Best Forex Broker in Indonesia 2019

Despite the fact that currency trading is still in its infancy in Indonesia, many Forex brokers are there to offer their services and even more, traders want to try their skills in trading. However, one must remember that among those who offer services are a lot of scammers and we want to help you to find the best legal and regulated Forex companies in the country. Find our list of the best brokers inside.

The brokers below represent the best forex brokers for trading in Indonesia.

FXTM

FXTM, short for ForexTime, is a platform with a primary focus on foreign exchange. That specialization allows it to rise above many others when it comes to Forex focused trading platforms and tools. CFDs are available on 50+ currency pairs including major, minor, and exotic pairs. Leverage is available up to 1000:1.

Spreads are competitive across all platforms with 24-hour trading open 5 days per week. FXTM is based in Cyprus and licensed by the International Financial Services Commission (IFSC), Cyprus Securities and Exchange Commission, and other regulators in and out of the EU. A free demo account is available.

OctaFX

OctaFX is a Forex and CFD trading platform with a focus on low, competitively priced spreads. It supports MT4, MT5, and cTrader trading platforms. cTrader offers the lowest costs, but does require a bit more experience. Novice traders are best starting off at OctaFX using MetaTrader 4, which supports micro accounts.

OctaFX supports 28 currency pairs, a smaller number than many competitors. You can get leverage up to 500:1 for currencies. Different leverage is available for metals, indices, and crypto trading. OctaFX was founded in 2011 and is based in and licensed in Saint Vincent and the Grenadines. 

FBS

FBS Markets Inc. is a Forex and CFD broker that offers its services across the globe. The company was established in 2009 and since then, the brand has grown in size, capacity and technology. It offers currency pairs, CFDs, stocks, metals and cryptocurrencies on MT4 and MT5 platforms.

FBS Markets offers 37 currency pairs, 4 metals, 3 CFDs, 4 cryptocurrencies and 32 stocks.

FBS provides the MT4 and MT5 trading platforms as WebTrader, desktop applications and mobile applications. For leverage accounts, this brokerage offers leverage of up to 3000:1.

eToro

eToro is an online trading platform that was founded in 2007 by the Assia siblings and their friend David Ring in Tel Aviv, Israel. Formerly known as RetailFX, eToro is the pioneering online broker for social trading. Their Openbook social trading platform in fact changed the nature of the way beginner online traders can trade the financial markets. It made the markets accessible to everyone, no matter what their level of experience by creating a user-friendly environment and allowing traders to copy the trades of other traders’ strategies automatically.

Alpari

Alpari is an industry veteran founded in 1998. It is headquartered in Port Louis, Mauritius and has an operations headquarters in London. The company offers services to international traders from 150+ countries, though the United States is a noteworthy gap – its membership to the US National Futures Association was revoked in 2015, forcing it out of the United States market.

This brokerage is originally from Russia. It is licensed in Belize as well as Saint Vincent and the Grenadines. It supports the MetaTrader 4 and MetaTrader 5 platforms. Forex traders can access 44 currency pairs and leverage is available up to 1,000:1. It is an exciting and innovative brokerage.

How to Choose a Forex Broker as an Indonesian trader

As opportunities are opening up now for the average person in Indonesia to trade Forex, it has become very important to choose a reliable broker for you to trade with. What are the crucial things you need to check before opening an account with a broker?

The first and the most important thing is to check whether the broker is regulated by BAPPEBTI (local Forex regulator). Then you will have to try the broker’s trading platform to see if it is good enough for you. After that, you will have to look at the fees and commissions the company charges to see how low or high they are in comparison to other brokers in the country. It is also important to see how many types of accounts the broker offers, as your size of capital should match your level of risk taking. It goes without saying that customer service is also a key priority in choosing a broker, as you want the service provider to deal with your problems in a business like and effective manner. Last but not least, it is good if the broker offers a lot of useful additional services.

