What to look for when choosing a Forex Broker

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#439: What to look for when choosing a Forex Broker

In this video:
00:26 – I’m joined by Ben Clay at Blueberry Markets
01:15 – What should you look for when choosing a new Forex broker?
04:46 – How easy is it to add and withdraw funds
06:40 – How safe are the funds?
07:30 – How long have Blueberry Markets been operating?
08:20 – What trading platforms do you use?
09:20 – Can I trade Crypto’s with Blueberry Markets?
10:47 – Will you be adding even more tradable products?
11:58 – Do your charts open the new day at 5pm EST New York time?
13:20 – What makes Blueberry Markets different from the others?

Andrew Mitchem:
What should you look for when you are searching for a new forex broker? Let’s that talk about that and more, right now.

Andrew Mitchem:
Hey traders, Andrew Mitchem here, at The Forex Trading Coach with video and podcast number 439.

I’m joined by Ben Clay at Blueberry Markets

Andrew Mitchem:
In today’s video and podcast, something a little bit different for you. We’re joined here by Ben Clay over Blueberry Markets to talk about brokers, what to look for and what you should look at for when you’re deciding to choose a new broker. Ben, welcome along. Good to have you here.

Ben Clay:
Thank you very much, Andrew. Always a pleasure.

Andrew Mitchem:
Good to see you. I think Ben, it’s been about a year since we had our last catch-up like this. Looking forward to lots of developments and exciting things happening out there with Blueberry.

Ben Clay:
As am I, thank you very much.

Andrew Mitchem:
Now good stuff. Ben, last week, I asked some of our listeners to ask a group of questions really, that they have always wanted to ask a broker. I said, “I’ve asked them on their behalf as we were having this catch-up.” I’ve got some questions here. I’d like to run through them with you.

What should you look for when choosing a new Forex broker?

The first thing someone said, what are some of the things that they should be looking for? What are the things they should be mindful of when they’re out there searching for a new broker? Obviously, there’s so many brokers out there online. They all claim to be good. They all claim to be legit. What is it that maybe just give us a list of some of the things that they should look for?

Ben Clay:
Yeah, absolutely. For me, personally, the first thing that I’m always looking at is reputation.

Andrew Mitchem:
Yes.

Ben Clay:
What the public is saying about that broker, online reviews, do your absolute diligence when it comes to searching and looking through the reviews. Usually, you’re going to find that there’ll obviously be some poor reviews out there for every broker. You get a pretty good idea when you look through the whole catalogue of what people are saying about them.

Andrew Mitchem:
Right.

Ben Clay:
Next, I would say licencing and where the broker is regulated, that’s always going to be a very important one. There are some good brokers out there, who don’t have regulation. That’s not to say that they’re all bad, but when a broker’s regulated that gives the client some protection, at the end of the day. There’s someone they can go speak to if they’re not happy with the resolution from the broker. That’s very important because things do go wrong, at times. It’s not to say that we’re a perfect broker, whatsoever, but I think it comes down to how you handle those client complaints and knowing that you can actually go somewhere and speak to someone if you do have an issue that the broker hasn’t resolved. That’s a big one for me.

Ben Clay:
Lastly, I would say, customer service is really, really important. Test it out and that’s not just with us. That’s for any broker. Jump onto their live chat, give them a call, ask them some questions and see how you’re treated. I think those three things there, the reputation, the licencing, and customer service are definitely the things that I’d be looking for when searching for a broker.

Andrew Mitchem:
Yeah. Cool. Thank you for that. One thing, just to add to that, I find with your customer service, your online live chat people, I don’t know who they are or where they’re based even, but I just find them very knowledgeable and I get the answers straight away. I think there’s nothing worse than whether it be a forex broker or anything you’re out there trying to search for a product and they just give you a generic copy-paste answer, or they, what’s your name, email address and we’ll get someone else to find it for you and your guys always give the correct answer straight away and you get off the chat after just a few minutes go well, I’ll fix the problem.

