ATC Brokers Review
Overall Rating
4.3/5
Rated #8 of Recommended FX Brokers
Minimum Deposit
2000
Regulators
FCA
MetaTrader 4
Yes
38
Islamic Account
Yes
Trading Fees
Low
24 Hours
ATC Brokers is a British forex broker company that is based in London.
Forex brokers are companies that provide traders with access to platforms that allow them to buy and sell foreign currencies.
Forex brokers are also known as retail forex brokers or currency trading brokers. Retail currency traders in turn use these brokers to gain access to the 24-hour currency market for speculation purposes.
Forex broker services are also provided for institutional clients and large companies such as investment banks.
ATC Brokers is a brokerage firm established in 2005 in Great Britain. It provides an online trading solution with the vision that the trading should always be transparent.
ATC Brokers is regulated by one of the most respected regulatory bodies within the financial service industry in the UK, the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA). In the US it is regulated by the National Futures Association (NFA).
The FCA aims to protect consumers by placing rules and regulations to set high standards and protocols for firms to conduct their business within the financial industry in the UK.
The company does not act as a counterparty to any of its clients and operates in an agency model with ECN aggregation and competitive pricing.
ATC Brokers uses Barclays Bank Plc, which is one of the top tier banks in the world, for its account custodian services. As a solid financial partner, the bank provides an assurance of integrity in the banking spectrum.
It offers multiple products giving access to trade FX, Metal, and CFDs from one account with narrow spreads.
ATC Brokers also developed a range of solutions for various trading purposes including liquidity providing and institutional trading, as well as vast opportunities for professional traders.
It provides tools to manage multiple trading through MAM accounts that bring custom software solutions.
As for the customer and support services, ATC Brokers remains on hand with any issue or question you may face while trading or planning to open an account with the broker.
Awards and Recognition
ATC Brokers has not received any awards since its inception date.
ATC Brokers Accounts
A forex account is a trading account held by a trader with a company like ATC Brokers, which is primarily issued with the purpose of trading currencies.
Usually, the number and type of accounts that a trader can open with a broker company differ according to the country in which the brokerage operates, the country of residence of the trader, and the regulatory authorities under whose jurisdiction it operates.
Types of Accounts and Their Features
At ATC Brokers, traders have the choice between three accounts, an individual account, a joint account, or a corporate account.
For all accounts, the minimum opening balance for global clients is US Dollar 2 000. For the UK and European clients, the minimum opening balance is £5 000 / US Dollar 5 000 / €5 000.
In trading with ATC Brokers, you will get access from only one trading account to the worlds’ financial markets FX, Metals and CFDs. New traders can benefit from a demo account and see how ATC Brokers perform with no risk involved.
The 20-day free demonstration of platforms with a virtual US Dollar 100,000 is available to all.
The pricing model is an added advantage, while a diversity of contracts for differences or other products brings an opportunity to speculate on the price differences for indices, commodities, and currencies with excellent trading conditions.
Deposits and Withdrawals
To start trading you can choose USD, EUR, or GBP currencies, and select payment methods such as a bank wire, Visa / Master Card, Skrill and UnionPay.
The minimum required deposit that is necessary to run and open an account is 5,000 USD or the equivalent amount in GBP or EUR. The amount is quite high but should be considered as a great trading opportunity which might be a good option for active traders.
Cost and Fees, Commissions and Spreads
The cost of trading depends on different factors like commissions, spread, and margins.
The spread of a currency pair is the difference between the bid and the asking rate. A pip represents the smallest increment that an exchange rate can move. One pip is 0.01 for currency pairs with JPY as the term currency and 0.0001 for all other pairs.
Margin is the amount of money required in your account in order to open a position. Margin is calculated based on the current price of the base currency against USD, the size (volume) of the position and the leverage applied to your trading account.
Commissions are the charges imposed by an investment broker on a trader for making trades on the trader’s behalf. The level of commissions will vary between different brokers and depends on the asset being traded and the type of service offered by the broker.
Execution-only brokers, which is a broker that does not involve in any personal investment advice and gives traders complete control over how they trade the markets, tend to have lower commissions.
The contract for differences (CFDs) trading, a popular form of derivative trading that enables traders to speculate on the rising or falling prices of fast-moving global financial markets, on shares will incur commission.
CFD trades on other markets have no commission but do wrap a spread around the market price of a certain instrument.
