Admirals Broker Review

Regulation: Admirals is regulated by the FCA of the UK, CySEC of Cyprus, ASIC of Australia, the FSCA of South Africa, and the FSA of Seychelles, under which Ugandand are onboarded. 

Safety Features: Under FCA regulation, all client money is kept fully segregated from Admirals’ own assets in an EEA-regulated credit institution. This ensures that clients’ funds are identifiable and available at all times and cannot be used by Admirals for any purpose.  Furthermore, the Financial Services Compensation Scheme (FSCS) exists to protect customers of financial services firms that have failed. The FSCS can pay compensation up to 85,000 EUR if a firm ceases trading with a deficit in their segregated client money.  Furthermore, under the UK subsidiary, traders are afforded negative balance protection.  However, the FCA restricts leverage to 30:1, prohibits Admirals from offering bonuses and promotions, and has banned all cryptocurrency CFD trading.   

Note that Ugandan traders can choose to trade under the subsidiary, Admirals AS Jordan Ltd, which is regulated by the Jordan Securities Commission (JSC). This requires manually switching from the FCA subsidiary to the JSC subsidiary (a button found on the top lefthand corner of the webpage).  As such, they are offered higher leverage (up to 30:1) and lower minimum deposits (25 USD). 

The JSC regulatory requirements are not as strict as regulators from the EU or Australia.  It does, however, require that all trading brokers operating in or out of Jordan must hold client funds in segregated accounts and submit periodic reports of their finances and operations.  Brokers must also be audited yearly by a trusted third-party auditing company.  However, under this subsidiary, traders are not offered automatic negative balance protection.  If a negative balance occurs, the trader must inform the company’s customer support services by email no later than two business days after its occurrence.  Admirals will then evaluate the inquiry and at its discretion may credit the accounts fully or partially compensate the negative balances.  

Admirals offers a much broader range of tradable instruments than other brokers and really outshines its competitors in its commodity, share CFD, and ETF offerings. 

All of the Admirals’ accounts have a minimum deposit of 100 EUR (or according to the chosen currency). The spread on the Trade MT4/MT5 accounts starts on 0.5 pips. For Single Share & ETF CFDs, Admirals’ charges from 0.02 USD per share, apart from on the Zero.MT5 account which has different commission values for each kind of asset.

Commission Structure

A commission is charged per lot on Zero.MT4 & Zero.MT5 accounts. This is a commission for a single side trade. Commission for a round-turn trade (opening and closing) is doubled and is fully charged at the opening of the order.

We opened and tested Admirals’ accounts:

Trade.MT5

The Trade.MT5 Account has a minimum deposit requirement of 25 USD, leverage up to 30:1, and when trading single share and ETF CFDs, there is a charge starting from 0.02 USD per share. Spreads start at 0.80 pips for the EUR/USD, and it is available as an Islamic swap-free account. 

Zero.MT5

With a minimum deposit requirement of 100 USD, the Zero.MT5 account has spreads starting at 0.0 pips on the EUR/USD, and a commission of between 1 and 3 USD is charged per lot per side (see below for commission structure). This account only allows trading on currencies (80 pairs), metal CFDs (3), cash index CFDs (10), and energy CFDs (3). Islamic accounts are not allowed on Zero.MT5. 

Trade.MT4

The minimum deposit on this account is also 25 USD. Spreads start at 0.5 pips (EUR/USD) on this account, and no commissions are charged. Note that there are no Islamic swap-free options on this account.

Zero.MT4

The minimum deposit is 25 USD on this account, leverage is up to 30:1, and spreads start at 0.0 pips on the EUR/USD. A commission of between 1 and 3 USD is charged per side per lot traded, dependent on the trading volume (see below for commission structure). This account does not offer Islamic swap-free options.

As a well-regulated broker, Admirals does not process payments to third parties. All withdrawal requests from a trading account must go to a bank account or a source in the trader’s name. 

