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Best Brokers for Option Trading in 2020

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Options trading can be considered as a relatively high-risk form of investment where you may pay to buy or sell securities at set prices on a later predetermined date. As the market fluctuates, the value of the options increases and decreases until they reach their specific maturity date. Options trading requires a broker, and with the influx of brokers in the market, choosing the right broker for you can be overwhelming. Every broker has its own advantages and disadvantages, as well as different selling points. It is of utmost importance that you do your research on options trading, before kickstarting your options trading career with minimal knowledge. Research on the different brokers in the market is useful as well, to determine which broker is the best fit for you. For convenience sake, we have compiled the top 8 trading platforms in the industry, to help you along your trading journey.

 

  • TD Ameritrade

 

Boasting reasonable pricing, an extensive library of resources for beginners, and an efficient and user-friendly trading platform that is suitable for both the inexperienced and experienced, TD Ameritrade takes the number one spot. Trades at this platform are set at $6.95 per trade with an additional $0.75 per contract, with no account minimum that traders have to satisfy. At the moment, the platform has a promotion in which traders are entitled to 60 days free of commission equity, options trades, and ETF as long as they deposit a minim of $3000. Additionally, there are also extra bonuses for traders who open bigger opening deposits. With a wide variety of resources for beginners, as well as the Think or Swim resource for experts, this platform serves as a reputable and useful broker for traders of any kind.

 

  • IQ Option

 

IQ Option is one of the most popular platforms not only for option trading, but also for other assets like: forex, cryptocurrencies, CFD’s etc. One of the things that makes this platform a good choice is their sophisticated trading platform – its really easy to use and is really fast in its trade executions. Its a good match for beginner and advanced traders. Whats also a positive of this trading platform is the demo account option where beginners can trade with virtual money before they use their real savings.

IQ Option also offers a good variety of technical tools and educational resources where they reveal some of the most successful trading strategies for every month.

For more information and also to check out how this platform is performing compared to other platforms you can check out this article on bbmlive.com and savedelete.com

 

  • Plus500

 

Although Plus500 only offers a limited range of tutorials and resources for amateurs, it is definitely a great place for novice traders to start at, as it does not require any trading fee and gives them the ability to sell options with nothing more than the trader’s initial investment. Plus500 also has  ETFs, stock trades that come commission-free, a limited range of cryptocurrencies and ADRs for traders to trade on. Available on both desktop and mobile phones, it gives traders the ultimate convenience to trade on the go and also provides excellent real-time notification alerts for any movements in the market. The minimum deposit on Plus500 is $100 which is in general pretty high.

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  • TradeStation

 

Originally a trader’s software company, TradeStation has since expanded tremendously and is now one of the leading brokers in the market. Especially suitable for professional traders, the platform provides professional data and swift trade execution for the experienced. Trades are priced at $5 with an additional $0.50 per contract, but the platform also offers per-contract pricing as well as unbundled pricing. Though this platform does not offer much for novices, professional traders will find that they are able to host family offices or business portfolios on TradeStation with ease. With a multitude of advanced analytical tools that are free with an account, TradeStation is known for selling many of its professional tools to investors who have opened accounts with other brokers. However, some points to note are the minimum account balance requirement of$2000 and at least five trade transactions per year in order to not incur an annual account fee of $95.

 

  • Interactive Brokers

 

For traders who prefer to make frequent and smaller trades, Interactive Brokers can do just that. With their no per-trade fee and an options commissions of $0.70 per contract, traders can execute trades as frequently as they want to without worrying about the high costs that they are incurring. High volume traders also benefit as they are eligible for lower pricing which can go down to as low as $0.15 per contract with more than 100,000 contracts each month. With their attractive pricing for all traders, clients often flock to Interactive Brokers to maximize profits. Their advanced technology is also highly sought-after, which includes a natural language AI bot that helps you place orders based on your instructions, and its expert desktop platform.

 

  • Ally Invest

 

Ally Invest is also another reputable broker that is most well known for offering low costs and zero minimum policy. With trades charged at $4.96 and $0.65 per contract, traders are not required to maintain an account minimum. They have an ongoing promotion that entitles traders to up to $3500 worth of bonus cash, the exact amount of which depends on the amount of the deposits in question. Beginners can start by investing a low amount to test out their abilities and strategies, without having to fuss over the fees or minimum balances. Equipped with valuable data, charts, analytics and tools, Ally Invest is an excellent platform that helps you with your strategies in order to maximise profit.

