the bond markets (UK, US, German, French, Italian bond futures), emerging market indices and currencies (EEM, Sensex, USDRUB, etc), sector ETFs (XLY, XLP, XLE) etc. While IG offers most of these markets, the amount of leverage is most of the time prohibitive. Oanda, on the other hand, Oanda only has plain vanilla indices and currencies on the menu.

To summarise, the question is:

Are there any spreadbetting platforms offering a wide variety of indices/bonds/EM currencies/ETFs with low leverage for longer-term trading (weeks - months), suitable for a small account (c. £12k)? Spreads are less important.

Many thanks

 

[LongTermInvester]

Hi everyone.

I am based in the UK and have a small account (c. £12k).

I trade conservatively, rarely risking more than 1% for one trade. I sometimes have very wide stops, as my trading horizon can be weeks to months. Therefore I need a broker that offers low leverage.

I have used IG spreadbetting until now, but today I discovered that OANDA offers extremely low leverage and I am truly impressed! However, the downside is that they do not offer many markets to trade - I often want to hold positions in the bond markets (UK, US, German, French, Italian bond futures), emerging market indices and currencies (EEM, Sensex, USDRUB, etc), sector ETFs (XLY, XLP, XLE) etc. While IG offers most of these markets, the amount of leverage is most of the time prohibitive. Oanda, on the other hand, Oanda only has plain vanilla indices and currencies on the menu.

To summarise, the question is:

Are there any spreadbetting platforms offering a wide variety of indices/bonds/EM currencies/ETFs with low leverage for longer-term trading (weeks - months), suitable for a small account (c. £12k)? Spreads are less important.

Many thanks

In my opinion you are already with the best in a big group of often questionable outfits. IG are not cheap but then you get what you pay for. They fully segregate client money, have no debt and keep all client assets floating between multiple banks to save any collapse.

I only know so much about this as I learnt the hard way. I was trading super tight, often 0 spreads, with WorldSpreads. That was up until they went bust and we all found out they were using client money to shore up their operation.

You get what you pay for. I'm happy to pay a fraction of a pip more here and there to get the wide range of products and the security.

 

[Hate2Lose]

Hi everyone.

I am based in the UK and have a small account (c. £12k).

I trade conservatively, rarely risking more than 1% for one trade. I sometimes have very wide stops, as my trading horizon can be weeks to months. Therefore I need a broker that offers low leverage.

I have used IG spreadbetting until now, but today I discovered that OANDA offers extremely low leverage and I am truly impressed! However, the downside is that they do not offer many markets to trade - I often want to hold positions in the bond markets (UK, US, German, French, Italian bond futures), emerging market indices and currencies (EEM, Sensex, USDRUB, etc), sector ETFs (XLY, XLP, XLE) etc. While IG offers most of these markets, the amount of leverage is most of the time prohibitive. Oanda, on the other hand, Oanda only has plain vanilla indices and currencies on the menu.

To summarise, the question is:

Are there any spreadbetting platforms offering a wide variety of indices/bonds/EM currencies/ETFs with low leverage for longer-term trading (weeks - months), suitable for a small account (c. £12k)? Spreads are less important.

Many thanks

Do you mean Oanda offers low leverage, or low margins?

If you like less leverage, you could simply put more funds into your IG account, meaning that you're effectively using less leverage.

If you want lower margins (i.e. more leverage), CMC have a history of offering more leverage. However I haven't used them for years, and lots of people used to complain that they would get plenty of re-quotes. Accendo markets provide quite a wide range of markets, but I think margins are similar to IG so they might not be ideal for you. Sorry I can't be of more help, but to my knowledge there's no-one in the market that offers both the range and the increased leverage.

 

[Hittfeld]

Interactive Brokers UK might be another possibility with their CFD offerings. Their margin requirement on these is quite low. Furthermore position trading involves quite some interest (finance) cost. And thats were IB really shines.

Regards

 

[FTSEBRK]

Also worth a look imho are Alpari UK and GKFX.

 

[Stargunner]

I trade with CMC now, but have used IG and City Index. I also keep an Alpari account purely for executing FX via an ECN.

Firstly, 12k is actually a substantial account for a new retail trader. Apart from the usual of IG, CMC and City Index, you could try Saxo Capital Markets, who are an investment bank with a minimum account size of 10k, and a huge range of products.

If you want to go DMA, IG do this very well.

A few firms do offer flexible leverage, but their product range can sometimes be smaller, e.g. Alpari.