Best Forex Broker in Indonesia 2019

FXTM

AvaTrade

FBS

eToro

Libertex

Alpari

ATFX

Forex Brokers in Indonesia Comparison Table

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.