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CloseATC Brokers Review
ATC Brokers offers the MT4 trading platform, forex and CFD instruments, but has a high minimum deposit requirement.
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Are you aware of the potential benefits of a volatile forex market?
Throughout COVID-19, more people are trying to recover from economic hardships through forex trading.
Investors are raising concerns about a U.S.-China trade war. Unemployment is skyrocketing around the world, and a potential slowdown is looming, with a lack of options to deal with it. Even before any downturn happens, the U.S. is running into trillion dollar deficits. 📉
This unnerving economic uncertainty has caused demand for the U.S. Dollar to climb as investors seek a safe-haven currency. At the same time, others question the stability of the U.S. Dollar. Amid the market volatility, there has been a 300% rise in people forex trading.
So, how can ATC Brokers help?
In this review, we will go through exactly how ATC Brokers can help give you a head start in the forex market. We will highlight what we like, and where we think the broker could improve. We’ll then complete the review by delving a little further into how COVID-19 is influencing the forex market.
Sound good? Let’s get started. 👇
Fast Facts
- Regulation: FCA (UK), NFA (U.S.), CIMA (Cayman Islands)
- Minimum deposit: $5,000
- Demo account: Yes
- Asset coverage: Forex and CFDs
- Best for: Transparency & safety
Ratings
- Commissions & Fees: 7.5/10
- Investment selection: 7/10
- Account options & Features: 7/10
- Usability: 8/10
- Educational Resources: 7/10
- Customer Service: 8/10
- Overall: 7.5/10
Investor Warning: There is a high level of risk in Margined Transaction products, such as, Foreign Exchange (FX) and Metals trading which may not be suitable for all traders as it could result in the loss of the total deposit or incur a negative balance; only use risk capital. Prior to trading any products offered by ATC BROKERS, please carefully consider your experience level and financial situation.
Overview & Summary
ATC Brokers most important aspects:
- ATC Brokers Ltd is considered safe and is regulated by the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) in the UK, the National Futures Association (NFA) in the U.S., and in the Cayman Islands (CIMA).
- Investors can access ECN pricing and variable spreads on over 100 instruments.
- ATC Brokers provides the MT4 trading platform, and an easy-to-use forex trading app.
- The online broker could improve its educational section and offer a wider range of instruments to compete with other leading brokers, like eToro.
What is ATC Brokers? 📚
There’s a lot to learn about forex brokers if you’re looking for one that can help you. Here’s the lowdown on ATC Brokers.
ATC Brokers is a multi-asset brokerage providing forex and CFDs for retail and institutional clients. The broker was set up in the UK in 2005 but has grown since to offer its services to investors across the globe.
ATC Brokers operates a 100% agency model and does not take a position against the trader to manipulate trading activity in its favour. The broker forwards clients orders to the liquidity providers where they are then executed at the best rates.
ATC Brokers provides the MetaTrader Pro platform, along with an Application Interface (API) which is a cool feature that allows users to hook their trading strategy directly to the execution venue view FIX API. This is very modern technology that makes sure the execution speeds are kept in top shape and spreads are kept tights, as well as catering to a variety of strategies and trading styles to suit your needs.
In 2019, ATC Brokers reported a massive decline in its revenue, stating no particular reason behind the poor performance. If we were to guess why, we would say that this is probably down to the fact that the broker simply doesn’t offer enough instruments, or quality services to compete with other giants in the industry, like Forex.com.
Pros
- Fully regulated
- MT Pro plugin for MT4 trading platform
- Frequent market news updates PAMM accounts available
- ECN execution model
Cons
- High minimum trading capital
- Limited payment options
- High withdrawal fees
Is ATC Brokers Regulated? 🛡
ATC Brokers Ltd is authorised and regulated by the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) in the UK, by the National Futures Association (NFA) in the U.S., and in 2018 it added the Cayman Islands (CIMA) to its regulatory licence, too.
ATC Brokers is in full compliance with these regulations and keeps all clients deposits in separate bank accounts. Barclays Bank Plc, a leading British Bank account in the UK holds the accounts, rest assured they’re safe.
With this, the broker doesn’t go near traders deposits for its daily operations. This means that if the broker goes bankrupt, you won’t need to worry about your funds, they should be safe, secure, and returned to clients.
ATC Brokers is a loyal member of the Financial Services Compensation Scheme (FSCS). This scheme is a kind of insurance for the deposits made into ATC brokers’ accounts. If the broker doesn’t comply with this, clients could be eligible to receive compensation of up to £85,000.
