Best Forex Brokers in Kenya 2020

Despite the fact Kenya is among the poorest countries in the world, there are still possibilities to invest in the markets there. Unfortunately, Forex trading is absolutely new and most companies that provide their services there are often regarded as some financial pyramid schemes. We may hope that the Central Bank of Kenya introduces a regulation for currency trading soon and that the situation for potential traders will improve. In the meantime we have laid out the best brokers serving the region.

The brokers below represent the best forex brokers for trading in Kenya

Oanda

OANDA is one of the early pioneers of online forex brokers, established in the mid 1990s. The company is said to be founded by Dr Michael Stumm and Dr. Richard Olsen.

When the online trading platform FXTrade was launched in 2001, it was the first fully automated forex trading platform. Since then, OANDA have grown by leaps and bounds to handle more than a million queries a day. It is estimated that about 20% of the global spot forex trades goes through OANDA’s servers.

FBS

FBS is a Forex ECN and CFD broker which was established in 2009 and is regulated by the IFSC in Belize and the CySEC in Cyprus. Since then, the brand has grown in size, capacity and technology and now supports 12 million traders from over 190 countries trading across Forex, Commodities, Metals, Cryptocurrencies and more.

FBS uses the hybrid broker model of Straight Through Processing (STP) and an Electronic Communications Network (ECN). There is no dealing desk as orders are passed directly into the systems of the liquidity providers at the actual market prices.

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.

How to Choose a Forex Broker as a Kenyan trader

Forex trading is currently unregulated in the country and choosing a broker in Kenya can be a problem. There are companies that offer services there and you can do online trading, but you need to be very careful as the company could be a complete fraud or government officials can charge you with doing something illegal.

If you do decide to start trading you will need to look for a broker that is recognized by an authorized governmental institution as a legal entity. You would also want to check what trading platform the company has, if any at all. The lower the commissions the company offers the better. You should also expect possibility to open the type of account that fits your capital size best. A broker should care about you as a trader and offer good customer service. Extra services would act as a bonus for you too.

General Regulation & Kenya Regulation

There are very few places in the world where Forex is unregulated. Most countries have gone through various stages in regulation, most from being very loose to being rather strict. Very few regulators allow unregulated brokers to operate in their countries and those who do operate have to follow strict rules and regulation.

Kenya is an exception. It still does not have proper Forex regulation and so brokers offering their services in the country operate without any law to govern them. Because of that, they are often targeted and racketeered by corrupt police officers and public officials. Companies are charged with illegal status or some pyramid schemes and the officials extort money from both the brokers and their customers. Brokers now often approach the government and ask them to introduce proper Forex regulation, so that brokers can legally operate and traders trade there. Let‘s hope the regulation is introduced soon and everybody can continue working with piece of mind.

Trading Platform & Software

Your main tool as a Kenyan trader will surely be your computer. It means you will also need a good trading platform. It is not that difficult for brokers to get one nowadays as Metatrader 4 is available with most brokers across the world. The platform has a lot of useful features inside of it, such as: chart station where you can upload as many symbols as you want and change their timeframes from 1 minute to 1 month. You can also do backtesting of your strategy there. All most popular technical indicators there and you can create one of your own if you know how to do some programming on the station. Somebody else can do that for you too. You can use a robot that will do trading for you, so you will not have to sit glued to your pc screen all day. A broker may have an online version platform, which you should check out. Test out the trading platforms before you deposit.

Commissions & Spreads

Brokers charge fees from their customers for transactions. In Forex, a fee is a spread, which is the difference between buy and sell price. Spreads are either fixed or variable. Fixed spreads are often between 1-5 pips for major pairs and 5-20 for crosses. Variable spreads are lower. They can be 0.2-0.8 pips for major pairs and 2-6 for crosses. However, when markets are affected by fundamental news such as interest rate decisions spreads tend to widen 10 or even 20 times for a few minutes. Then everything comes back to normal and spreads are the same as under normal market conditions. It‘s up to you what kind of spreads are better for your trading style.

Account Types

A great advantage that a trader can have trading Forex is an account type based on the size of his capital.

Micro account

You can start trading currencies with as little as a few hundred bucks. If that‘s how much you have you would probably need a micro account and trade micro lots (the size of a micro lot is $1000).

Mini account

If you have over one thousand dollars you may try a mini account and trade mini lots which are 10k. Your risks and rewards increase exponentially if you trade this type of account.

Standard account

If you intend to trade much larger volumes and have over 10 thousand dollars you can try to apply for a standard account and trade volumes that exceed 100k. Remember, the bigger the amount you trade with, the bigger the risks are.

Customer Service

As brokers make money charging fees (spreads) on your transactions it is absolutely normal to expect good customer service on their behalf. It does not matter whether a broker is native or foreign, they should service you in your native language or dialect. They should also resolve trading connected problems and issues in a fast and effective way. If a broker ignores you, you should not open an account with him or close it if you have actually opened it.

Additional Services

Brokers compete with each other trying to gain as many customers as possible and they often do it by offering extra services. Those may include free educational materials in video, audio and text formats, various market analysis on a weekly and daily time frames, financial news feed (reuters, Bloomberg and etc.). You may expect some annual, quarterly or even monthly contests for traders. So, the more extra services they offer, the better it is for you to see whether the broker cares about their traders or not.

Conclusion

Despite the fact, there is no legal framework for Forex regulation in Kenya, brokers there are quite active and you may cautiously proceed to open an account with the most reliable broker. We have laid out the best of these brokers below. We hope that the information provided in the article will help you to choose one of the best brokers operating in your country.

Read More:

• Forex Brokers Regulations
• Trading the Economic Calendar
• How To Choose the Best Forex and CFD Broker
• Developing your Trading Strategy