AvaTrade debuted on the online trading scene in 2006. The broker is, by and large, considered a pioneer in its field and attracts investors from around the world, providing them with the chance to “trade with confidence” with cryptocurrencies, fiat currency pairs, bonds, indices, stocks, commodities, and vanilla options.
Its commitment to excellence has earned AvaTrade the trust of more than 200,000 retail and professional investors. Then again, this does not come as a huge surprise, considering this brokerage is fully committed to customers’ satisfaction, ensuring they can trade in a reliable environment from all locations, at all times. AvaTrade works seamlessly across all desktop and mobile devices.
Smartphone users can conveniently have all their positions at a glance since AvaTrade has released two highly innovative native apps. Mobile traders who own iPhones, iPads, and iPods Touch devices can obtain the iOS-compatible app at no cost from the Apple Store. This one works on iOS 10.0 and above, and supports multiple languages, including Hungarian, Russian, Polish, Japanese, Finnish, Italian, Arabic, French, and Portuguese.
Provided that you intend to trade on an Android-based tablet or smartphone, you can find AvaTrade’s Android-compatible application in the Google Play Store. AvaTrade GO works smoothly on Android 4.4 and up. Both apps come with a range of nice features, including the option to trade with more than 250 leveraged instruments, a chat facility staffed by multilingual customer support agents, numerous technical tools, automated trading, and real-time price alerts.
AvaTrade Mobile App Account Types
This brokerage is experienced enough to recognize that simplicity often works best for traders. The company provides clients with a choice from two account types only – standard and professional. Traders can start by opening a free demo account first before they dive into making real-money investments.
Prospective customers of the Muslim faith are accommodated by the availability of Islamic accounts. This allows them to trade in line with the principles of the Islamic Sharia law, which prohibits using interest.
Standard and Demo Accounts
The mobile app of AvaTrade allows users to open standard accounts by depositing as little as $100 provided that they use debit/credit cards. These are suitable for retail traders. If you register from a member state of the European Union, your standard account will entitle you to leverage your derivative instruments at a maximum rate of 30:1 under the ESMA requirements.
The standard retail account also boasts risk disclosures and has a Negative Balance Protection to safeguard retail traders’ investments against huge market swings. This prevents their balance from going into the red when they trade leveraged products. Other than that, real-money retail accounts use the standard dealing-desk type of order execution. One standard lot is equal to 100,000 currency units.
However, you must cover certain criteria before they let you open a real retail account. The broker will prompt you to partake in a short questionnaire to adequately evaluate your knowledge and experience in trading with leveraged derivatives. You will be denied a real account if they determine you are unfit to trade with leverage. This is because 79% of all retail investors at AvaTrade end up losing their money when using leverage.
If you are not yet ready to set up a live account via the mobile app of AvaTrade, you should feel free to begin your experience with a demo one. Registering a demo account will take less than a minute. It entitles you to a free trial with virtual money for a period of 21 days.
After this period, your demo account will expire and you will have no other option but to upgrade to a real account provided that you are satisfied with the AvaTrade mobile platform, of course.
Professional Accounts at AvaTrade
Traders who feel confident in their level of experience and trading knowledge have the option to upgrade their regular accounts at AvaTrade to professional ones. Of course, you can open one such account immediately upon registration but only on condition you meet AvaTrade’s criteria. Professional accounts are not available to just anyone.
The eligibility criteria are not that easy to meet. You must provide proof that you have registered a sufficient trading activity within the last year on relevant derivative markets like spread betting and leveraged Contracts for Difference (CFDs).
Your trading transactions should also meet specific size requirements. You are unlikely to receive AvaTrade’s approval if you are a small-scale investor who only trades occasionally and with nominal amounts.
The second criterion that may render you eligible for a professional account is having experience of one year or more in the financial sector. You will also need a portfolio of more than $500,000 in trading instruments such as leveraged derivatives, shares, and debt instruments.
However, this type of account is available only to eligible clients who are permanently domiciled in certain countries, namely the UK, Germany, France, Portugal, the Netherlands, Poland, Denmark, Bulgaria, Belgium, Austria, the Czech Republic, Ireland, and Italy, among several others.
Islamic Accounts at AvaTrade
Some traders prefer to open and close multiple positions within the same day, a practice known as day trading. Others are looking to make long-term investments, which translates into holding their trades open for prolonged periods. This is associated with paying interest (known as swaps in the Forex world) on your overnight positions, which can be problematic for customers of the Muslim faith since Islam disallows financial transactions that involve interest.
The AvaTrade mobile app caters to such customers with interest-free Islamic accounts. These work exactly like standard accounts, the only difference being they are not subject to interest or swap charges. Instead, the Islamic accounts at AvaTrade work on the MetaTrader 4 software and are charged with daily administration fees rather than with swaps.
Muslim clients who sign up with AvaTrade are provided with a broad choice of financial instruments to trade with. They can invest in fiat currency pairs, commodities like gold, crude oil and silver, indices, stocks, bonds, and Exchange Traded Funds (ETFs). With that said, not all currency pairs are made available to Islamic customers at AvaTrade.
