Vantage

Founded in 2009 and headquartered in Sydney, Australia, Vantage is authorised and regulated by the Australian Securities and Investments Commission (ASIC), the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA), the Cayman Islands Monetary Authority (CIMA), and the Vanuatu Financial Service Commission (VFSC).  Furthermore, every deposit is protected by either the Investor Compensation Fund or by the Financial Services Compensation Scheme in the UK.

Australian traders will be trading with the Australian subsidiary of Vantage, which is licenced and regulated by the Australian Securities and Investment Commission (ASIC). 

In early 2021, ASIC tightened its restrictions on CFD trading to better protect traders. As a result, Vantage clients in Australia will have a leverage limit of 30:1 for Forex trading and will be provided negative balance protection, meaning that traders can never lose more money than they have in their trading accounts. In addition, ASIC regulations ensure that Vantage keeps its operational funds segregated from client accounts, but also prevent Vantage from offering promotions or bonuses. 

While the additional protection offered by ASIC regulation is welcome, some Australian traders may find the low leverage levels and lack of bonuses at Vantage restrictive. The only way around these restrictions is to trade with a broker which does not have ASIC regulation, which of course then means less protection.

Overall, because of its history of responsible behaviour, ASIC and FCA regulation, and the fact that Vantage is regularly audited, we consider Vantage a safe broker for Australians to trade with.

The account-opening and verification process at Vantage is seamless, fully digital and accounts are ready within 24 hours, which is about the industry average. 

All Australian residents are eligible to open an account at Vantage, as long as they meet the following minimum deposit requirements:

• Standard STP Account: 50 USD
• Raw ECN Account: 50 USD
• Pro ECN Account: 10,000 USD

Vantage offers corporate and individual accounts.  For the purposes of this review, we will outline the process for opening an individual account:

1. From the Vantage homepage, you will have to click on the ‘Live Account’ tab where you will be directed to register an account with a name, email address, telephone number, and country of residence.  
2. Vantage’s registration form requires traders to fill in their personal details, including physical address, date of birth, and ID number. 
3. Next, traders are required to fill in their financial details, employment status, and trading knowledge.  
4. Traders will then have to choose their preferred trading platform (MT4 or MT5), choose their account type, and account currency.  
5. Verification usually takes less than 24 hours and Vantage will need:
   1. Proof of Identification – Vantage accepts all government-issued identification documents such as Passport, national ID card, driving license, or other government-issued ID. 
   2. Proof of Address – Proof of residence/address document must be issued in the name of the account holder within the last 6 months and must contain a trader’s full name, current residential address, issue date, and issuing authority. 

Overall, Vantage’s account-opening process is fully digital and hassle-free and accounts are ready for trading within 24 hours.

Vantage’s range of financial instruments for CFD trading includes Forex, share CFDs, commodities (energies, metals, and softs), indices, and cryptocurrencies.

Vantage’s trading fees are higher than average on its entry-level account but lower than average on its ECN accounts.

Vantage offers three trading acccounts, the Standard STP, the Raw ECN and the Pro ECN.

The Standard STP Account has trading costs included in the spreads, while the Raw accounts offers raw spread pricing in exchange for a commission per lot. 

We opened and tested several of Vantage’s accounts:

Standard STP Account

The Standard account is perfect for novice traders who want direct market access with no commissions. The minimum deposit on this STP account is 200 USD.  Fees are included in the spreads, which start at 1.0 pips on the EUR/USD, and traders can access leverage of up to 30:1.  These trading costs are average for the industry. 

Raw ECN

As the name implies, this is an ECN account, with no dealing desk.  Raw ECN accounts are professional trading accounts with floating spreads starting at 0 pips on the EUR/USD. The minimum deposit is 500 USD, leverage is 30:1, and a commission of 1 USD is charged/lot per side (2 USD round turn).  These trading costs are some of the lowest in the industry.

Pro ECN

Pro ECN accounts are tailored for professional traders and money managers who trade in high volumes.  Pro traders will receive leverage of up to 500:1 but will have to meet certain eligibility criteria in order to open an account:

• Traders should have net assets of 2.5 million AUD or a gross income of 250,000 AUD for the last two consecutive financial years.
• Demonstrate your knowledge by finishing a short online quiz
• Traded at least 20 times per quarter (for any 4 quarters in the last 3 years)
• Traded at least 500,000 USD  in notional value for each of the 4 quarters

  Traders should be aware that under Pro status they will be giving up the following protections:

• The provision of a Product Disclosure Statement (PDS), Financial Services Guide (FSG) or any other relevant documents that Vantage will typically provide to retail clients.
• The protections afforded under ASIC’s PIO measures for CFDs, including leverage restrictions.
• AFCA’s dispute resolution scheme for recourse.

