The fees and commissions that certain financial intermediaries charge can sometimes be confusing or not easy to know in advance. In this article, we want to make an in-depth analysis of all the commissions of the FP Markets broker to find out if they are cheap or expensive and try to see if it is worth hiring the brokerage services of this company.
FP Markets is an online broker with a recognized track record of more than 15 years. This financial intermediary regulated by the ASIC (Australian Securities and Investments Commission), offers the traditional CFD markets on Stocks, Stock Market Indices, Commodities, and Forex currencies.
Its headquarters are located in Australia but it also has a strong presence in other regions such as Europe and Asia.
Like the vast majority of brokers, the way in which FP Markets obtains benefits is through the different commissions that it charges to its clients, but being an ECN-type broker, these commissions and fees are usually quite competitive; later we will see more details about it.
FPMarkets | -ECN/STP broker from Australia specialized in Forex and CFD -Regulated by organizations such as ASIC and CySEC -Tight spreads and low commissions | Visit Broker Website |
What services does the FP Markets broker offer?
FP Markets services are truly diverse as they go beyond just providing a trading platform and access to the financial markets.
Among the many services offered by FP Markets we can find:
- Account opening through a simple and completely free process.
- Demo Account totally free and with no expiration limit (it only expires if you stop logging in or using the account for more than 30 days).
- Access to all its platforms, including MetaTrader 4 and 5, Mobile Trading App, WebTrader, and all of them free of charge (except the Iress platform).
- Ebooks, Podcasts, video tutorials, live webinars, and much more, all with free access.
- VPS services for automatic trading (free if the first month you deposit at least $1000 as an initial deposit, or the rest of the time if you maintain each month a volume greater than 10 lots in the Standard accounts or 20 lots in the Raw account).
- Autochartist tool for predicting possible market movements and volatility alerts.
- Possibility to automate your MetaTrader 4 account with Myfxbook Autotrade, and take advantage of copy trading opportunities.
- Traders Toolbox, is a set of 12 tools to elevate your trading experience.
- Free Forex trading calculator.
More information about the Forex broker ECN FP Markets in the following guide of this company: FP Markets broker review
Types of trading accounts
FP Markets offers us two main types of accounts:
- Standard Account
- Raw account
Both accounts can be used through the MetaTrader 4 or MetaTrader 5 platforms.
In addition, we can access the Iress accounts, in one of its three modalities:
- Standard
- Platinum
- Premier
Each of these accounts has different commission and fee models, which will be explained later in this article.
Markets available on FPMarkets
Among the markets that FP Markets offers its clients to trade are the following:
- Forex: More than 60 FX pairs. All the “major” pairs that include the dollar (USD), either as a base or quoted currency. Among them the pair GBP/USD, the EUR/USD, and the USD/JPY.
- Stocks: You will be able to trade CFDs on shares of the best-known companies worldwide, these shares come from global markets including London, Madrid, New York, Paris, Hong Kong, and others. In total, you can trade more than 1,000 shares if you use the Meta Trader 5 account and more than 10,000 if you use the Iress platform.
- Indices: With FP Markets you will have access to the main global indices through CFDs, among which the NASDAQ 100, S&P 500, EUREX, and others stand out.
- Commodities: As for CFDs on commodities, this broker does not offer a wide variety, only WTI, Gold, and Silver.
- Digital currencies: The most important cryptocurrencies of the digital asset markets, such as Bitcoin, Ethereum, Ripple, and others.
FP Markets broker commissions
FP Markets, being an ECN-type broker, does not act as a counterparty in the transactions of its clients, so its way of generating income is through commissions and fees associated with trading. It only acts as an intermediary, sending the orders of its clients to the liquidity providers to which it is connected, trying to obtain the best prices available at all times and without any conflict of interest between the broker and its clients (as can happen in market maker brokers that do act as a counterparty).
These commissions and fees charged by most Forex and CFD brokers, such as FP Markets, can be divided into two types:
- Trading commissions: These are the commissions that are generated when the trader operates with financial assets on the trading platform, whether they are currency pairs, stocks, indices, or others, and in general these are the ones that have the most impact on the daily transactions of the traders.
