Recently heard about the Pepperstone web trading platform and took a look at it to see if it’s any good. Seems like a pretty neat platform with most of the tools that one would need to trade across the world.
Even though it’s an Australian broker, my experience using it for the past year shows that there’s no difference in currency funding, experience and breadth of instruments to trade compared with a local broker.
Here’s a quick review on what the platform has to offer.
Most indices around the world are available for trading.
Precious metals available for trade though most would trade gold and silver. Note the corresponding currency is the USD or EURO, not your funding currency.
Soft commodities are also available.
Energy like crude oil and natural gas are available.
Last but not least the hottest flavour of the day – bitcoin.
Unlike the other instruments, Pepperstone only allows leverage of up to 20:1. This in itself is already quite a lot.
Given the wild swings in the market, it would be safer for Pepperstone and the individual traders.
Personally though I think that bitcoin has room to run.
The mind boggling thing about the platform is that it allows you to use 1:500 leverage. That’s unbelievable.
I know IG markets allow up to something like 1:2.5.
This is really out of this world.
I guess if you understand the risk and know how to handle it, you could make a real big killing.
Given the big swings in the bitcoin market, you seriously do need to have some guts to use 1:500 on that instrument.
It can swing up and down by 10 to 20% within a day.
Pepperstone allows you to trade on their web platform for convenience but they have connections with MetaTrader 4 and 5 if you want to customize your trading experience.
For people on the go, there’s iPhone, iPad and Android trading apps.
One thing that I found really convenient is the range of funding options.
I’ve never seen such extensive options, and some of the funding options are immediate.
No more waiting for 2 days before seeing funds in your account while your trading opportunity slips away.
Instant funding can be both good and bad. Good because you can trade immediately.
Bad because there is virtually no barrier of putting money into the account, and that makes it very tempting to put large sums and trade on them.
Coupled with the amount of leverage possible… only experienced traders should use this combination.
All in all, Pepperstone is a good platform to use. The interface is very friendly, funding options are extensive, and there’s more than enough choice of instruments to trade on.
Use the 1:500 leverage option very sparingly though.
For prudence’s sake, stick to 1:100 or below.