 

  • Lightspeed

 

Accommodating experienced traders more so than beginners, Lightspeed charges $0 for each trade and $0.60 for each contract, with a minimum of $1 for every trade. They offer tiered pricing, which starts at 500 contracts monthly, up to 100,000 contracts per month at a $0.20 fee. Offering a range of platforms including order execution, customized layouts, execution, and historical data analytics, Lightspeed is equipped with many other useful tools and features to enhance the trading experience of professionals. With their platforms available on desktop, web and mobile devices, clients can easily switch between platforms with ease and execute trades on the go.

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With these top brokers in mind, extensive research, such as those provided by source:business 24-7, is indeed crucial for you to find a broker that can readily meet your needs. Regardless of whether you are an amateur who wants to try their hand at options trading or a professional trader who has accumulated years of experience, there is a suitable broker for everyone. Once you find a broker that you are comfortable with and can confidently rely on, you are on the right track to kickstarting your options trading career.

How To Trade CFD’s

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How To Place A CFD Trade

CFDs allow you to trade on markets that are falling, give you the ability to use leverage, and make use of many different instruments, while some allow you to trade for 24 hours a day. For these reasons, investors are taking full advantage of this flexibility of CFDs as part of their diversified portfolio. What exactly are CFD’s can be found in this article on business24-7

CFD Trading Steps

  • Choose A Market

First you have to decide which market you’d like to trade in. For trading inspiration, visit and study technical and fundamental analysis.

  • Decide: Buy or Sell

If you think the market price will fall in value press “sell”, and press “buy” if you think it will rise.

  • Select A Trade Size

Next you have to choose how many CFDs you’d like to trade, with 1 CFD equivalent to 1 physical share of equity.

  • Add A Stop Loss

A stop loss is used in order to close a position at a particular price in case it might move too far against you.

  • Monitor and Close A Trade

The moment you place a trade you will be able to see a profit-loss update at the top of your screen. This will give you a real time update of your position. By clicking the close trade button you will be able to exit a trade.

CFD Trading Explained

  1. Choose A Market

CFDs offer trading opportunities in many different markets like currencies, indices, shares, commodities, interest rates and bonds. These allow for instant access to global markets in Australia, New Zealand, Asia, the UK, Europe and the US.

With such a variety in choice, it is important to find the best trading opportunity that is perfect for you. Since most trading platforms have research tools, you can use these to help you identify that perfect trading opportunity.

With the search function available on the platform, you can search for and select a market.

  1. Decide To Buy Or Sell

After choosing a market, find out what the current price is. This can be accomplished by looking at a trading ticket on the platform.  CFD markets trade on two prices. The first price being the selling price or the bid price, and the second being the buying price or the offer.

When subtracting the one from the other you get what is called the spread. The price of the CFD is determined by the price of the underlying instrument. Trading in CFD is determined by the following: If you believe the price will go up you will buy that market, also commonly known as going long. If you believe that the price will go down, you will sell the market, also known as going short.

  1. Selecting The Trade Size

Before trading in CFDs, you have to select the size or the amount of CFDs you’d like to trade in. When trading in equities a single CFD is equal to 1 share. With all others like forex, bonds or interest rates, indices and commodities, the value of a single CFD depends on the instrument. To see what number you’re trading on look up the tick value in your particular instrument’s information sheet.

Because CFDs are a leveraged product, you do not need to have a huge percentage of the overall trade value, commonly known as the margin, in order to enter into a trade. Basically, the bigger the trade you’re about to enter into the bigger of a margin that is required.

Make sure that you have sufficient funds in your account before you place a trade and make use of the margin calculator to calculate your initial margin.

  1. Add Stop And Limit Orders

Before placing a trade, consider a risk management strategy. A good risk management technique is to include a stop loss in your trade, which will close a trade when the market reaches a particular level. In essence a stop loss order instructs the platform to close an open position once the trade reaches a certain level set by the trader. A stop loss is beneficial, as it triggers just in time to prevent further loss.

CFD-stop-loss-trade

A limit order on the other hand closes a trade at a price which is better than the current market price for that instrument. It helps to lock in profit targets.