Islamic accounts do not support trading with cryptocurrencies. A customer will have to give up on the privileges their swap-free account entitles them to and pay interest when trading such decentralized currencies overnight. The same pertains to Forex pairs that involve any of the following fiat currencies – RUB, ZAR, MXN, and TRY. Other than that, Islamic customers can test this swap-free account type in demo mode.
AvaTrade Mobile App Trading Instruments
The AvaTrade GO mobile application includes a wide range of instruments to trade with while on the move. There more than 250 currency pairs along with numerous derivatives. Mobile users can trade with commodities, cryptocurrencies, stocks, equity indices, and bonds. ETFs and vanilla options for Forex are also on offer for those interested in this type of investment.Forex and Cryptocurrency Trading
The foreign exchange market is the most dynamic and liquid market in the world, with a mind-boggling turnover that exceeds $6 trillion per day. At AvaTrade, mobile customers are presented with numerous lucrative opportunities in terms of currency pairs. Here you have the chance to go long or short, buying and selling major currency pairs such as USD/EUR, USD/JPY, USD/CAD, and USD/GBP. Such pairs are frequently recommended to new traders looking to build up their experience.
Nevertheless, the brokerage also provides trading minor pairs. Also referred to as crossed pairs, these usually contain the currencies of major economies, not counting the US dollar. Some prime examples at AvaTrade GO include AUD/GBP, EUR/AUD, JPY/EUR, and GBP/JPY.
More versed Forex investors are granted the option to diversify their portfolios by incorporating exotics. These stand out with significantly greater volatility and a lower level of liquidity compared to major and minor pairs. The spreads are normally higher, which is why trading with such pairs is considered a more expensive venture. Examples include EUR/TRY, ZAR/JPY, and GBP/SGD.
The mobile broker offers three ways to open a trading position on the foreign exchange markets. You can tap on your chosen pair, trade directly on charts, or open your position with a single tap provided that the MetaTrader one-click trading feature is activated.
At AvaTrade, customers also have a broad range of cryptocurrencies to choose from, with some of the options being Ethereum, Bitcoin, Ripple, Litecoin, Dash, and Stellar. The maximum leverage for cryptocurrencies for customers from the EU is 2:1 whereas that for non-EU traders is much higher at 25:1.
Bonds, Stocks, and Indices
AvaTrade members can also speculate on price fluctuations in both directions by purchasing Contracts for Difference (CFDs). These are available for a wide range of financial instruments including bonds, stocks, and equity indices. The brokerage boasts a focused range of Asian, North American, and European bonds, with tight spreads and maximum leverage of 25:1. You can go both long and short on such markets.
Those of you looking to incorporate indices into their portfolios have a decent enough choice from a great variety of index markets. This spares you the hassles that result from having to analyze and evaluate the performance of companies’ individual stocks. This is because indices measure the weighted average of an entire basket of multiple companies’ stocks.
You can speculate with the performance of DAX 30, the Dow Jones, Euro Stoxx 50, Nasdaq, FTSE 100, and the S&P 500. Customers who wish to trade individual stocks are not lacking diversity, either. They can invest in stocks from major exchanges such as the FTSE, Nasdaq, and NYSE. This is where the stocks of large companies like Coca Cola, Google, Apple, Tesla, and Amazon are being traded.
Soft and Hard Commodities
Mobile traders who download the AvaTrade app can act on their opinion on a variety of hard commodities including silver, gold, copper, platinum, oil, and palladium. Contracts for Difference are available for these commodities but the maximum leverage you can use is product-specific.
The maximum for gold is 20:1 whereas that for all other available commodities, including soft ones, is half as low at 10:1. Speaking of soft commodities, AvaTrade caters to customers’ needs by offering markets for corn, wheat, sugar, soybeans, and coffee.
Vanilla Options
This mobile brokerage accepts trading with daily, weekly, monthly, and yearly vanilla options. This trading instrument is difficult to grasp by novice investors but once you get the hang of it, you will quickly get hooked. Trading with vanilla options gives you full control over all aspects of your positions and enables you to adequately balance your gains and risk. AvaTrade offers both put and call options.
AvaTrade Mobile App Fees and Spreads
AvaTrade incorporates fixed rather than floating spreads. Some investors might argue against fixed spreads but these are not entirely lacking in advantages. One of the biggest benefits of trading with fixed spreads is that you know how much a position will cost you beforehand. The downside of this type of spread, however, is that some brokerages often widen it during important news releases while others would impose trading restrictions.
The exact spread depends on the instrument you trade with. The same thing applies to the margin. For example, the spread for silver is 0.029 with a margin of 10% whereas that for the Nasdaq index is 1.00 over market with a margin requirement of 5%.