ATC Brokers offers traders a commission-based account that charges a commission of US Dollar 10 per standard contract (US Dollar 5 per side), which compares to roughly 1 pip, resulting in an all-in cost of 1.3 pips after accounting for average spreads of 0.3 pips in the EUR/USD pair.
The pricing of average spreads listed by ATC Brokers in the UK varies slightly from that of its US counterpart.
Commission of US Dollar 6 found turn per lot is charged and the average spread for the EUR / USD currency pair is 0.3 pips.
For fees when transferring funds to or from an account, the broker adds a charge of 2.9% for Cards and E-wallet deposits. Withdrawal fees for USD currency are US Dollar 40, but card withdrawals are processed with no fees.
Leverage
The facility that enables a trader to get a much larger exposure to the market than the amount he or she deposited to open a trade, is called leverage. Such leveraged products magnify a trader’s potential profit – but of course, also increase the potential loss.
The amount of leverage is expressed as a ratio, for instance, 50:1, 100:1, or 500:1. Assuming that a trader has US Dollar 1,000 in his or her trading account and is trading ticket sizes of 500,000 USD/JPY, that leverage will equate to 500:1.
The maximum leverage is 1:200 but for the European clients, it is 1:30 in compliance with ESMA limitations.
Bonuses
Forex brokers tend to lure new traders with offers of attractive deposit bonuses. This can be useful, but it is essential to discern what a proper bonus is.
Such a bonus is but a way to compensate traders for choosing a certain broker since once the account is opened, the trader will have the same expenses as any other.
The bonus is just a reward for the trader’s choice that gives some of these expenses back to the trader, once proving himself as an active trader.
Moreover, since 1 August 2018 The European Securities and Markets Authority (ESMA) has placed investor protection measures on the marketing, distribution, or sale of CFDs to retail clients.
These prevent brokers from directly or indirectly providing the retail client with a payment, monetary or excluded non-monetary benefit in relation to the marketing, distribution or sale of a CFD, other than the realized profits on any CFD provided.
This means that a Deposit Bonus is currently not applicable for retail clients.
ATC Brokers does not offer any bonuses to its clients as none could be found on its website.
Trading Platforms, Software, and its Features
The forex trading software provided by a broker company to its clients is called the platform and is used to carry out their trades.
A platform can be a multi-asset one, which means that it allows clients to not only trade forex but also other asset classes like CFDs on stocks, stock indices, precious metals, and cryptocurrencies.
The decision about which platform to choose will depend on what a client would like to trade, therefore it will be one of the criteria when choosing a broker too.
ATC Brokers use the popular MetaTrader4 platform that suites any trading style and can be accessed through all devices including desktops, mobiles, and tablets.
MT4 is software that provides a friendly and powerful interface consigned by beginning and professional traders along with a powerful ECN execution model.
MT4 supports market, limit, and stop orders, along with multiple types and multiple instruments that allow potential successful analyses of the market.
The platform has a complete charting package built-in with indicator libraries that can be fully customized. It also provides the ability to import EA signals for order execution.
The next level of the MT4 provides an additional feature that optimizes the trading process – the MT4 PRO. This brings a user-friendly interface with one-click execution, strategy orders through predefined objectives and different price levels of market depth.
The MT Pro for MetaTrader4 provides a variety of new features that will improve your MT4 trading experience and allow you to customize trade settings.
Being available on many devices and free of charge, you can control your account, trade in the financial markets and use 30 technical indicators for market analysis.
The mobile application can be obtained from the App Store or Google Play. Once you have installed the MT4 App on your mobile device, use your ATC Brokers live account credentials to login to the software. Demos to use all these platforms are available on their website.
ATC Brokers also gives traders the possibility of using PAMM & PAMM+ software. This is used by fund managers to trade different investor accounts from one master account.
One single order trade all the accounts. Investors have access to the bank office where they can access the trading reports.
PAMM runs multiple investor accounts that have the same currency while PAMM+ runs accounts created with different base currencies. PAMM+ has greater flexibility than the PAMM management software. Both software’s run on the MT4 or FIX API.
In addition to this, ATC Brokers has partnered with Beeks Financial Cloud to provide clients with Virtual Private Server (VPS) solutions.
ATC clients have been offered an 8% discount on any VPS subscription starting from £27 per month. A VPS allows you to run your trading platform 24/7 without switching your computer on.