Ben Clay:
Well that I’ll pass that on to our head of the client’s experience because that’s something that we’ve focused really hard on. We actually have targets and goals to have live chats answered within 30 seconds, questions answered within 30 seconds, email responses within 30 minutes. As you said, not just generic responses we’ve built out our own knowledge base internally in the company so that everyone has access to that and everyone knows how the whole company works, no matter what department you’re in and on top of that as well, we have customer service that’s 24/7. [crosstalk 00:04:06] So even on the weekends when the markets at markets are closed, you can reach out and get in touch with people. So I really appreciate that. That’s something that we’ve worked very, very hard to get to and it hasn’t been easy, but we have a really dedicated customer service team that we’re really proud of.

Andrew Mitchem:
Yeah. Good. Well, it’s look, it’s working well, I can just say that from my own personal experience as well.

Ben Clay:
Always, always good to know. Thank you.

Andrew Mitchem:
Yeah, it is. That’s excellent. Ben, next question here.

How easy is it to add and withdraw funds

Someone said, “how easy is it to add and withdraw funds and what payment methods do you offer?”

Ben Clay:
Another great question. One question that I’m always blown away that I get asked and I was surprised at how often I would get asked this was, “am I allowed to withdraw profits?” That’s what I used to get asked by clients all the time, which would just astonish me.

Andrew Mitchem:
Yes.

Ben Clay:
I mean, yes, they’re your funds. You can withdraw them whenever you like. There’re no issues whatsoever. Withdrawing is very easy with process withdrawals within 24 hours during business days. And it usually takes one to three days to hit the accounts. In terms of adding funds, we’ve added a bunch of different payment methods now so it’s really nice and easy. We’ve actually added USDT, so tether crypto funding, which you can do through Ethereum. We also now have PayPal, which has been really, really a positive far [crosstalk 00:05:22] as well as… Of-… yeah, that’s been a big one for us. Then of course credit card, bank wire, skrill, Neteller, dragon pay, and we also have faster pay. So [crosstalk 00:05:34] we’ve got plenty of different options to withdraw and deposit from and we make sure it’s nice and fast and easy.

Andrew Mitchem:
Yeah. It’s not like the old days when you had to do the whole bank deposit and even head down the bank. I remember in my first days with not with you guys, but long before, it was a it was a slow process.

Ben Clay:
Yes, yes. We’ve tried to make it as fast as possible. I think with global banking changes, everyone needs to be on that same page. There’s no point delaying withdrawals or anything along those lines. As a broker, that’s one of the most important things and it was probably the most frequent question I got asked was, “how fast do you process your withdrawals and how easy is it?” So, it’s important to us to make it nice and easy.

Andrew Mitchem:
Yeah. And again, from personal experience, I find it’s sometimes the same day and that’s different country as well. So really good.

Ben Clay:
Absolutely. I’m glad.

How safe are the funds?

Andrew Mitchem:
And safety of funds, obviously great to be able to get your funds back out, but how safe are someone’s funds when they’re there and they’re actively trading with you?

Ben Clay:
That’s another good question. One, that’s going back to the first question you asked, that’s a question you should always ask the broker that you’re [inaudible 00:06:37] board with as well. How are my funds held? What guidelines do you go by? So being regulated here in Australia, we have very strict guidelines to follow. All our funds are held in segregated accounts here in Australia and what that means is they’re kept separate from the company funds, operating day to day funds. So obviously there’s always risk in where you’re holding your funds in any financial institution but, the fact is that we hold them separately from our day to day operating funds. So if anything is to happen to blueberry markets, those funds are held separate, so to speak.

Andrew Mitchem:
Cool. Well that’s good to note.

How long have Blueberry Markets been operating?

“How long you been operating?”, that’s another question that came through.

Ben Clay:
Okay. We’ve actually gone just past that a five year anniversary, so just over five years around five and a half years now. We’re very, very proud of that. It’s been a long five years. When I started here, we had four employees and now we have close to 50 [crosstalk 00:07:32] around the world. So we’ve had a lot of growth and I think you’ve been with us since the very early days, I think 2017 [crosstalk 00:07:38] when you first joined us.

Andrew Mitchem:
Yes.