Trading Account Currencies: Deposits to trading accounts can be made in most national currencies, which are subsequently converted into AUD, USD, EUR, GBP, BRL, MXN, CLP, SGD, THB, or VND. Ugandan traders will be disappointed that UGX is not an option, as they will have bank accounts denominated in UGX and will have to pay conversion fees, which are 1% of the transferred amount. An option is to use an international bank account.

Deposits and Withdrawals: Deposits can be made via bank transfer, VISA, MasterCard, Klarna and Skrill. Credit cards/debit cards are processed instantly, but deposits via wire transfer can take 3 bank days to reflect. No commissions are charged on deposits or withdrawals, but should the base currency of a client’s trading account differ from the base currency of the transferred funds, the amount transferred will be converted to the base currency of the client’s trading account, and a 0.3% fee will be charged. For those transferring funds via e-wallets in a different base currency, the first 5 transfers will be free, and thereafter 1% of the amount will be charged. 

Admirals’ mobile trading platforms are above average when compared to other similar brokers.

Admirals Mobile App

Developed entirely in-house, the Admirals app is available on both Android and iOS. 

Features: We found that the Admirals’ trading app has a clean interface and is easy to use. It has a sophisticated dashboard and intuitive home screen that allows you to add instruments to your watchlists, view market analysis materials, and contact customer support from within the app. It also has excellent search functionality and it’s simple to place orders, set price alerts, and view live prices and charts. Admirals has also updated its charts, and traders can tap with one finger to check the price for a selected period or tap with two fingers to check the price difference for a selected range.

Conveniently, we were also able to deposit and withdraw funds and upload and scan our documents.

MT4/MT5 Mobile Applications

Both trading platforms are available on Android and iOS mobile devices and tablets.

Beginner traders should be aware that there is some loss in functionality when compared to desktop trading platforms, including reduced timeframes and fewer charting options. In addition, spotty connections can reduce the overall trading experience. Generally, it is better to be at your desktop to conduct day-to-day trading and use a mobile device to keep an eye on the markets or close open positions.

The Admirals MT4 and MT5 apps allow traders to work from anywhere, with functionality to close and modify existing orders, calculate profit/loss in real-time, and tick chart trading to further assist traders while on the move.

Overall, Admirals’ mobile trading support is better than that of other brokers, with support for the MT4/MT5 apps in addition to its own mobile app.

The MT4 and MT5 trading platforms are available as downloads for your computer and as a Webtrader in your browser. 

MT4 and MT5

The benefit of Admirals offering third-party platforms such as MT4 and MT5 is that traders can take their own customised version of the platform with them should they choose to migrate to another broker. Additionally, thousands of plugins and tools are available for both the MetaTrader platforms. 

While MT4 has great customisability, the platform feels outdated, and some of the features can be hard to find. MT5 is more powerful and faster than MT4 when it comes to back-testing functionality for automated trading algorithms. It also has a built-in news feed, market depth indicator, economic calendar, and trades can be made on the charts. 

Admirals’ trading tools are superior compared to those offered by other similar brokers. The MetaTrader Supreme Edition is one of the best MetaTrader plugins on the market. Integrated into the MetaTrader Supreme Edition is Trading Central and a number of other useful tools. It also offers a VPS service.

Admirals has partnered with Trading Central to integrate its indicators (Forex Featured Ideas and Technical Insight) into the MetaTrader Supreme Edition. These two highly customisable tools provide pattern recognition and technical analysis for almost all financial instruments. A VPS service is also offered to clients who maintain an equity amount of 5000 EUR (or equivalent) in their trading accounts.

MetaTrader Supreme Edition

Trading Central: A third-party tool, Trading Central’s professional analysts use the most advanced technical analysis tools in the industry to gather the most comprehensive and in-depth market information. This tool essentially supports traders without the technical know-how in making trading decisions. This dynamic product suite is available to traders through the MetaTrader Supreme Edition. Trading Central is considered one of the best trading tools in the industry, and Admirals does well to offer this tool to its clients.