Demo Account

Those afraid to risk real money on trading will be glad to learn that Vantage has introduced an unlimited MT4 demo account. Traders can test strategies and analyse data on over 300 instruments.    

Vantage’s mobile trading options are excellent compared to other brokers. 

All the trading platforms supported by Vantage are available as mobile and tablet downloads – allowing traders to keep track of their open positions while on the move.

MT4/MT5

Both MT4 and MT5 are available as mobile and tablet downloads on Android and iOS – allowing traders to keep track of their open positions while on the move. 

The advantage of using the MetaTrader platform is the cross-device and multi-broker functionality, making it easier to change brokers or use multiple brokers.  

Vantage’s MT4 and MT5 apps allow traders to work from anywhere, with nine timeframes and 30 indicators. However, traders should be aware that there is some loss in functionality when compared to the desktop trading platforms, including reduced time frames and fewer charting options, but traders can close and modify existing orders, calculate profit and loss, and trade on the charts. 

Vantage App

With a suite of technical indicators such as Moving Averages, Bollinger Bands, MACD, 9 timeframes, charting tools, and 10 timeframes, the Vantage App offers traders of all styles powerful yet simple technical charting.  It is packed full of features such as order management, custom watch lists, trading signals by Trading Central, alerts, news calendars, and more. 

For those who prefer to trade on their computers, Vantage offers MT4, MT5 and TradingView support.

MetaTrader 4

The MetaTrader 4 Platform (MT4) is the most popular online Forex trading terminal in the world. It has a straightforward interface, considered easy-to-use for both novice and experienced traders alike.  It is also widely recognised for its fast execution speeds, range of charting tools, algorithmic trading, and customisability. MT4 is available in over 31 languages.  

Other features of MT4 include:

• Supports the creation, modification, and utilisation of automated trading strategies.
• Supports MQL4 programming language.
• Algorithmic trading, which allows any trading strategy to be formalised and implemented as an Expert Advisor. 
• Allows traders to develop their own custom indicators
• Superior charting tools in nine timeframes
• 31 graphical objects
• 30 built-in indicators
• 9 timeframes
• Three order execution types
• Four types of pending orders

While MT4 has great customizability, the platform feels outdated, and some of the features may be hard to find.  In addition, only the basic orders are available, including Market, Limit, Stop, and Trailing Stop.

MetaTrader 5

MetaTrader 5 is the latest trading platform developed by MetaQuotes Software Corp. Set to replace MT4, MT5 is more intuitive and offers significant improvements in copy trading, mobile trading, and other innovative features that make trading account management more efficient.  Other features of Mt5 include:

• 38+ preinstalled technical indicators
• 44 analytical charting tools
• 3 chart types
• 21 timeframes
• Additional pending order types
• Detachable charts
• Trailing stop
• Depth of Market
• An integrated Economic Calendar.

TradingView

TradingView is not only a trading platform with detailed information to help you make trading decisions: it also includes one of the biggest social trading communities, with plenty of EAs (Expert Advisors) that beginner traders, or those too busy to trade manually, will appreciate. This addition to FP Markets’ tech portfolio and we believe traders of all backgrounds will enjoy TradingView access

There’s a lot you can achieve with TradingView, but these are just a few of its advantages:

• Unmatched charting capabilities, suitable for beginners and advanced traders
• Large social trading community of more than 50 million users
• The ability to design your own indicators and strategies using TradingView’s Pine Script
  programming language
• The option to validate trading ideas using TradingView’s bar-by-bar replay function
• Wide selection of fundamental data
• Real-time global news coverage

On the whole, the toolbox is sophisticated yet simple to use and allows traders to analyse the fast-moving global financial markets with accuracy.

As a well-regulated broker, Vantage ensures that all Anti-Money Laundering rules and regulations are followed. 

Vantage offers a range of deposit and withdrawal methods, including bank wire transfer, local bank transfers, credit cards, and debit cards, Skrill, Neteller, BPay, Poli, and Unionpay transfers.  