- Non-trading commissions: They refer to the charges that the broker applies for other services not associated with trading, for example, account maintenance, currency exchange, or processing of deposits and withdrawals of funds.
FP Markets Trading Commissions
Among the trading commissions that FP Markets charges, the most important are the following:
-The spread: It refers to the difference between the Bid price and the Ask price of a trading instrument. For example, when you want to buy you will pay the highest price (Ask), but if you want to sell you will pay the lowest price (Bid), just like exchange houses work.
In the following image, you can see how this is reflected in a trading chart.
–The overnight rate: Also known as rollover or swap, it is a commission that is charged to your account for the use of leverage each time you leave an open trade from one day to another, taking into account that each trading day ends at 23:00 UTC, which coincides with 11:00 p.m. according to the Spanish peninsular time and which corresponds to 5:00 p.m. New York time.
This means that if you open a trade before the close of the trading day (5:00 PM New York time), and close it at 5:01 or any time after that, your trade will be charged the overnight rate.
Now, this rate can sometimes be positive, that is, instead of subtracting from your account, it will add. This is possible due to the fact that this commission type is calculated based on the difference in interest rates between the currencies that make up the currency pair.
When you sell a currency you will pay the swap of the currency sold and you will be credited the swap of the currency bought.
Spreads at FP Markets
Let’s move on to the specifics of spreads at the FP Markets broker.
First of all, it should be noted that FP Markets offers the following types of accounts to which spreads are applied:
- Standard Account
- Raw account
- Iress account (which is divided into 3 more types of accounts).
- Islamic Account (which has the Standard variant and the Raw variant)
Standard Account Spreads
The FP Markets Standard Account does not have fixed commissions but instead applies a markup on top of the gross interbank prices it receives from its liquidity providers, meaning that this markup is included in the spread.
The size of the spread of each asset in FP Markets is different, they are highly variable depending on the volatility and trading volume of each one.
Raw account spreads
Unlike the Standard account, in the Raw account, there are fixed commissions regardless of the spread, but you have to take into account that on many occasions the spread can be worth 0 for the main currency pairs, so you would only pay that commission and nothing else.
In the FP Markets Raw account, the fixed commission is $3 USD for each side in each traded lot, that is, $3 USD for opening a trade (or the sum of them) of one standard lot, and $3 more for closing it, this means that the broker will charge a total of $6 USD commission per lot traded, or its equivalent in the currency of your trading account.
As in the Standard account, for Raw clients, the spreads are very varied.
The images below show some examples of the most common spread values within the FP Markets Standard account and Raw account in the different types of markets.
Please note that these examples are indicative and may vary depending on market conditions.
Commissions on Iress accounts
The Iress account has two different types of accounts:
- Retail
- Wholesale/Professional
The spreads in the Iress accounts are very similar to those of the previous accounts, but for this type of account, FP Markets applies a different commission model when trading under a DMA (Direct Market Access) execution.
The DMA execution model gives clients access to a quotes channel from the underlying exchange they want to trade through the order book of that exchange or a liquidity provider, so these clients receive prices in real-time and at the same time a total market depth and consequently more competitive commissions.
Each Iress account has a fixed commission associated with it in addition to the spread, as shown in the following image.
As we can see, there is a commission of:
- A minimum of $6 AUD, and thereafter 0.06% for Retail accounts
- A minimum of $9 AUD, and thereafter 0.1% on Platinum accounts
- 0.05% for Professional accounts (No minimum)
Commissions on Islamic accounts
The FPMarkets broker, in order to serve Muslim clients, offers two Islamic accounts, the Islamic Standard account, and the Islamic Raw account.
The Islamic Standard account has spreads that go from 1 pip upwards, and although these spreads are not as tight as in other accounts, it should be noted that this account does not have fixed commissions per lot traded since they are included in the spread.
The Islamic Raw account does have tight spreads that go from 0 pips forward, but unlike the previous one and to compensate for these low fees, it charges a commission of $3 per lot traded in both directions.
Overnight Rates (Swaps) at FP Markets
In general, it can be said that the swap commissions (overnight rates) in FP Markets are quite tight, the numbers speak for themselves.
