AvaTrade Broker Detailed Review

Is AvaTrade Safe?

With more than 200,000 registered clients globally, and more than 2 million trades executed monthly, AvaTrade is a leading broker in the Forex trading industry. The company was formed in 2006 when AVA Trade EU Ltd was founded in Ireland.

AVA Trade EU Ltd, is compliant with MiFID and is regulated by the Central Bank of Ireland (Reference No.: C53877) and Ava Capital Markets Pty Ltd is licensed in Australia by ASIC (license: 406684).

Some of AvaTrade’s recent awards include:

• Best Forex Broker 2019 (Daytrading)

• Best Trading Experience (Fxdailyinfo)

• Best Forex Broker (FXEmpire)

• Best Broker: Most Reliable (FXEmpire)

• Best Forex Broker (The European)

AvaTrade for Beginners

As you would expect from one of the larger brokers, AvaTrade offers a comprehensive repository of educational material to get new traders started, as well helpful tools and analysis to assist traders in finding the best opportunities. While customer support is 24/5, the same as most other brokers, it is available in 14 languages and high-quality support is a top priority.

Educational Material

AvaTrade has a good range of educational material to offer its clients, and much of it is designed for new traders. AvaTrade also offers a Sharp Trader website with a swathe of analytical material including videos, trading tools and daily analysis.

Trading for beginners – The Trading for beginners section gives you all the information you need to tackle Forex and CFD instruments with confidence. In this section, traders can learn about many trading topics, including ‘What is Forex’, ‘What is a pip’, ‘What is Metatrader?’, ‘MACD trading strategies’, ‘How to read a Forex chart’, ‘Technical analysis’, and more.

Video Education – AvaTrade’s video section is strong and covers many different topics including Advanced Trading Tools, Beginner Lessons, Forex Trading Strategies, and more.

Ebook – AvaTrade’s Ebook gives traders a good overview of basic Forex terminology and the different groups of currency pairs available. The Ebook also explains how to read a Forex quote and the advantages of Forex trading.

Analysis Material

AvaTrade offers traders a free educational and analysis website called Sharp Trader designed to include everything a trader needs for day to day trading. Traders can enjoy daily technical and fundamental analysis by AvaTrade’s experienced researchers and videos reviewing a wide range of topics for all levels of trading knowledge. The site also offers trading tools – including an economic calendar and trading calculators as well as access to AvaTrade’s trading platforms.

Customer Support

AvaTrade’s clients have access to professional customer support, 24 hours a day, five days a week. The AvaTrade support team can be reached via telephone, live chat, and email in 14 languages including English, French, Italian, Spanish, German, Portuguese, Arabic, Russian, Japanese, Chinese, and Taiwanese. Additionally, if you deposit 1000 USD or more AvaTrade will assign a dedicated account manager to assist you with your first trades and teach you how to use the various platforms and tools.

Trading Conditions

AvaTrade has a selection of trading instruments, including Forex, commodities, stocks, indices, cryptocurrencies, bonds, and ETFs. Besides these, AvaTrade also has vanilla options, which is an uncommon feature with Forex brokers. With competitive pricing, leverage up to 1:400 on Forex pairs, AvaTrade should appeal to both new and experienced traders.

Account Types

Demo Account – AvaTrade’s free demo account is a handy tool to practice your trading, test an expert advisor, or acquaint yourself with how Forex trading works. With 100,000 USD virtual funds, the demo account accurately simulates AvaTrade’s real account and will only expire after 21 days.

Regular Account – AvaTrade’s regular trading account has a minimum deposit of 100 USD and offers competitive spreads, dependable customer support, and access to a wide range of tradeable instruments. Regular account holders enjoy progressive perks according to the amount they deposit. From 1,000 USD and upward, you get a bonus of 20% on your deposit and 1-on-1 trading sessions with a personal account manager. Clients who deposit 2,000 USD or more will also gain free access to DupliTrade, a powerful copy trading platform. More about DupliTrade later on.

VIP Account – VIP accounts require a minimum deposit of 50,000 USD. With this account, you will enjoy several privileges, including a personal account manager, faster withdrawals, better trading conditions, and a 10,000 USD bonus (the maximum allowable by AvaTrade). VIP clients also have access to DupliTrade. Please note that you can reach VIP status by growing your account to 50,000 USD with profitable trading.

Spreads and Commissions

At AvaTrade you can expect spreads as low as 0.7 pips (e.g. on the EUR/USD and USD/JPY), and there is no commission on trades, whatsoever. Rollover (interest) may be charged (or earned) on certain positions that are held overnight.

