Best Forex Brokers in Singapore 2019

AvaTrade

Oanda

FBS

eToro

Libertex

How to Choose a Forex Broker as a Singapore trader

High tech hub country of Singapore is one of the richest in Asia Pacific area with a thriving economy, top salaries in the world, big investments from foreign countries and according to statistics it has the largest volumes of transactions in Forex after London and New York. It looks like Singapore traders have excellent opportunities to invest their money in currencies.

However, one should not forget that opportunities do not come without risks. As has been said, risk can be significantly reduced if you trade with a good broker. How do you know which one is good? A number of things to consider: it has to be regulated (by MAS), offer you excellent trading platforms and software, must have low spreads or commissions, offer you a good choice of accounts to choose from, care about their customers and provide a lot of other extra valuable services.

General Regulation & Singapore Regulation

 Each country in the world has its own regulatory framework and an entity that regulates and monitors financial markets. In some countries, like Russia or France and several more, Forex is regulated by Central Banks and brokers need to get licenses with these institutions to be able to legally offer their services to traders from those countries. Of course, under these circumstances it becomes difficult to do business due to large amount of bureaucracy, not clear regulatory requirements and a risk to be closed by those supervising institutions. In other countries, the suprevision is given to some independent institution that monitors only financial markets. These tend to be more liberal and provide brokers with greater chances to set up their businesses in the country. Loose or strict, brokers will still have to follow a regulatory framework set by regulatory institutions, adhere to the rules of providing services, have sufficient capital, reduce risks for their clients and etc.

In Singapore, the agency that regulates Forex market is MAS (Monetary Authority of Singapore). Any broker who wants to offer financial services in the country has to be MAS licensed. MAS is the Central Bank of Singapore, so it has other tasks too. Those involve supervising all financial, credit and insurance intermediaries offering their services to Singapore residents. Brokers regulated by MAS have to limit their clients risks by keeping their money in segregated accounts in case brokers go broke. In that instance investors money would still be safe. Among other things that MAS regulated brokers have to do is to fully disclose all services and products that they offer to their clients. The regulator also has a lot of educatory resources and a special programme for investors MoneySENSE that helps them to make rational and independent decisions regarding investing. So, if you live in Singapore, be sure to choose a MAS regulated broker.

Trading Platform & Software

The Profession of a trader is a very independent one. You can be your own boss and set your own working hours. However, as you will be trading online you will need to have a good trading platform. Those who have tried a lot of platforms know that some of them are excellent, some just good and some simply inhibitive to trading. If you have time and desire you can keep on testing for yourself each trading platform and software, but the best way is to simply choose which is easy to use and has a lot of useful extra features. In terms of simplicity, you need to know which button does what. If you hit ‚buy‘, it buys and if you hit ‚sell‘ it sells. This is easy and what it is supposed to be. In terms of extra features, you would want to have a good chart station or possibility to have multitude of different charts with different instruments so that you could compare them and chack their values on different time frames. You would also want to have multiple indicators, ability to make your own notes, close your entire position with one click, test your strategy, copy function and news feed on the platform.

Commissions & Spreads 

Forex industry probably has the best type of commissions from the rest of financial industry. The fact is that Forex brokers are compensated from spreads which are difference between bid and ask prices. These can be fixed and variable. Fixed spreads will be around 1-4 pips for major pairs and 5-15 for currency crosses. Variable spreads tend to be much smaller under normal market conditions. They can be 0.2-2 pips for majors and 2-5 pips for crosses. When markets are affected by some fundamental news and start acting like crazy spreads expand and can be 10-20 times bigger. But they stay like that just for a few minutes till markets absorb new information and start acting normally again.

Account Types

A strong and reliable broker will offer you a lot of different types of accounts to choose from. Let us briefly look at some of them.

Demo account

Before you start trading you need to do some testing. A demo account is a good platform for doing that. You will be able to find out how your trading strategies work under real market conditions without risking a dime.

Micro account

Investing in currencies does not mean you need to have millions or hundreds of thousands of dollars to start with. With most brokers it is enough to have 100$ to open a micro account. So, you will be able to trade real money and earn real money with such a small amount and even if you lose your initial deposit it won‘t be a very big sum of money.

Mini account

Mini account is a predecessor of micro account. These started when most retail brokers started offering their services to the average Joe around the world. A mini lot size is 10k and you can usually open it with 100$ or 200$ depending on leverage offered by your broker. However, you should have at least 1000 or better 2000$ to trade with a level of confidence and comfort and not to worry about margin call.

Standard account 

A standard lot size is 100k and you can open it with as little as 1000$ or 2000$ depending on the leverage offered by your broker. However, the risk of losing big is greater on this account and your initial deposit should be at least 10k or better 25k so that you could trade with comfort and ease.

If you have any specific needs you may discuss them with your broker and you can be offered VIP or some other kind of account that would fit your needs, capital size and trading style best.

Customer Service

Customer service is the mirror of the character of the broker. If it is not properly functioning in a quick and efficient manner, you will not want to stay with such broker for too long. Living in Singapore you should also expect customer service in your local language or dialect. Lots of foreign scammy companies can come without being able to offer you that and that would be a red flag not to trade with them.

Additional Services 

Brokers compete with each other to win as many customers as they can by offering lots of extra services. It may include free webinars, daily and weekly analysis of various financial instruments, instant news feed from most popular financial news services (Reuters, Bloomberg and etc.) and many more. Those are really helpful, especially if you are a novice to Forex.

Conclusion 

As you may see a Singapore trader has a lot to pick from in terms of choosing a reliable Forex broker. We have set expectations which you need to have about your broker in order to trade with piece of mind and concentrate on your trading strategy. If you need, go through the mentioned points in the article before opening a real account with a specific broker. When you feel confident that you have found the one, then move on and do open an account. See our list of the best ones below.