Pepperstone Review

Pepperstone brokerage firm is a subsidiary under the Pepperstone Group Limited which is based in Australia. This brokerage firm began operation in 2010, but it has grown so quickly to be among one of the largest forex and CFDs brokers in the world.

In a bid to cover the need of clients in the United Kingdom and Europe through direct local access, the broker launched an entity in the UK in 2015. Altogether, the brokerage firm has offices in different locations, including Melbourne, Nassau, Dubai, Dusseldorf, Nairobi, Limassol, and London.

Pepperstone Regulation and Licenses

Pepperstone is a regulated and legit broker, which holds relevant licenses in every jurisdiction it operates in. The broker’s clients resident in Europe and the UK are handled by the Pepperstone Limited registered as a UK company and equally regulated by the FCA – Financial Conduct Authority.

Also, Pepperstone acquired the CySEC license in November 2020, which means all clients from the EU are covered by the legislation, while it also holds the BaFIN license that allows the broker to serve clients from Germany.

Clients from Dubai and MENA region are also covered since the company is regulated by the DFSA. And for the African clients, the company created an entity in Kenya that is regulated by the CMA.

Considering the commitment of this broker to different authorities, you can be sure your safety is guaranteed because each of these regulators compels strict compliance to their policies and customer protection laws. The FCA and ASIC required that the company separates traders’ funds from the company funds and also comply with other things like auditing, accounting, and internal risk management.

In addition, Pepperstone offers an automated risk management system to its clients and, also provides negative balance protection to give clients a safe trading experience. However, most traders from Europe registered with the UK entity of the broker since the European ESMA regulation reduced the maximum allowed leverage recently to 1:30 on FX pairs for security purposes.

Speaking of leverage, Pepperstone offers up to 1:500 leverage for all approved professional clients. But it is recommended that every new trader understands the implication of leverage in trading before making a choice.

Different Account Types offered

One thing that Pepperstone assures every client is that irrespective of the account type, all traders have access to the same quality trading experience, support, performance, and comprehensive features offered by the platform.

That said, Pepperstone has two different kinds of accounts namely the Standard account which is made for retail traders because of its no-commission model, and the institutional STP grade, which charges $3.5 commission per lot per $100,000 traded.

Trading Instruments, Fees, and Spreads

With Pepperstone, you have access to different trading instruments ranging from over 70 FX pairs, metals, indices, commodities, and cryptocurrencies which include BTC, BCH, ETH, DASH, and LTC against USD. However, these trading instruments vary per jurisdiction.

In terms of Fees, Pepperstone has been considered to be competitively low since it charges no fee for deposits, withdrawals, or even inactivity fees. But instead of the Razor account type, the broker charges a commission per trade, as mentioned above.

However, the pricing of the broker is built into its spread which is also considered low relative to other brokers in the brokerage industry. The Pepperstone standard account type has a minimum spread of 0.77 pips and the razor account type is as low as 0 pips since commissions are charged on the account in the first place.

Also, to trade cryptocurrency, the spreads are quite huge. For BTC, the spread is $10, $4 for Ethereum, and $3 for Litecoin. But all together, Pepperstone is considerably low with its pricing.

Conclusion

While the broker looks like a perfect choice, one of the cons is that it only offers a demo trading account for 30 days which might not be good for users that wanted to take their time to learn.

Outside this, every other this is as mentioned for Pepperstone, but in addition, you will want to consider reviews of existing users to make your decision.