Deposits for all payment methods are free, although clients will have to absorb the fees charged by their various banking institutions.  All withdrawal requests are processed Monday to Friday, 9 am – 7 pm (AEST), within one business day. Clients can withdraw funds online by simply logging into the secure Vantage client portal and selecting the withdraw tab from the menu.

Vantage offers a wider range of base currencies compared to other similar brokers.  

Vantage clients can choose between 9 base currencies, including AUD, USD, GBP, EUR, SGD, CAD, NZD, JPY, and HKD.

This is an advantage for Australians who will likely have bank accounts denominated in AUD, and will be able to avoid paying currency conversion fees on deposits and withdrawals.  Currency conversion fees can make trading expensive and affect profitability.  

For traders that trade in large volumes (more than 10 lots a month), it is better to open an account denominated in USD at a digital currency bank, especially for trading on assets such as the EUR/USD. This is because when trading a USD quoted currency pair with another currency account, there will be a small conversion fee for every trade made.

Overall, Vantage offers more trading account currencies than most other large international brokers and it offers accounts denominated in AUD.  

Vantage offers a broad range of trading tools, including MT4/MT5 Smart Trader Tools, sentiment indicators, and Premium trader tools.  

MT4/MT5 Smart Trader Tools

The MT4/MT5 Smart Trader Tools consist of three additional MetaTrader plugins that dramatically improve the trading environment. The tools include an array of sophisticated alarms and messaging systems, and correlation tracking:

• Alarm Manager: Allows traders to set the alarms, apply their rules and triggers.  It offers 6 types of alarm alerts available on SMS, via email, and push notifications.  
• Correlation Matrix and Correlation Trader: These tools work together to show correlations between pairs of trading symbols. It functions with any symbols available in the trading platform, allowing a calculation of the correlation between multiple asset classes against Forex. The Correlation Trader will then allow for a detailed inspection of the correlation between any two instruments.
• Excel RTD Link: Clients can use MS Excel fans to compare, analyse and create rules in real-time across multiple accounts using their favourite spreadsheets.

Sentiment Indicators

Vantage’s sentiment page displays the overall long and short positions of the Vantage book. The sentiment ratio of long to short positions is represented as a percentage and displayed as a sliding scale where red represents clients’ shorts and blue represents their longs.  Sentiment indicators are available for Forex, commodities, and indices.  

Traders should be aware that as forex is a decentralised market, Vantage’s sentiment readings are of the Vantage book only. By reading this snapshot of the market, however, traders will get an idea of the average trader’s mindset and therefore take advantage of the supply/demand imbalances that may result.

Premium Trader Tools

Pro Trader tools are available to clients with a minimum balance of 1,000 USD.  Pro Trader tools include various market news updates, trading ideas, an economic calendar, and various analyst views:

• Market Buzz: A news feed that offers news analytics and sentiment indicators.
• Featured Ideas: Access technical and fundamental trade ideas based on proven, backtested strategies across all your favourite currency pairs and technical setups. 
• Economic Calendar: Vantage offers actionable, real-time economic data, which allows traders to act on market-moving events from more than 30 countries across the globe. 
• Analyst Views: Vantage offers a unique combination of quantitative technology and technical analysis expertise covering 80,000 instruments. 

Vantage provides a good selection of market analysis materials, but these are all curated by third-party providers.  

Vantage provides research primarily from third-party content providers such as Trading Central. The broker also has some basic features, such as an economic calendar and client sentiment data. Still, Vantage lacks a variety of in-house content besides its daily videos, compared to other forex brokers.

For those without a Pro Trader account, beginner traders can access a series of articles and videos explaining Forex trading basics, a market overview, market analysis, trading psychology, and various MetaTrader platform tutorials. Vantage also provides a library of over 130 videos as part of its Pro Trader videos. Content ranges from short introductory clips for beginners to longer advanced concepts across forex and CFD trading across various markets. Again, one has to make an initial deposit of 1,000 USD to gain access to this material.   

Vantage also offers regular webinars – run thrice weekly – a real advantage for beginners trying to find their footing in the Forex trading space.  

Help is available 24/5 via telephone, email, Telegram, and live chat.

For the purposes of this review, we found customer support via live chat extremely responsive and polite.  They were also able to answer all of our questions satisfactorily.