Ben Clay:
So you’ve been with us along for the ride.

Andrew Mitchem:
Yeah. Wow. That’s, that’s good to know. I came over and met Dean, must have been close on that beginning time. It seems [crosstalk 00:07:51] like probably close on five years ago now.

Ben Clay:
Yeah. I think we’re due to come over and and meet you this time around trip over.

What trading platforms do you use?

Andrew Mitchem:
Yep. That’d be awesome. Nah, good. Platforms, MT4, MT5, your main platforms?

Ben Clay:
Yes. So we’ve got MT4 and MT5, obviously they’re all available on web and mobile platforms as well. So you can use them on mobile, just download the apps there. We haven’t seen a need to branch out too much more on the platform side of the moment. Everyone seems to still love MT4 and M5 and I’m still an MT4 MT5 proponent myself. I’ve been using them for 12 years now.

Andrew Mitchem:
Yes.

Ben Clay:
So, so those are the platforms that we have but, if anyone has any preferences or platforms they want to add, always come to us we’re always open for suggestions.

Andrew Mitchem:
Yeah. Cool. I find that MT4 and MT5 covers probably 90% of most traders out there.

Ben Clay:
Yeah, exactly. Right. And on that as well, MT5 has the ability to have a lot more products than MT4 previously had, there was server restrictions. So now MT5 can have hundreds of products on there, which has been good for us.

Can I trade Crypto’s with Blueberry Markets?

Andrew Mitchem:
Good. I think that sort of ties in nicely with the next question about cryptos, because I’ve had some people say, “I can’t find cryptos on Blueberry markets” and they can on other brokers. Interested to hear your answer to that one.

Ben Clay:
Again, back to the platforms, we have all those products in our MT5 platforms. If you can’t find them speak to your account manager, you can actually request an MT5 account from your client portal, just request an additional account and we’ll get you set up with an MT5 platform, which has 10 crypto pairs on there. We’ve also added 200 Australian shares and we have 50 of the top U.S. shares, Google, Amazon, Facebook, and so on. That’s been a big addition for us this year as well.

Andrew Mitchem:
Oh wow. So on MT5 only for those new additionals. Can you trade those on just a normal forex MT5 account? Can you…

Ben Clay:
Yep, absolutely. So all those products should be there, if you don’t see them as a little trick. If you do have an MT5 account and you don’t see all those products, go to your market watch where you see all of those products listed and right click on any pair in there and then just hit show all. That will bring up literally every single product that we offer.

Andrew Mitchem:
Wow. Well, that’s good to know. So it’s MT5 if you want to go those extra, non forex market

Ben Clay:
Absolutely.

Will you be adding even more tradable products?

Andrew Mitchem:
So with all those that you’ve mentioned, I doubt this next question’s going to have an answer then because it seems like you’ve got a lot already but, the question was, “will you be adding even more forex pairs, cryptos, commodities and indices?” It sounds like you’ve already got lots there already.

Ben Clay:
Well, we do have a lot of products, but that’s not to say that we’re not open to adding more for sure.

Andrew Mitchem:</strong
Right.

Ben Clay:
We always take suggestions on board. So if there’s certain demand for a certain product, then absolutely we’ll be looking to add more as I said, MT5 has a lot less limitations. I’m hoping in the next year that whenever we do this video again next that I’ll have some updates with a bunch of new products as well. Again, if anyone has any suggestions, don’t hesitate to reach out to us and put those forward.

Andrew Mitchem:
Wow. That’s really good to know because not only do you have a whole lot of extra markets to trade, but you’re also willing to add additionals if the demands there.

Ben Clay:
Absolutely. Absolutely. We try and do what the people want at the end of the day. So come forward to us and, and let us know and we’ll take care of it.

Andrew Mitchem:
Perfect. A question here, and I think this is a very… What would be the word people underestimate the importance of this one.

Do your charts open the new day at 5pm EST New York time?

Someone said, and they may have seen a lot of my videos, but they said, “do you have five days in your week on the charts and do your charts open at 5:00 PM New York time?” I’m guessing they’re talking about the forex markets.

