Plus500 Review

Plus500 is an anomaly in the world of Binary Options brokers. They are traded on the Main Market in the London Stock Exchange since 2013. By 2014 they had achieved a total market capitalization of more than $1 billion. Their list of assets is extensive and includes a proprietary trading platform that is both a web-based interface and a mobile trading app interface.

In this review, we will be consider this king of capitalized Binary Options brokers and what they have to offer you as a Forex, commodities, and stock trader.

Who Is Behind Plus500?

Plus500 began operations back in 2008. Since then they have grown into a globally respected and leading Internet-based CFDs (Contract for Difference) trading platform that offers 2,000 different instruments. These cover a range of financial product offerings including Forex, stocks, ETFs, market indices, and commodities. Plus500 submits to regulation from three respected financial jurisdictions in the United Kingdom, Australia, and Cyprus.

In Limassol, Cyprus, they offer the platform with its financial products to the European Union under the brand Plus500CY Limited. The business operations of the platform are headquartered in London under the Plus500 Limited company. The company itself is from Haiffa, Israel. With a strong financial balance sheet and fundamentals audited and regulated by the LSE, the company is poised for continued expansion and international growth.

What is Plus500? Is it a Scam?

In short: it is NOT a scam. Plus500 is an internationally recognized, publicly traded company boasting over a billion dollars in market capitalization on the London Stock Exchange. They fully segregate all customer bank accounts as per the best practices of the Financial Conduct Authority’s rules for client money. The company hedges positions utilizing its own money and not client funds. They also never pass on client funds to hedging counter parties.

Plus500 strictly does not speculate in the markets themselves. They are adamant in not having any exposure whatsoever either to sovereign debt, corporate debt, or retail clients. This is how they are confidently able to provide their clients with a secure, safe trading environment that relies on state of the art trading and operational technology. Customers receive an added protection as they are all safeguarded by the United Kingdom’s and Cyprus’ investor’s compensation schemes.

What Plus500 Is Not

Plus500 is a Binary Options trading brokerage that offers literally over 2,000 different financial instruments on which you can speculate and trade. It is not a computer trading algorithm. This means that there is no Forex trading robot provided or supported in opening an account at Plus500. While they do provide a proprietary computer-, tablet-, and mobile app-based trading platform, you will have to enter all of the trades manually on your own.

What You Will Receive With Plus500

Plus500 is a large and impressive organization with deep pockets and solid finances. It should come as no surprise that they can successfully offer an extensive range of good products and services to their member account holders. We look at these in this section below.

Plus500 Desktop User Interface

The main interface of the primary trading platform is simple to understand and easy to utilize. We like that they aesthetically divide up the trading screen according to three sections. The menu options are to the left of the trading screen. The top section of this screen shows the assets available to trade. Meanwhile the bottom section of this screen depicts the trading chart. You have options to examine charts by either candlesticks or as a simpler line chart. You can superimpose the technical indicators on the charts to get a more specially tailored price movement analysis. You can even adjust the time frames simply from 1 week views all the way down to 1 minute ones.

Plus500 Mobile Platform

A great feature that Plus500 offers its users is their proprietary mobile platform. This trading app allows account holders to access and trade via their smartphones and other mobile devices. The mobile app works on Windows, iOS, and Android systems in its various versions. For example, the iOS broker app gives customers the opportunity to trade 24/7 using their iPad, iPhone, and even Apple iWatch. Critics consistently call the Android app a highly stable platform that supports many different devices.