Lastly, the broker takes its time to make sure it verifies each customer using the ‘Know Your Customer’ (KYC) method. Clients will need to show photo identity and a recent utility bill.
Where Exactly is ATC Brokers Regulated? 🌎
Clients from all around the world can use ATC Brokers to start forex trading. This does exclude countries from the OFCA list and from other jurisdictions where the regulation might be a bit too strict.
⚠️ Important: Certain ATC Brokers products and features mentioned in our review might not be available to traders from certain countries due to legal restrictions. For example, you won’t find ATC Brokers in our list of the top Australian forex brokers, for exactly this reason.
Complete List of ATC Brokers’ Fees 💸
Now that we’ve outlined all the safety measures, it’s time to get into the interesting stuff: fees. We’ll start by highlighting some of the key fees ATC Brokers charges.
Modern brokerages offer state-of-the-art platforms, apps, market analysis, media coverage, and research tools. In order to continue providing these services and remain profitable, brokerages often charge various fees – both related to trading and not related to trading.
Minimum Deposit | Withdrawal Fees | Inactivity Fees | Deposit Fees | CFD Commission Fees |
---|---|---|---|---|
$5,000/£5,000 | Vary depending on method | Yes | Yes | No |
Minimum Initial Deposit 💰
The minimum initial deposit with this brokerage is $5,000/£5,000. Though this is quite high, it shouldn’t frighten you too much. Brokers that require heftier initial deposits usually offer higher quality and more varied services to clients.
Brokers with less demanding minimum deposits usually want to attract younger investors and novices who don’t require any particular level of features or trading capabilities. Brokers that don’t have an account minimum generally do this to grow their customer base.
With the rapid expansion of online brokerages that don’t have account minimums, even the brokerages that do have minimum deposits have been forced to reduce them to attract new clients.
The largest minimum deposit you could need, when all account types and jurisdictions are considered is a sizable $10,000/£10,000.
ATC Brokers Withdrawal Fees 💳
Withdrawal fees from ATC Brokers aren’t universal – they depend on how you choose to withdraw payment.
For international wires, a fee of £25.00, $30,00, or €40,00 is charged. currency. Credit/Debit cards are charged no fee. Skrill Wallet is charged a 1% transaction fee, and clients in the UK can use a faster payment for a fee of £10.
Every broker will have its own fee rules surrounding withdrawals. On top of that, payment providers also charge different processing fees. ATC brokers also support withdrawals by wire transfer.
Inactivity Fees 🗓
ATC Brokers clients are charged inactivity fees if there is no buying or selling activity for at least six months. For this, you will be charged 50.000 in the currency that your account is in. We advise you to become familiar with all the brokers fees and services that you may be charged.
If you decide not to trade with your account anymore, it’s best you close it by notifying customer support to avoid fees. When doing this, confirm that there are no fees due.
Deposit Fees 💵
ATC Brokers accepts all major credit cards, including Visa card, Mastercard and China UnionPay. A deposit fee of 2.9% is generally charged while there is a $0 fee for withdrawals.
ATC Brokers Commissions 💷
Luckily, if you want to trade CFDs with ATC Brokers, you won’t be charged commission fees. Commission fees might be charged when buying and selling financial instruments. This is one of the ways in which forex brokers earn revenue, and they vary among different financial assets, order types, and account types.
ATC Brokers Compared
Average spread EUR/USD standard
N/A
0.6
N/A
All-in cost EUR/USD - active
N/A
0.6
N/A
Minimum initial deposit
$3,000
$10,000
$1
Total currency pairs
38
182
88
Demo account?
Social / copy trading?
What Can You Trade with ATC Brokers? 📃
Traders will gain access to forex, metals, and CFDs through an ATC Brokers account. What you will actually be able to trade with this brokerage, however, is a bit more complicated. Here’s where it gets a bit tricky.
You see, depending on your country of residence, you will sign up with different entities of ATC Brokers. Investment offerings are not the same across the board – with some jurisdictions having access to more tradable assets while others offer less variety. This is a result of different regulations across jurisdictions. Therefore, your country of residence will determine which trading instruments you will have access to.
The broker provides ECN pricing and variable spreads. Overall, the broker provides over 100 instruments. U.S. customers can access a range of 40 instruments, including 38 popular currency pairs and two metals. In the UK, customers can access 38 major and exotic forex pairs and 12 CFD instruments.