Ben Clay:
Absolutely, that’s something as well that was very important to us and same with the previous brokers. I’ve worked out, to be honest, I don’t understand why you would want to run on any other timeframe. That’s the timeframe that gives you the correct data and we’ll give you five daily candles through the week. The markets don’t trade on Saturday, Sundays. So that’s how it should be shown and that’s how we’ll always show. It does get a little bit tricky around daylight savings changes, but we always make sure that we keep them at 5:00 PM New York open.

Andrew Mitchem:
That’s right. That’s what I’ve always taught people. If you work on, doesn’t matter where you live in the world, if you work on 5:00 PM New York time, it’s the start of the new week and the start of each new day. People say, “how do I find out?” Well, for me, it’s quite simple. If you’ve gone to a daily chart, there should be five candles in the week and if you then scale down to a one hour chart, the new day starts with the zero, zero candle on your one hour chart will be 5:00 PM New York time.

Ben Clay:
Exactly. That’s a good way to look at it. And also it’s either going to be GMT+2 or GMT plus three, depending on whether New York is on daylight savings or not. So you can do a quick Google search as well and what is GMT+2 time at the moment, if it matches your platform then you know that, that broker’s running on that same timeframe.

What makes Blueberry Markets different from the others?

Andrew Mitchem:
Yeah, absolutely. No, that’s good. Last question here, Ben, someone has said, “what makes you guys different?” Like we said, right near the beginning, most brokers think they’re the best broker, but what genuinely makes you guys different?

Ben Clay:
That’s a question that I always get excited to answer. I guess we do have extremely competitive spreads and lightning fast execution, which a lot of brokers do. There are a lot of great brokers out there, but I really think that our customer service is what separates us at the end of the day. It’s something that we’ve worked so hard on and something that we’ve thought we saw a gap in the market while there are a lot of good brokers out there, and a lot of good brokers offering amazing customer service. We’re focusing on offering the best customer service in the world when it comes to brokers, not just being there, but being there for every single person that comes along and making sure that any issue is resolved in a real speedy timeline.

Ben Clay:
I think that’s been what’s separated us and what’s helped us grow to the level that have in such a competitive industry. So I’m really, really proud of where we are and I think if that’s something that’s important to you and I think it should be important to everyone is good customer service and knowing that something does go wrong, you’ve got someone there to talk to. So every single client of ours had their own personal account manager, no matter where you are in the world, you’ll have someone there to speak to. And of course we have that 24/7 live chat. So as well as a good range of products, amazing spreads and fast execution, it’s the customer service that really separates us from the other brokers.

Andrew Mitchem:
Yeah and once again I see that all the time, I hear that all the time, which is why I’ve always had Blueberry markets for the last five years as my preferred broker on the website. For that reason that I know if I send people to you or people I suggest… I never send people, I will say here’s a group of brokers who I think are good. You can find out which ones you think are the best and for them…

Ben Clay:
Yeah.

Andrew Mitchem:
Then it’s people making their call. But everybody that goes to you, the feedback is always exceptional around, this was easy, this was good to set up adding funds for drawing, especially the customer service. So yeah. Look, thank you for doing that. And it’s great to be associated with you guys within the Forex market when there’s so many choices for people, but so much that’s not good. It’s great to be associated with someone who is good.

Ben Clay:
Yeah, and I really appreciate that kind of feedback, that’s something that’s really important to us. The same goes for you at the Forex trading coach, I’ve known you for a very long time and I hear nothing but positive feedback from your clients, with the service and the products that you offer. So I really, really appreciate all the hard work you put in to supporting Blueberry as well.

Andrew Mitchem:
Cool. Thank you, Ben. Awesome to talk with you. Thank you to everybody who has sent in questions and look forward to catching up with again this time next year. We’ll do another one.

Ben Clay:
Sounds good to me. Let’s not leave it as long next time.

Andrew Mitchem:
Sounds good. Thanks Ben. Take care.

Ben Clay:
Thanks Andrew. Bye-bye.

Episode Title: #439: What to look for when choosing a Forex Broker


Find out more about Blueberry Markets – Click Here

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