Global Opinion Toolset: Also included in the MetaTrader Supreme Edition is the Global Opinion toolset. These tools scan and contextualise millions of financial news stories and social media posts daily, giving traders a dynamic view of market sentiment. They can drastically reduce the length of time traders need to spend on daily research by flagging up the best assets to trade and warning of changes in the market that may impact trade success.

Mini-Terminal: Additionally, a new mini-terminal facilitates trade management by making commonly-used trading features more accessible than in the native version of the software. A mini-chart feature also lets traders see multiple time frames and chart types in a single chart.

An additional Trade Terminal feature helps traders manage multiple orders concurrently, using the same advanced trade management features of the mini-terminal.

Tick Chart Trader: Tick Chart Trader allows clients to trade tick charts quickly and accurately. An additional Indicator Package with the latest indicator technology delivers more chart information and trading signals within the trading tool.

Indicator Package: This tool brings traders the latest indicators for more chart information, keeping order history and finding trading signals to define strategies. A few options include: candle countdown, chart group, day session, and freehand drawing.

Trading Simulator: Finally, a trading simulator is available to backtest strategies on historical price data. Until this feature was conceived, traders were limited to testing strategies with a demo account in real-time. The trading simulator enables traders to test multiple strategies on the same data set to find the optimal strategy for different market situations.

VPS: Admirals offers a VPS (Virtual Private Server) service for traders who deposit more than 5000 EUR in their trading accounts. VPS hosting allows traders to run automated algorithmic strategies, including expert advisors 24 hours a day, 7 days a week on a virtual machine. VPS services have the advantage of never suffering connectivity issues and have extremely low latency due to their proximity to major international exchanges.

Admirals market research materials are comprehensive and well-structured, and compare well to other large international brokers.

Trading News: The Trader`s Blog, which is open to all clients, provides daily economic news and context or analysis to help traders find new opportunities through insightful and practical market information. Other articles include a more in-depth analysis of a specific subject. 

Market Heat Map: The Market Heat Map is a real-time visual method of following asset price movements and obtaining daily trading data from the FX and CFD markets. This tool highlights the most volatile assets, and thus presents various trading opportunities.

Market Sentiment: The Market Sentiment tool is a visual interpretation of aggregated data from multiple service providers showing the relationship between open long and short positions. Market sentiment data is useful to help understand macro trends and the mood of the trading collective. This information is especially useful for traders holding positions for long periods.

Premium Analytics: Premium data feeds are used to deliver the best information to traders.

Weekly Podcast: Admirals delivers a weekly podcast that covers the most engaging and informative trading news and analysis possible. New podcasts will be available every Monday, covering the economic news and events of the past and coming week, as well as offering market analysis and trading strategies. 

Forex calendar, or economic calendar: A list of scheduled events that could affect the currency markets.

The educational material available through Admirals is extensive and varied. Split into different sections, Admirals offers a structured course, a knowledge base, an overview of risk management, and frequent webinars.

Admirals also provides a free, structured Forex and CFD trading course called Forex 101, designed to help beginners learn how to trade. It is a collection of nine online lessons split into beginner, intermediate and advanced stages, and all lessons are taught by professional traders. The course covers everything from setting up MT4 to managing risk and is an excellent resource for new traders.

The articles and tutorials section covers Forex Basics, Forex Analysis, Forex Strategy, Forex Indicators, Trading Psychology, Trading Software, Automated Trading, and Cryptocurrencies. This section is best used as a knowledge base or as an additional resource once the Forex 101 course has been completed. A separate glossary is on hand to help beginners with new terminology.

The risk management section covers best practices, an introduction to leverage and leverage effect, and how rapidly moving markets can create gaps in charts.

Admirals also provide expert-led webinars. Webinar topics include commentary on the upcoming week or educational webinars likeMastering the 4Ms of Trading, which help traders develop trading skills and build confidence.

Remote support for technical issues related to MetaTrader or the MetaTrader Supreme Edition is available to clients during business hours.

For the purposes of this review, we found the customer service responsive, knowledgeable, and polite.