You can begin trading in CFD, Crude Oil CFDs, silver and gold, commodities, other exotic metals and forex pairs, including major forex pairs like EUR/GBP, EUR/JPY, EUR/USD, and GBP/USD. These all have competitive commissions.
Investment Selection | Availability |
---|---|
Available instruments | 100 |
Platforms | MT4, Mirror Trader, Tablet & Mobile App |
Forex pairs | 40 |
Major forex pairs | Yes |
Minor forex pairs | Yes |
Exotic forex pairs | Yes |
Cryptocurrencies | No |
Commodity CFDs | |
Metals | Yes |
Energies | Yes |
Agriculture | No |
The Benefits of ATC Brokers 🏆
ATC Brokers provides the MT4 trading, which is one of the most popular for forex/CFD traders and brokers. It has existed since 2005 and has lasted because of its clean interface, myriad of tools and particularly, its ability to to support other apps, which heightens its capabilities.
A range of Expert Advisors (EAs) are sitting ready to automate the trading process. The platform can be downloaded to both Windows and MAC. Here are some of the key features you will find on the MT4 platform:
Intuitive interface with live quotes, analysis and order management tools. It also gives access to the MetaTrader market where you can buy indicators, signals, and other apps to enhance your experience.
The platform has over 30 technical indicators including more popular ones like Bollinger bands, moving average, MACD, etc.
ATC Brokers Mobile App 📱
If you like to trade on the go, finding the most ideal forex trading app for you is crucial. ATC Brokers’ app is known for its usability. Investors can utilize the mobile app on iOS and Android devices.
The app interface is easy-to-use and customizable with the majority of the same features borrowed from the desktop. This app allows you to trade on the go using the following features:
- ☑️ Clients can place trades on the desktop version and then pop over to the app to monitor or modify it, should they wish to.
- ☑️ Users can view all live quotes for tradable assets which can be customized to display the trader’s favoured assets.
- ☑️ The market news is updated daily and focuses on economic activities, currency pairs and other assets as well as recent price action.
- ☑️ The news section is updated multiple times during the day.
Trading Accounts & Fees 👥
If you sign up with ATC Brokers you will have the choice of three account types. All accounts have a minimum balance requirement of $2,000 for global clients, but European and UK clients will need to deposit a minimum of £/$/€5,000.
Investors in the UK can access a leverage of up to 1:200. In the EU a limit of 1:30 is enforced by regulators. That is, unless you are a professional trader. If you are in the U.S, you should be aware that forex regulations in the U.S. are stricter than those in the EU, which will affect the leverage offered to traders.
The broker charges $6 commissions round turn per lot. Spreads average at about 0.3 pips for the EUR/USD currency pair.
Though there is no detailed information available about the trading conditions for each individual account, the fees and leverage are roughly similar. If you are finding all of this a bit confusing, check out our guide to commissions and spreads in the forex market to simplify it down, and help you understand forex fees better.
⚡ Quick tip: Leveraging your trades can lead to larger profits. This guide will teach you all you need to know about leverage and how to make effective trades.
ATC Brokers Customer Support ☎
The ATC Brokers support team is offered in a limited range of languages. It holds a double AA grade support rating, and the team can be accessed through live chat and support.
For quick fire questions, the live chat is always a good option. But how does it fair out? The answer is that the team responds super quickly; within 30 seconds, in fact. The team quickly resolves any issues we sent their way.
For more questions that require more in depth responses, the email support is more adequate for the best answers. The email response time is excellent. In some cases, it was less than 15 minutes. The slowest response time was 6 hours. Of course, this could vary for others.
Similarly, the phone support is quick to answer, and answered any questions successfully. Overall, the customer support team is responsive and resolves issues quickly.
Where ATC Brokers Could Improve 👨🔧
ATC Brokers offers a range of 38 currency pairs, 9 CFDs and two metals. In comparison to other brokers, including Interactive Brokers, that offer a huge range of instruments, this is quite a small range of assets.
ATC Brokers Investor Education 👨🏫
ATC Brokers “Learn Centre” contains some training material on forex, CFD and metal trading to help up your game on the MT4 platform.
To trade effectively on the market, you should get to know the best trading tools to utilize. ATC Brokers provides clients with a strong collection of educational content to help you increase your knowledge. There’s also numerous articles on forex, day trading and CFDs, not to mention a demo account.
Overall, the educational section is limited. There are other top rated forex brokers for beginners that offer better education sections.