General Regulation & Indonesian Regulation

The Western world has known Forex trading for decades and regulation in the area has seen a lot of changes. It is not that easy to run a scam and get away with it now, as most regulators in Europe and USA are quite strict and will not allow companies to defraud their customers of their money. Margin requirements and leverage offered are now stricter than they used to be, and that decreases the risk that both a broker and a trader can take. This means that investors’ capital is now much safer than it used to be.

As has been mentioned, Forex in Indonesia is relatively new. The current regulator of the local market is BAPPEBTI, which can be translated as Commodities and Futures Trading Regulatory Agency. It was established in 2005 with the purpose of regulating financial markets in Indonesia and supervising of financial intermediaries in the country. In 2013 the agency introduced quite strict requirements for those who provide financial services in the country as a lot of private investors had lost a lot of money due to various scams, illegal trading, and manipulation by non-regulated brokers. A lot of those brokers are now out of business and BAPPEBTI regulated brokers are much safer to trade with than ever before.

Trading Platform & Software

Traders do not really have to do a nine to five job, as Forex market is open 24 hours per day, five and a half days per week. You can skip a few days and trade only a few hours or even a few minutes per day. What you need is a reliable and easy to use trading platform. Most brokers now have Metatrader 4, which is really user-friendly, has all necessary features and a very advanced chartstation with all possible indicators and necessary features adjusted for a person with limited computer knowledge. You may also expect a broker to offer their own online browser software. Try it to make sure it offers everything you need. You need to practice trading with that platform on a demo account just to get a feel how stuff works and whether it meets your needs or not.

Commissions & Spreads

Forex brokers make money by getting commissions. However, these are not standard commissions as in stock trading, but commissions in the form of spreads. Spreads are simply the difference in buy and sell prices offered by your broker. For the EUR/USD a typical difference between those prices will be 1-3 pips depending on a broker. So, if you open a position in the pair you will have a deficit of those 1-3 pips (depending on your broker).

Spreads can be fixed or variable. With most brokers, fixed spreads for major pairs will be 1-5 pips and crosses 6-20 pips. Variable spreads are lower under normal market conditions. For major pairs, they can be 0.1-1 pip and for crosses 1-6 pips. However, they do change when something extraordinary happens in the market. For example, FED announced interest rate policy or changes overnight lending rates and markets start moving like crazy up or down. Then variable spreads change and can be ten, twenty or even fifty times bigger for a few minutes than they usually are. Then they come back to normal. So, you can choose a broker with the type of spreads that fit your trading style best.

Account Types

Brokers try to attract customers of varied incomes and so they offer different kinds of accounts based on the size of capital that you want to use for trading.

Micro account

If you have a hundred $ you can still trade with most brokers who offer a micro account. Minimum size lot for the account is 1k and the price of a pip is just 10 cents.

Mini account

If you want to trade bigger volumes, but still have under 5k you can open a mini account and trade mini lots, the size of those are 10k and the pip cost 1$. Be sure to have more than 1000$ to reduce your risk in trading.

Standard account

Those who want to trade standard lot sizes of 100k need to open a standard account. A recommended amount for that is over 20k, but you can try it with 10k. Just remember that the bigger the position of your transaction, the bigger the risk is too.

Islamic accounts

The majority of populations in Indonesia are Muslims. If that is your faith you can open a swap free Islamic account. In these accounts, you won’t have to pay interest and you will not be paid interest on overnight lending rates.

Customer Service

Customer service of a broker will tell you a lot about the reliability of the company and its willingness to offer the best kind of service to you. If they fail to deal with you in your local language or dialect, ignore your online requests, deal with your questions for weeks, you might consider searching for another broker. So, check how they deal with your questions and then make a decision if you are satisfied with their service or not.

Additional Services

You will be surprised to see how much more services brokers offer to attract and win you as their customer. Some will offer tons of free educational materials in video, audio and text formats. Others will organize trading contests with lucrative money prizes; others will have daily market recaps, analysis and so on and so forth. Select the broker with most useful services and enjoy them.

Conclusion

Trading Forex is an excellent opportunity to invest your money and be your own boss. However, it comes with risks. One of them is choosing a broker. We hope the article helped you to understand what makes a reliable broker and how to find one. Good luck in trading.

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