Admiral Markets Review and Analysis
Overview
Admiral Markets has been around since 2001 and has since built its reputation as a prominent forex and CFD market maker broker, serving clients in more than 40 countries across the world. The broker has earned licensing and regulatory status in a number of different jurisdictions, including by the strict UK regulatory body the FCA, which renders it a safe and reliable broker to be trading through. Using the Meta Trader trading platforms, Admiral Markets does manage to stand out from the crowd due to its strong educational and research offering, as well as the multiple extra, advanced tools that it puts at the disposal of traders.
Touching upon all relevant aspects of the Admiral Markets offering, the following review aims to equip you with the necessary knowledge, information, and insights to help you decide whether Admiral Markets should be your broker of choice.
Investor Protection & Regulations
Admiral Markets is authorized and regulated not only in the UK by the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA), but also in Australia by the Australian Securities & Investment Commission (ASIC). Besides having the seal of approval by these two top-tier watchdogs, Admiral Markets is also regulated in another two EU-member states, namely Cyprus and Estonia.
This multi-jurisdictional regulatory status, forces Admiral Markets to be employing a series of measures aiming at the protection of clients and adhere to strict rules, such as the complete segregation of client funds, know your client policies, as well as anti-money laundering procedures and capital adequacy requirements. Against this backdrop, Admiral Markets can be considered a legitimate and trusted broker and its client traders may engage in their trading endeavors in safety and confidence.
Tradeable Products
In terms of the assets up for trading when using Admiral Markets, the list of the available assets is pretty impressive and well above the industry average, meaning that Admiral Markets users are spoilt for choice and can comfortably and effectively diversify their portfolio since they can choose between 50 different currency pairs, 44 stock market averages, over 3400 individual stock CFDs, 28 commodities and 32 cryptocurrencies CFDs. On the downside, however, the trading or buying of actual cryptocurrencies is not possible via Admiral Markets. Nevertheless, your choices are further broadened via an MT5 Invest account through Admiral Markets, whose holders may also invest directly into over 4000 different stocks, as well as between 200-500 different ETFs, the latter being reserved for professional account holders.
Fees and Commissions
Opening an account with Admiral Markets comes with no fee, however, after 24 consecutive months of inactivity, a fee of €10 per month is applied. Moreover, with most account types clients are allowed two withdrawals per month for free, while there are no fees for transfers to bank account when the same base currency is used. When transferring funds to a bank account with a different base currency, then the transaction incurs a 1% exchange fee.
There is no commission charged when trading via an Admiral Markets MT4 and MT5 account. Instead, clients are charged a dealing spread upon entering or exiting each trade. Thanks to the Straight Through Processing model employed by Admiral Markets, which ensures direct market access to its clients, the spreads offered are highly competitive and compare favorably with most of the brokerage’s competitors.
Admiral Markets offer many different types of trading accounts, allowing their clients to choose the one that suits them better. The Admiral Zero MT4 or MT 5 accounts come with the lowest all-in cost (spreads plus any commission), though their downside is that they allow access to a significantly smaller range of tradeable assets.
Account holders, except those trading via Islamic accounts, may also be charged rollovers (or swaps) fees and these should be factored in if you are planning to hold long positions overnight when trading.
Trading Platform
As a genuine MetaTrader broker, Admiral Markets offers the full suite of MetaTrader platforms, including MetaTrader 4 (MT4) and MetaTrader 5 (MT5), both of which may be downloaded on either Windows or OS X, while also be available through your browser through the MT WebTrader.
In addition, both the MT4 and MT5 platforms have a free MetaTrader Supreme Edition plugin that extends the platform’s capabilities and works on Both live trading, as well as demo accounts on Admiral Markets can benefit from the free MetaTrader Supreme Edition plugin which extends and enhances the capabilities and functionalities of the trading platforms, through the inclusion of news events on charts, as well as other trading tools and analysis widgets.