Another thing to keep in mind regarding swap fees is that FP Markets will charge you a triple swap fee on Wednesday if you keep a position open over the weekend. This occurs because the settlement period of the banks that provide the liquidity is 2 days (in this case Monday and Tuesday).
For more details about swap rates by account type, you can consult the “Swap Rates” section on the official FP Markets website.
Swaps free accounts (Islamic account).
Islamic accounts were created so as not to leave Muslims out of trading and investments, since in Islam, it is possible to trade if they find a Forex account that facilitates swap-free trading and that has been designed for people whose beliefs prohibit paying or receiving swaps or rollover interest on overnight positions, in line with Sharia law.
The FP Markets Islamic account offers that possibility to its Muslim clients by bringing their swap fees to 0, as long as they prove they belong to the Islamic religion.
Now, these accounts, as we mentioned before, do not generate overnight commissions, but they are subject to administrative commissions that compensate the zero cost swaps.
In the following image, you can see some of these administrative charges.
Non-trading commissions
We have already seen the fees and commissions that may affect your trading with FP Markets, but it is also important that you are aware of other charges that you may incur even if you do not open or close positions.
Commissions for funds deposits and withdrawals in FP Markets
Some brokers have fees associated with deposits and withdrawals of funds. In the case of FP Markets, there will be no extra charge for depositing funds, and even this broker will take care of the commissions that do not exceed 50 USD for clients who deposit $10,000 USD or more using international bank transfer as a deposit method.
However, for withdrawals using this same method (international bank transfer), FP Markets will deduct 10 AUD or its equivalent in another currency from your account.
Other withdrawal methods are not exempt from withdrawal fees.
For example, for Neteller withdrawals they have a fee of 2% up to 30 USD plus country fees (if any), for a transaction of $45,000 USD.
For withdrawals with Skrill the trader has to pay a commission of 1%.
The commission is 0.5% if you withdraw with FastPay or Perfect Money, and 1.5% if you withdraw with DragonPay.
FP Markets Platforms Usage Fees
As we saw earlier, FP Markets offers its clients different trading platforms depending on the type of account they select.
Basically they are the following:
- MetaTrader 4 (MT4)
- MetaTrader 5 (MT5)
- Wweb trader
- MT4 and MT5 mobile apps
- Iress Mobile
- IressTrader/ Iress ViewPoint
From the list above, only the IressTrader or Iress ViewPoint platform have an associated usage cost, which will be $55 USD per month including the TSG rate (General Services Rate).
But there are conditions in which you will not have to pay this monthly fee, for example, you will not pay for these platforms if:
- You trade 15 times or more per month with a standard ticket fee of 10 AUD.
- You generate more than $150 in commissions.
Another fee associated with these platforms is the Australian Stock Market (ASX) data streaming fee, which is $20 (plus GST) per month, but it’s important to note that you can get a discount if you trade 5 times or more per calendar month or generate $50 in commissions when trading CFDs on ASX or Indices on DMA.
Commissions for inactivity
On the official page of the broker FP Markets there is no information about commissions for inactivity.
These commissions are usually charged to the account of users who do not access their account for an extended period of 30 days or more, although this period may change depending on the broker.
Not finding information about it, we have decided to ask the support team directly and they have answered us that indeed, FP Markets does not charge any extra charge for inactivity, that is, you can leave your account for a long time without generating any expense or commission.
Conclusions
Now you have complete knowledge of all the commissions and fees that FP Markets apply to its clients, and also which services and platforms are free of charge.
We hope this article has been useful to you. Also remind you that you can open a demo account with FP Markets completely free of charge and thus you will be able to see in practice how all these commissions affect your trading.
Do not hesitate to write us any concerns, doubts, or personal experience with this broker in the comments, in the same way, if you think that this information is truly relevant, you can share it on your social networks so that other users can also take advantage of it.
FPMarkets | -ECN/STP broker from Australia specialized in Forex and CFD -Regulated by organizations such as ASIC and CySEC -Tight spreads and low commissions | Visit Broker Website |