  1. Monitor Your Trade

Now that you’ve placed a trade and included stops and limits, it is time to monitor the trade. The profitability or loss of your CFD trade will be influenced by every move of the market price. Whilst in a trade, you will be able to track the market prices, see profits and losses in real time and add additional trades or close existing ones.

  1. Closing Your Trade

Once you are happy with your trade and want to close it, choose the close position option and close the trade using a CFD broker like Plus500. Upon closing the trade, you will be able to see your net profit and loss and it will be visible in your account cash balance.

The Basics of Forex Trading

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The word forex refers to the ability to buy and sell a currency in exchange for another. It stands for foreign exchange. Forex is one of the markets in the world that is traded heavily on a daily basis.

A lot of people, businesses as well as countries are directly involved in the trading of forex. Therefore, when you are about to go on vacation to Europe and you trade your US dollars to euro, you are participating in foreign exchange.

When there is more of a demand for a particular currency, that demand will push the value of that currency either up or down in relation to other currencies. Before you can trade in currencies though, here are a few things you ought to know first, in order to be able to take the first step and start.

Currency Pairs

currency-pairs-for-forex-trading

First thing to learn about forex trading are currency pairs and what they mean.

Currencies always trade in pairs in the forex market, meaning that there are always two currencies involved in a transaction eg. when you trade euros for dollars. Currency pairs are used so that one can clearly see the cost of one currency in comparison to another.

Symbols are used in the forex market to show specific currency pairs. The US dollar is designated by USD, the euro by EUR and the and the British pound by GBP. Thus, when talking about the pound/us dollar pair, we designate it as GBP/US. Other currency symbols also commonly traded are the Japanese yen=JPY, British pound=GBP, Swiss franc=CHF, Canadian dollar=CAD, New Zealand dollar=NZD, Japanese yen=JPY and Australian dollar=AUD.

Each one of these currency pairs have a market price associated with it. The price quoted on a currency pair indicates how much of the second currency eg. USD/JPY (in this case it is JPY) is needed to buy 1 unit of the first currency (in this case USD). For example, if the price quoted for EUR/USD is 1.4215, it means that it costs 1.4215 US dollar to buy 1 unit of euro.

If you’d like to know how much euro you need to buy 1 US dollar all you need to do is flip the pair to USD/EUR. Thus, you would need to divide 1/1.4215. The result in this case will be 0.7034. It would cost 0.7034 euros to buy 1 US dollar, based on that market price.

Market Pricing: A Quick Overview

When learning about forex trading as a beginner it is important that you learn new terminology teaching you about the price of currency pairs. Understanding how these terminologies fit not each other and how to use them to calculate profitable trades helps you get one step closer to your first currency trade.

In general currency pairs would move about 50 to 100 pips per day. The word pip stands for point in percentage, indicates the fourth decimal place in most currency pairs. In the case of the JPY currency, the second place.

If the price of a currency pair moves 50 pips it would as an example move from 1.4500 to 1.4550. Thus, if you bought at 1.4500 and sold at 1.4550, you would have made a profit of 50 pips.

The profit you would have made on the abovementioned trade also depends on how much currency you purchased. Buying a micro lot, which is 1,000 units, would only give you a 10 cents value on each pip, which means that your profit would be 50 pips * 0.10 = $5.

If you bought a mini lot, which is equal to 10,000 units, each pip would be worth a dollar. Your overall profit would have been $50. If you bought a standard lot, which is equal to 100,000 units, each pip would be worth $10, making your profit $500.

The value of each pip is called the “pip value”. Anytime you are dealing with a pair where the US dollar is listed second, then the pip values mentioned above apply. Whenever the US dollar is mentioned first, the pip values may be different.

To find out what the pip value is for the USD/CHF for example, you would have to divide the normal pip value by the exchange rate of the USD/CHF at that particular time. So, if the USD/CHF trades at 0.9367, a micro lot would be worth $0.10/0.9367 = $0.1067. The JPY pairs, like the USD/JPY have the exact same process except you have to multiply by 100.

When trading the first currency of the pair is called the directional currency on the forex price chart. Should you pull up a chart of the EUR/USD and you see the price moving up, it simply means that the euro is gaining in relation to the US dollar and vice versa.