Deposits and Withdrawals Fees

Ways to Deposit to AvaTrade

You can fund your AvaTrade trading account with:

• Moneybookers (Skrill): 100 – 5,000 USD

• WebMoney: 100 – 5,000 USD

• Neteller: 100 – 5,000 USD

• Wire transfer: 100 USD minimum

• Credit or debit cards: 100 – 20,000 USD

How Fast are Deposits Processed?

• E-payments are processed within 24 hours.

• Wire transfers from offshore bank accounts (outside of South Africa) can take up to 7 business days to be processed.

• Wire transfers from local South African banks will typically be cleared in under five business days.

• First deposits with credit or debit cards can take up to 1 business day to reflect in your trading account due to the security verification process.

How to Withdraw Funds From AvaTrade

Due to anti-money laundering regulations, withdrawals can only be sent via payment methods with which you funded your account, except when profits have been made by trading and 200% of the initial deposit amount has already been withdrawn via the initial payment channel. Withdrawals are typically processed and sent within 1 to 2 business days. Once the withdrawal is processed, additional time may be required for you to receive it. Here are the different times according to the different payment channels:

• For credit and debit cards – up to 5 business days.

• For e-money – up to 24 hours.

• For wire transfers – up to 10 business days (depending on the bank’s location).

AvaTrade Deposit and Withdrawal Fees

AvaTrade doesn’t charge clients for making deposits and withdrawals. The only costs are the bank card, e-wallet, or bank transfer fees.

Trading Platforms

Metatrader 4 – The MT4 trading platform is one of the most widely used Forex trading platforms and can also be used to trade other instruments like commodities, cryptocurrency, stock index, and stock CFDs. One of the features that make MT4 popular is its auto trading feature that enables algorithmic trading and strategy backtesting with expert advisors (trading robots).

AvaOptions – With AvaTrade, you can also trade vanilla options. Options trading is exciting and provides traders with opportunities to benefit from more than just the 2-dimensional nature of Forex trading. You can trade vanilla options on more than 40 currency pairs, gold, and silver. With an AvaOptions demo account, the AvaTrade support team is there to assist you while you learn the ropes.

Trading Tools

Avatrade offers a number of trading tools, including Autochartist, Duplitrade and Zulutrade.

Autochartist is an award-winning automated technical analysis tool that works with MT4 and identifies trading opportunities across hundreds of financial instruments. Autochartist is free to any AvaTrade client making a 500 USD deposit.

Autochartist’s advanced recognition engine identifies the strongest potential trading opportunities and predicts future price movements. Some of Autochartist’s key features are:

• Chart pattern recognition
• Fibonacci pattern recognition
• Key level analysis
• Pattern quality indication

Also available on AvaTrade are DupliTrade and ZuluTrade, both Automated Copy Trading Platforms

With a minimum deposit of 2,000 USD at Avatrade, traders gain access to DupliTrade, a copy trading platform linked to your MT4 trading platform. DupliTrade allows you to automatically duplicate the actions of expert traders (with proven histories) directly into your AvaTrade trading account.

Your MT4 trading account can also be linked to a ZuluTrade account, also used for copy trading.

*AvaTrade’s MT4 MAM accounts can also be used for copying trades from a master trading account to an unlimited number of ‘copying’ accounts.

Mobile Trading App

For those traders who are often on the move, AvaTradeGO is a choice mobile trading platform. It is available for Android and iOS devices and has a user-friendly, advanced, and intuitive home screen. With AvaTradeGO, you can open and manage several MT4 accounts on the same control panel.

Evaluation Method

We value transparency and openness in the way we review the partners. To bring transparency to the forefront, we have published our review process that includes a detailed breakdown of the AvaTrade offering. Central to that process is the evaluation of the reliability of the broker, the platform offering of the broker and the trading conditions offered to clients, which are summarised in this review. Each one of these is graded, and an overall score is calculated and assigned to the broker.

AvaTrade Risk Statement

Trading Forex is risky, and each broker is required to detail how risky the trading of Forex CFDs is to clients. AvaTrade would like you to know that: CFDs are complex instruments and come with a high risk of losing money rapidly due to leverage. 71% of retail investor accounts lose money when trading CFDs with this provider. You should consider whether you understand how CFDs work and whether you can afford to take the high risk of losing your money.

Overview

We investigated AvaTrade, and find them to be an outstanding broker. The only disadvantage being that AvaTrade charges an ‘inactive account fee’ of 25 USD on trading accounts that have been dormant for three months or longer. For accounts denominated in other currencies, it is 25 units of the particular base currency. Accounts that lie dormant for more than a year may also be charged an administration fee.

What we like most about AvaTrade are:

• Low transaction fees

• An impressive variety of tradeable instruments

• A varied choice of trading platforms

• A high standard of customer support

• Excellent educational support for new traders.

• Decent trading tools, especially Autochartist

• Segregated accounts for client deposits

Most retail CFD accounts lose money. Your capital is at risk.