Admiral Markets stands out for offering several volatility protection settings which enhance their clients’ trading experience, which include stop orders and limits on maximum price slippage, the ability to limit or fully avoid losses when a pending order falls into a price gap, and the avoidance of order activation due to spread widening when no actual movement occurs on the market.
Mobile Offering
Admiral Markets offers its own mobile app for both iOS and Android users, which though fairly basic ensures the ability to trade on the go, as well as embedded customer service contact options. In addition, Admiral Markets clients may also use the MT4 and MT5 apps, which are also available for both the Android and the iOS operating systems. The only downside is that when using the apps, the extra functionalities obtained via the MetaTrader Supreme Edition plugin are not available.
Trader Education
Education and learning content is an aspect where Admiral Markets truly excels and its impressive offering in this regard is especially useful and helpful for beginner traders. However, intermediate as well as advanced traders may also find material geared towards their needs and skills level, which they can also use to further enhance their knowledge and insights and further improve their trading experience and chances for success.
Particularly useful for beginner traders are also the 21-day “Zero to Hero” trading course and a forex 101 online course also offered by Admiral Markets. The brokerage’s educational suite includes content in many forms, from written materials and articles to e-books and guides, as well as webinars and video tutorials, while their dedicated YouTube channel offers an impressive wealth of educational videos on how to effectively trade forex and CFDs.
Research
The research analysis and tools offered by Admiral Markets via its website and through its trading platforms are both extensive and diverse, as well as solid and credible. What is very convenient for traders is that all content is easily navigated and therefore each trader can locate the research item or topic they are interested in without trouble or problems. Moreover, all customers get free access to Admiral Markets’ Premium Analytics offering, which grants them access to the very useful macroeconomic and geopolitical news flow via the Dow Jones News calendar, sentiment indicators by Acuity, as well as technical analysis from Trading Central. Admiral Markets customers may also browse through various technical analysis reports, fundamental macroeconomic content, as well as an array of trading tools such as heat maps, which greatly enhance their trading experience and help pave their way towards trading success.
Customer Support
Admiral Markets fares quite adequately in terms of its customer support offering since clients are offered a range of contact options on the brokerage’s website, such as an email contact form, as well as live chat. Telephone support is also available, though its availability is limited to 12 hours a day, from 6 a.m to 6 p.m. UK time, seven days a week. In terms of web chatting, Admiral Markets may be reached not only through the Live Chat option, but also through What’s App, Facebook Messenger, and Telegram on all working days of the week.
Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs):
How trusted is Admiral Markets?
The trusted source of information on fintech matters SBO, gave Admiral Markets a 3.67/ 5.00 rating based on analysing 20+ criteria and testing. Admiral Markets is currently in 8th place in this ranking. OspreyFX is currently rank as the number one.
Is Admiral Markets an ECN broker?
Admiral Markets is not an ECN broker, but instead employs the Market Making and Straight Through Processing (STP) broker model, meaning that they provide their clients with direct access to the markets. For those trading through an Invest.MT5 Account, orders are passed to an external gateway that is either connected to exchange or an external liquidity provider. Moreover, Admiral Markets actually hedges all client transactions, since it pledges to carry out back-to-back transactions with its liquidity provider. Admiral Markets A.S. is the sole liquidity provider for all CFD transactions carried out on its trading platforms via the Trade.MT5 and the Zero.MT5 Accounts and in this sense Admiral Markets is also a market maker broker.
Is Admiral Markets a good broker?
The overall assessment of Admiral Markets is that it is surely a good broker since it offers trading on the reliable and well know MT4 and MT5 platforms, through a great variety of different trading accounts and also offers very extensive, wide, and varied tradeable assets lists, which greatly facilitates portfolio diversification and opens up numerous profitable opportunities for its clients. Thanks to its deep liquidity and high-speed order execution, Admiral Markets is indeed an attractive broker and based on the fact that is regulated by several financial authorities across the globe, it is also a reliable and safe venue for your trading endeavors.