Shortening The Learning Curve

In order to truly learn about forex as a beginner, one has to experience the movement of prices in reality. To do so you would have to place trades with a demo account or fake money. Using a demo account means that there is no real risk imposed on you. A number of brokers offer you the ability to trade with these demo accounts, that work exactly the same as real live accounts.

Forex Market – The Final Word

It is important that you understand the concepts discussed above in order to have a firmer grasp on what is happening when a currency pair rises or fall. Doing a technical analysis and working out the maths involved in the difference in pips between two currency price points will help you determine what the possible profit potential is. You should also be careful when you choose your own forex broker.

What are Binary Options and How Do They Work?

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What Is A Binary Option?

picture-binary-options

A binary option can be defined as a financial instrument with payoff being either a fixed amount or nothing. It is based on a system of a yes or no question. What this means is that a binary option offers you a well-defined risk and a clear outcome of what you can expect on every trade you enter into. Every binary option trade start with this question.

Is the market going to close above a particular price at a particular time?

options-trading-buy-sell

If you answer yes, then you can invest in the option and buy it. Otherwise if not, you can sell the option. The price you pay for a binary is between $0-$100, and as in any other tradeable market, it involves a bid and ask price.

When thinking about it, one can easily come to the realization that binary options are a reflection of how we think of things in our lives. We either get a yes or no, and things either happen or they do not. When entering into a trade, the payout will reflect either a yes, which means taking it all, or a no, which means losing at all, at expiration time.

What you can also do is close a position earlier in order to lock it in for profit or to limit your losses. If you are an active trader, you would most probably be scanning the market every day, as you are dealing with complex issues on a frequent basis.

As such when you trade binary options, you want to be dealing with a broker who removes complexities and make things simple. A good broker like IQ Options for instance knows that you would want to focus on the market and on your position, and not on a lot of unnecessary products.

How Do Binary Options Work?

When learning about how binary options work, there are 3 concepts that are vital: the time of expiry, the strike price and the underlying market. If you allow yourself to become familiar with those 3 concepts, you will understand the basics of binary options.

The amount of money you pay is the absolute maximum that you can also lose. For that reason, we say that the risk you undertake is capped. At times you might not want to wait until the time of expiration and might want to close your position to lock profits in earlier.

First, you would want to pick an asset that you’d want to trade in. Each one of those assets would be based on an underlying market, with the trade based on the price movement of that market.

Then you’d want to find a strike price that you’re comfortable with. The strike price is the level you predict the market price will be at expiration. Either above or below.

Afterwards you select a time of expiration. This is the moment of revelation for every trader, because the value of your binary option is determined here. Also you should make sure to choose an options broker who has a fast trading execution. One of the fastest to choose from are IQ Option and Experts Option. If you want to learn more about this broker you can find on overview of IQ option here.

How Risky Are Binary Options?

The good thing about binary options is that you are always able to know the risk reward ratio before you start trading. Since your trade is paid for upfront, you cannot lose more than you paid for, and will always know the maximum potential in profit for each trade.

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Let’s explain exactly how each trade goes:

Let’s say you buy a binary options contract for $45, in the hopes that it will end at $100, thus with a profit target of $55, ($100-$45=$55). You will never incur a loss bigger than $45, no matter how much the market moves.

What makes trading more difficult is complicated fee structures, payout structures that are confusing and margin requirements that are hard to understand.

How Are Binary Options Regulated In The US?

The Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) regulates all binary options trading. As such binary options can only be traded in the US on a Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) regulated exchange.

Nadex is a full-service exchange and is regulated by the CFTC. They are also designated by the CFTC as a Designated Contract Market and Derivatives Clearing Organization. They match buyers and sellers in a secure manner.

Binary Options Trading Example

At expiration a trader might be hoping for the following:

  1. If the market expires at or below 1.1700 at $4AM PST, the seller will receive the $100 payout.
  2. Should the market be a tick or more above 1.1700, you will receive the full payout, as you are the buyer.

Should you not want to wait till expiration, you can still close your position at current market price. The profit or loss you will incur is determined by the difference between the entry and exit prices.

As each binary option actually reflects a question, the question in this case would be: Will the EUR/USD close above 1.17?

This is shown as: EUR/USD > 1.1700