Plus500 is a trading website which is owned by Plus500Ltd and is represented in the UK by Plus500UK Ltd. They currently offer over 2000 instruments. Plus500 was founded in 2008 and this is when their online trading platform was launched. By 2011 they already had more than 2 million transactions per month. The company is a sponsor of the 2013-14 Spanish football champions- Atletico Madrid. Plus500 Ltd is listed on the AIM, a section of the LSE (London Stock Exchange). In this review you can read, in detail, of all options and features of Plus500.
UK Regulation and Reputation
Plus500 was found in Israel and their main headquarters are located in Haifa. This is where Plus500 is licenced and regulated. The UK subsidiary has its offices in London and is licenced and authorised by the FCA. In addition to UK and Israel, Plus500 is also authorised in Cyprus and Australia. Plus500 has a reliable and sound reputation as an online trading platform and they always keep customers’ money on a segregated basis. The market value of the company exceeded $1,000,000,000 in 2014 and their reputation gained a huge boost since they became Atletico Madrid’s main sponsor.
Trading Offer
At Plus500 you can trade Forex, CFD, ETF, Indices, Shares, Commodities and Options. There are over 50 Forex currency pairs you can trade, both major pairs like GBP/USD and GBP/EUR, but also pairs involving less popular currencies such as GBP/DKK, GBP/NOK and even pairs like CHF/DKK, NZD/JPY. You can also trade the virtual currency Bitcoin. When it comes to shares, you can choose from a shortlist of popular companies, or you can go country by country and choose the shares you’d like to trade. Shares of British, US, Irish, Australian, German, French and many other companies are included. There are over 200 UK companies including companies like: Barclays, Tesco, EasyJet and Burberry. There are twenty indices available for trading, including UK100, USA 30, Australia 200, Hong Kong 45 and many more. There are five options: Germany 30, France 40, Netherlands 25, USA 500 and Italy 40. There are over twenty options from Germany 30 alone. In addition, there are over 75 ETFs, such as USO-Oil Fund, Commodity Index Fund (DBC) and many more. If you like to trade commodities you can choose from more than 15, including: oil, natural gas, silver, gold, sugar and corn.
Leverage and Lot Sizes
If you’re trading Forex at Plus500 you can get leverage of up to 1:200. For example, if you’re trading GBP/USD you can get a leverage of 1:200, same if you’re trading DKK/NOK. Always remember that trading with higher leverage may result with you losing all your funds. One lot size in Forex trading equals 100 units of the second currency in the pair. If you’re trading CFD indices than the maximum leverage that you can get is 1:294. That is the leverage for UK100, Europe 50 etc. The leverage for Greece 20, for example is 1:50. The lot size depends on the margin.
Spreads/Fees/Commissions
Plus500 doesn’t charge any commissions or fees. They are compensated solely through the market spread. You can only be charged an activity fee if you don’t use your account as per the user agreement. The spread may differ, as it goes as low as 0.01% with some Forex pairs like GBP/USD, which makes the spread per unit $0.40. For EUR/GBP the spread is 0.04%, or £0.60 per unit. The spread for UK 100 is 0.03%, or £1.00 per unit. When it comes to shares, the spread for the shares of Tesco, for example is 0.20%, or £0.30 per unit.
Trading Platforms
Plus500 provides 4 different trading platforms, i.e. four variants of their platform: a web-based version, a download version, separate apps for iOS, Windows and Android smartphones and tablets, as well as an Apple Watch version. With the web based version, as the name suggests you simply need to access their website, register, deposit and start trading. If you choose the downloadable version you’ll need to install it on your computer and start trading from your desktop. The app versions are similar, only with them you can trade from your mobile device. If you are looking for a specific version, like the Meta Trader 4, you’ll need to look for a different website, since it is not featured on Plus500. The trading platform allows you to get notification alerts, so when a certain price is reached you’ll receive and SMS. The platform is proprietary and it is easy to use. It features a trading screen where the tabs are clearly labelled and you are allowed to trade multiple things at once. In addition, charting software is also included, but the charts appear separately. At Plus500 you can open a demo account and get some experience before you start trading with real money.
Banking
You can fund your Plus500 account pretty much like you fund anything these days, via credit card (Visa and Master cards are accepted) or wire bank transfers. In addition, e-Wallets like Skrill and PayPal are also accepted and this is quite handy, since there are online trading websites which don’t accept e-Wallets. All you need to do is select “Funds Management” and then select “Deposits”. The minimum deposit amount is £100 and the maximum deposit may vary, although via bank transfer it is set at £100,000. Plus500 keep their customers’ funds in a separate account. You’ll need to provide identification documents before you can make a withdrawal.
Welcome Offer for new Traders
Each new player who opens an account at Plus500 is entitled to a £20 Welcome Bonus. Receiving this bonus is easy; all you need to do is register and enter a 3-digit code. You will need 60 Trader points before you can withdraw the bonus. The bonus offer is valid for 3 months. In addition, you would be also entitled to a First Deposit Bonus. This bonus depends on the deposited amount. With a deposited amount of £100 you would get a bonus of £20, with £400 a bonus of £100. The Trader points you need to have depend on the bonus amount.
Support
If you encounter any problems, or have any inquires or questions what you can’t find an answer to on the website, you can contact Plus500 customer support time. Whereas they don’t have a phone support line, which can be a bit of a problem, you can send them an email, or fill in the online form and wait for them to get back at you. They respond in a reasonable amount of time and if you want to get an answer as quickly as possible, then you can via live chat. You can also get in contact via their Facebook and Twitter pages.
Training Materials
The website of Plus500 features a lot of useful information on Forex and CFD trading and they carefully and thoroughly explain all the risks involved. The website itself is quite informative and you can expand your knowledge on Forex and CFD trading if you go through it. However, it doesn’t provide any videos or webinars on these topics and while all the necessary information are there, some people learn better through videos or webinars. Traders with accounts at Plus500 would have to look elsewhere to find useful and informative videos on CFD, Forex and trading with leverage in general.
Conclusion
In summary, Plus500 provides a lot of trading instruments and a lot of options. They offer quite a large number of stocks. The leverages are quite fair and we can safely say that Plus500 is quite reliable. There should be no doubt that your money would be safe with Plus500. They allow e-Wallet payments which is quite good. Two things that could be improved are the customer support and the training materials. They should add phone customer support and provide additional training materials on the website. Other than that, Plus500 is quite alright.