Pepperstone Review
Founded in 2010, Pepperstone is a leading forex and CFD broker that is based in Melbourne, Australia. Pepperstone is a no dealing desk broker that offers its clients ECN trading services. To serve its international clientele, Pepperstone also maintains offices in Dallas, USA, and Shanghai, China. Over the years that Pepperstone has been operational, the broker has won numerous awards for the high-quality services that it has provided to its clients.
Advantages
- Great customer service.
- User-friendly and fast account.
- Easy-to-use and nice looking platforms.
Regulation
Pepperstone has regulatory licences in Australia and the UK. The former is provided through the Australian Securities and Investments Commission (ASIC) whereas the latter is through the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA).
The ASIC licence will cover those clients who are based in Australia, New Zealand and South Africa. Although the FCA licence is from the UK, it will also cover all those traders who are based in Europe. This is because of the Markets in Financial Directive (MiFID) which allow any European regulated broker to offer services to other EU members.
For the UK licence, if for any reason Pepperstone were to go under, your client accounts are covered up to £50k. Moreover, it is great to know that there is a governmental agency to turn to in the event of any issues that you are having with a broker.
Leverage
The maximum leverage that you can achieve on your account is 500:1 or 30:1 if you are in the UK. This maximum leverage is applicable to the Forex, Energy and Precious metal assets.
Account Types
There are three main account types that you can make use of. These are the Razor Account, the Standard account and the Islamic or “Swap Free” account. The latter is an account that is designed such that no interest is charged on the positions.
Apart from the fees on the Standard / Razor account and the Swap Free structure of the Islamic account, there are not that many differences between them. All of these accounts allow you to scalp, hedge and develop your own EAs.
Spreads And Fees
Low fees and spreads are Pepperstone’s bread and butter. Given their unique approach to matching client orders, they are able to achieve some of the lowest spreads in the industry. In most cases, these fees are near zero especially for the razor account.
What spreads you will get on your account will depend on which type you have opened. Example for Standard Account:
| Asset | Min Spread | Avg Spread |
|---|---|---|
| AUDJPY | 1 | 1.46 |
| AUDUSD | 1 | 1.27 |
| CHFJPY | 1.2 | 2.23 |
| EURAUD | 1 | 1.39 |
| EURGBP | 1 | 1.36 |
| EURUSD | 1 | 1.16 |
| EURUSD | 1 | 1.16 |
| GBPUSD | 1.1 | 1.49 |
| USDCAD | 1 | 1.47 |
| USDJPY | 1 | 1.25 |
Conclusion
Pepperstone is one of the most respected and fastest growing Forex brokers in the world. They were innovators in the space and have built a brokerage that has changed the way that we view retail FX trading.
Through their use of High Frequency Trading technology and co-location agreements, Pepperstone has given traders a unique service. Traders are now able to execute orders with razor thin margins in a mere fraction of a second.