Leverage and CFDs with ATC Brokers ⚖
Let’s go through ATC Brokers leverage before you make your decision. The CFDs offered by ATC Brokers are a leveraged product. Here is how it might play out if you got ten fold the leverage to the minimum balance in your account.
Say you have a $10,000 position, and hold $1,000 in your current account. In this situation, a small sum of money has control over a bigger financial position. This is what we call leverage. Leverage has the potential to drastically increase both profits, and losses during trades. It can be both magnificent and devastating.
For example, say you purchase $10,000 worth of metals using CFDs. Then the price of your metal rises 10%, making your position now worth a total of $11,000 – positive news, right?
Your position has increased by $1,000, which represents a 100% rise on your initial funds.
But look, this can go either way. Let’s consider your metals fall 10% in value, making your position drop by $1,000. Where you did have a $10,00 position, now you have a $1,000 position.
The value could potentially fall significantly more, causing greater losses. For this reason, you should always be extra careful and aware of the risks that come with leverage. If you’re new to forex trading, we’ve created a complete guide to forex trading to show you the ABCs of it all.
How is Covid-19 Influencing the Forex Market? 📈
The impact that COVID-19 is having on the forex market is huge. Multiple factors are contributing towards economic uncertainty. Unemployment is skyrocketing across the globe as a result of lockdown fears.
Trump is still in an intense trade war with China and is not giving any of his strategy away. Even so, trying to fundamentally alter how China interacts with the global economy can’t be changed overnight.
So, there’s been a lot of inherent uncertainty about trade and renegotiating our trade agreements, and if a slowdown does arrive in the U.S. there aren’t a lot of options to deal with it. There isn’t much room left for the Fed to reduce interest rates further, and the political options aren’t easy either. On top of this, the Government is increasing its borrowing, and running into trillion dollar deficits.
This uncertainty has caused demand for the dollar to climb as investors seek a safe-haven currency. More people are now recognizing the benefits of a volatile market to help regain lost income. And with an increasing number of people at home, forex trading has catapulted by a huge 300%.
All in all, the effects of COVID-19 on the economy and the financial markets will continue for a long time. Now might just be the right time to find a reliable forex broker to help guide you through the rocky planes.
Conclusion 🚩
ATC Brokers provides access to a range of forex and CFDs to investors across the globe. It is regulated in several districts and complies with strict regulatory guidelines to safeguard your funds. Clients will benefit from the online brokers use of ECN technology which brings tight spreads and quick execution speeds to your investing.
With ATC Brokers, you will have access to just about 50 trading products, which is small when compared with some other leading online brokers out there. Funding options are also far and few between, lacking popular services including PayPal and Neteller.
A minimum deposit of $5,000 is quite high in comparison to most brokers really, but for this you should expect better research and analysis tools than those offered by brokers with a $0 minimum deposit requirement. The learning centre is also limited, which won’t be ideal for beginners.
In summary, ATC Brokers is considered safe, but it could improve a few things to be more competitive with other highly-rated brokers. We suggest you check out eToro’s easy-to-use trading platform.
ATC Brokers: FAQs
-
How Can I Deposit Funds with ATC Brokers?
ATC Brokers will not charge any deposit fee for transfers. However, an international withdrawal fee is charged with €30, $40, or £25 depending on the currency your account is based in. This is a high fee in comparison to other brokers.
The broker accepts all major credit cards, including Mastercard, Visa, and China UnionPay cards. There is a fee of about 2.9% charged on deposits.
-
How Do I Withdraw Funds with ATC Brokers?
When withdrawing from ATC Brokers, you won’t incur any charge. This is a big positive with the broker as withdrawal fees can seriously add up.
-
How Do I Sign Up with ATC Brokers?
To get started, click the “Open an Account” section on the bottom right of the ATC Brokers site. Once you click on the open an account button, you’ll be prompted to fill out an application. Here, you’ll include some personal information, your trading experience, and employment information, and a couple of standard security declarations.
If the application has been accepted you will get a welcome email, instructing you on how you access your account. The process in total should only take 1-2 working days for individual accounts. This can go up to 3-5 working days for joint accounts.
ATC Brokers and the Competition
See how ATC Brokers compares to the leading forex brokers by reading one of the reviews below.
All reviews, research, news and assessments of any kind on The Tokenist are compiled using a strict editorial review process by our editorial team. Neither our writers nor our editors receive direct compensation of any kind to publish information on tokenist.com. Our company, Tokenist Media LLC, is community supported and may receive a small commission when you purchase products or services through links on our website. Click here for a full list of our partners and an in-depth explanation on how we get paid.