Plus500 Risk Management Tools

Risk management is a critical pillar of successful trading. This is all the more true with Binary Options and instruments. A few important risk management tools are included with the primary interface and the mobile platforms. These include all of the following:

• Price Alerts – give you a warning that your trade has touched a preset price level. This tool will not close out a trade, but instead only helps to keep you on top of developing price trends in a given market
• Close At Profit – a handy tool for auto closing out trades when they attain your determined and set profit point
• Close At Loss – should your trade reach a predetermined stop loss point, this will close out your position automatically
• Guaranteed Stop – when markets are particularly volatile, you need a tool that guarantees your exit. This tool in fact does absolutely limit your maximum possible losses even if the position moves hard and fast

Plus500 Trading Tutorial

We like that Plus500 is providing fully functioning and realistic tutorials and demos for these accounts. It is critical to spend time learning how to trade these instruments and the best practices for risk and capital management. This is evidenced by the risk statistic the company provides on its own website. They state that 80.6 percent of retail investors’ accounts lost money when trading CFDs with this brokerage firm. CFDs are complex instruments that carry a high risk of losing money fast because of their leverage. You should consider whether you understand how CFD’s work and can afford the high risk of losing your money. This is a fair warning as clearly the odds are stacked firmly against you with this type of Binary Options trading at Plus500.

Plus 500 Cryptocurrencies Trading

Cryptocurrencies are financial instruments that are new and not yet offered by every trading platform under the sun. The product offerings from Plus500 come paired with the American dollar. It is crucial to realize that this financial product is actually a derivative contract and not the cryptocurrency literally. It means that trading the digital assets becomes significantly more affordable than buying some of them. They also permit you to trade either the long or the short side of the cryptocurrency. At time of publication, these are the cryptocurrency pairs that Plus500 supported in their trading accounts:

• BTC/USD
• BCH/USD
• ETH/USD
• ETH/BTC
• XRP/USD
• LTC/USD

CFDs also provide you with the benefits of leveraging these trades if you so desire. At time of publication, Plus500 delivers leverage for Bitcoin, Ethereum, Litecoin, and Ripple. You gain the two advantages of greater affordability as well as access to leverage in trading the cryptocurrencies with Plus500. We like that they make it so easy to access this growing area of interest.

Plus 500 Zero Percent Commissions Trading

It may sound too good to be true, but Plus500 has built an enormous and growing business around the globe on no- commissions trading. They still make money on the spreads between the various currency pairs, ensuring that they can post a healthy profit. The no-commissions aspect is just another reason that this is such a popular Forex broker.

Plus500 Members’ Website and Customer Support

The members customer support is a critical feature of any trading operation. Plus500 provides limitless 24 hours per day, seven days per week customer support in the form of a significant Frequently Asked Questions section, email, and live online chat. We especially like the online chat format as this allows you to get your pressing questions answered quickly and effectively without having to bother with back and forth emails or to wait on a delayed response.

How Plus500 Works

Trading with Plus500 is a matter of choosing one of their account types and then depositing funds to get started. The international company keeps it simple with two straight forward kinds of accounts for clients big and small alike. These are the standard trading account and the demo account (that allows you to practice before committing your hard-earned real money). A basic minimum of steps are involved in opening up an account with Plus500.

Funding an account with the London- and Haiffa-based firm is fairly convenient, though the options are not so many and easy as rival Binary Options brokers like Vantage FX and IQ Option. Plus500 permits the following four methods of depositing and withdrawing funds:

• MasterCard and Visa Credit or Debit Cards
• Bank Account Wire Transfer funds
• Paypal transfer
• Skrill

Plus500 Trading Costs and Withdrawal Policies

As you can see from this company website graphic above, Plus500 is deadly serious about $0 commissions and trading fees. There are two categories of expenses in trading these types of options. These are commissions and spreads. Traders merely pay the still-tight spreads on any financial instrument or asset they trade as their trading expenses. Here are the minimum, dynamic spreads that apply with Plus500:

• EUR/USD .01 percent
• GBP/USD .01 percent
• EUR/GBP .03 percent
• XAU/USD (Gold) .03 percent
• UK FTSE 100 .01 percent
• USO Oil ETF .29 percent
• Brent Crude .04 percent
• Wheat .25 percent

As far as withdrawals go, Plus500 works to get them processed within one to three business days. You can receive these via bank account wire transfer, credit cards, and Ewallets.