Meanwhile, the costs of trading with more volatile instruments like the cryptocurrencies are significantly higher, starting at 2% over-market. It makes sense that trading cryptocurrencies with leverage would also require a greater margin, or 50% in the case of AvaTrade GO. As a matter of fact, all spreads here are over-market ones.
You will find a complete list of the fixed spreads the mobile brokerage offers on the Trading Conditions page of the website. It also contains useful information about leverages and margins. Another thing to bear in mind is that the spreads for certain commodities, such as crude oil and natural gas, can sometimes turn out to be wider than those listed from 10 pm to 5 am GMT.
Similarly to some of its rival brokers, AvaTrade does charge its customers fees for inactivity. Provided that your live account remains inactive for one whole year or more, the brokerage would automatically deduct maintenance fees from your available balance. The charges might change over time but amount to $100 at the moment of writing.
AvaTrade Mobile Banking
Clients of AvaTrade are provided with a variety of payment options they can use to deposit and withdraw while on the move. However, the available solutions for banking depend on where you register from. For instance, customers based in EU member states and Australia cannot use e-payment methods like the digital wallets Skrill and Neteller. As for the base currencies you can register your AvaTrade account in, these include GBP, EUR, USD, AUD, CAD, and CHF.
| Brand | Minimum | Fees | Processing Time |
 | No Minimum | No Fees | Instantly |
 | No Minimum | No Fees | Instantly |
 | No Minimum | No Fees | Instantly |
 | No Minimum | No Fees | Instantly |
 | No Minimum | No Fees | Instantly |
 | No Minimum | No Fees | Instantly |
| Brand | Minimum | Fees | Processing Time |
| No Minimum | No Fees | 1-2 business days |
| No Minimum | No Fees | 1-2 business days |
| No Minimum | No Fees | 1-2 business days |
| No Minimum | No Fees | 1-2 business days |
| No Minimum | No Fees | 1-2 business days |
| No Minimum | No Fees / International $25 | 2-7 business days |
Deposits
Traders at AvaTrade can take advantage of several payment methods that allow for convenient and secure deposits. Once you give the trading platform a test drive by opening a free demo account, you can proceed to top up your live account with a credit and debit card. Bank wire transfers are also available to AvaTrade’s international clients.
The supported deposit methods are country-specific. For example, the brokerage does support virtual wallets such as Skrill, Neteller, and WebMoney, but these are unavailable to traders who register from Australia and the European Union. Meanwhile, customers who sign up from Canada cannot deposit with their credit cards.
Each deposit method has its specific processing timeframe. Deposits conducted with credit or debit cards are immediate provided that you have successfully verified your account. Otherwise, first-time deposits with cards may require up to one working day.
Electronic payments via the supported e-wallets are processed within 24 hours. The bank wire transfer is the least time-efficient deposit method, taking up to 7 working days. However, the exact timeframe depends on the payee’s country of origin and their financial institution. The minimum deposit amount is $100 or the equivalent in your currency. The mobile brokerage recommends a starting balance of between $1,000 to $2,000.
Withdrawals
Mobile customers of AvaTrade are granted quick and easy access to their trading profits provided they have completed the initial verification process of their accounts. The available methods coincide with those offered for deposits. You can cash out your trading gains with your card and e-wallet, or by requesting a bank wire transfer.
The brokerage understands that customers insist on accessing their money quickly and hassle-free, which is why withdrawals from your AvaTrade account take only 1 or 2 business days. Due to regulatory requirements, customers can receive their money only via the payment solution they have initially used to fund their balance. Another important thing to take into account is that AvaTrade allows you to withdraw only up to 200% of the sum you have deposited with your debit or credit card.
For instance, if you deposit $1,000 and you make a profit of $1,500, the broker will return only $2,000 to the card you have initially deposited with. You can cash out the remaining $500 via another supported banking method, like a bank transfer. Traders can cancel their withdrawal requests as long as the latter are still pending. The broker covers processing fees for bank transfer withdrawals of up to $100 or the currency equivalent.
AvaTrade Regulations
AvaTrade is an accredited mobile broker that operates legally in a huge variety of countries. The company services traders from Australia under a license, issued by the Australian Securities and Investment Commission (ASIC). Another valid license has been granted by the Central Bank of Ireland.
Japanese traders are accepted as well under the permission of Japan’s Financial Services Agency. AvaTrade also holds valid permits from the South African Financial Sector Conduct Authority and the Abu Dhabi Financial Regulatory Services Authority.
The brokerage stores the funds of its clients into a segregated account and provides them with a Negative Balance Protection, which basically means you can never lose more than your initial deposit. The app also contains a risk disclaimer banner, warning that 79% of AvaTrade’s retail customers lose their money when using leverage.
Conclusion
This mobile brokerage deserves to be given a try thanks to its broad variety of assets, reasonable spreads, and useful educational tools. The AvaProtect tool for risk management is another useful tool that can greatly reduce your losses from adverse market movements. The brokerage is overseen by some of the most accredited financial regulators in the world. Mobile traders can have their full peace of mind they are investing in a well-protected, safe environment.