Markets, Products, and Instruments
Most brokers offer all or some of the following kinds of market instruments for trading:
Forex:
Forex trading, also called currency or FX trading, involves the currency exchange market where individuals, companies, and financial institutions exchange currencies for one another at floating rates.
Commodities:
As with currency exchange markets, commodity markets offer different investment opportunities for traders. Investing in contract-based tradable goods is a reliable way to mitigate risk during times of inflation or economic uncertainty.
Indices:
Equity or stock indices are actual stock market indexes that measure the value of a specific section of a stock market. They can represent a specific set of the largest companies of a nation or they can represent a specific stock market.
Precious metals:
The trading of gold and other precious metals involves hard commodities that are contract-based tradable goods.
Energy:
The high volatility of energy prices due to political and environmental factors, supply and demand, extreme weather conditions, and global economic growth is a typical feature of this product, making it another popular trading choice.
At ATC Brokers, traders can trade in Forex, Commodities, Cryptocurrency, Metal, Energies and CFDs.
What is genuinely great at ATC brokers is their pricing model, while a diversity of Contract for Difference or other products brings an opportunity to speculate on the price differences for indices, commodities, and currencies with excellent trading conditions.
Safety and Regulation
One of the first things a potential trader needs to establish is whether a broker like ATC Broker is safe to trade with. One of the surest benchmarks to measure the safety of a brokerage is to establish which regulating authorities are watchdogs over its actions.
ATC Brokers is authorized by the respected regulatory body FCA. FCA regulations protect customers while conducting the brokers to follow strict rules of operation, education, execution and provide safety of the clients’ funds.
Any trader signed with an FCA regulated broker can be assured the broker is trustworthy and operates in full compliance with high standards.
The FCA has rulemaking, investigative and enforcement powers that can be utilized to protect and regulate the financial services industry.
This protection includes the FCA’s client money rule which mandates firms to segregate client funds. The most important factor is funds’ protection delivered by accounts’ segregation, while trader’s money is kept separately from the company activities.
ATC Brokers (US) is a member of the National Futures Association (NFA 358522) and is a registered introducing broker with the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC).
Customer Support
Potential traders need to be assured that the broker company they chose can offer the necessary support and help whenever they may need it.
At ATC Brokers traders receive customer support via telephone, email, live chat, or the completion of a request form.
Research
Potential traders should always do as much as possible research about speculative trading before commencing to do it.
Trading with confidence and success relies heavily on knowledge and understanding of the markets, therefore research options offered by brokers form an integral part its features when choosing the right company to trade with.
ATC Brokers offers few options when it comes to research offerings. Besides a Virtual Private Server (VPS) service for MT4 users and its Trader’s Corner blog, which is not highly active, the broker provides only an economic calendar.
ATC Brokers updates its website daily and focuses on economic activities, currency pairs, and price action.
The economic calendar shows the time and dates of upcoming global economic events. It shows analysts’ consensus on the event’s likely to impact on selected assets. It is compared to the history and a trader can make decisions based on the analysis that follows.
Education and Training
Before starting to trade, potential clients of ATC Brokers should avail themselves of all possible information and trading skills needed to be successful in the world of forex and commodity trading.
If ATC Brokers’ website itself does not provide enough means, a trader should explore other informative websites and means to obtain that knowledge.
ATC Brokers does not provide a comprehensive educational service, which is crucial for beginning traders, as this is broker is more focussed on professional trading.
The learning center of the website consists of several training materials on forex, CFD, and metal trading using the MT4 platform. There is also a selection of articles on forex, CFDs, day trading, demo accounts, ECN brokers and trading using the MT4 platform.
Conclusion
Conflict of interest can arise with brokers who operate a dealing desk. For that reason, the firms that provide customers with a neutral trading environment and a non-dealing desk approach are recently preferred among the active traders.
Disclaimer
There is an extremely high degree of risk involved in trading securities. With respect to margin-based foreign exchange trading, off-exchange derivatives, and cryptocurrencies, there is considerable exposure to risk.
This includes but is not limited to, leverage, creditworthiness, limited regulatory protection, and market volatility that may substantially affect the price or liquidity of a currency or related instrument.
It should not be assumed that the methods, techniques, or indicators presented in these products will be profitable, or that they will not result in losses.
Prior to trading any products offered by ATC Brokers, please carefully consider your experience level and financial situation.