TD Ameritrade Review – is it scam or safe? explained by professional Forex trading experts the “ForexSQ” FX trading team.
TD Ameritrade Review – is it scam or safe?
TD Ameritrade is an American brokerage firm that offers investment services and trading in stocks, ETFs, mutual funds, options, fixed income, futures and forex, as well as margin lending and cash management services.
The forex brokerage arm – TD Ameritrade Futures & Forex Llc offers trading in around 100 major and exotic currency pairs, which is a rather extensive portfolio. Another forex broker that has a comparatively large forex portfolio is FxPro, with around 70 major and exotic pairs.
Forex trading is one of the lesser businesses of the company, but nevertheless TD Ameritrade Futures & Forex Llc is one of the five remaining active retail forex brokers on the US market, along with FXCM, Forex.com (Gain Capital), Oanda and Interactive Brokers.
TD Ameritrade is strictly regulated by the US Financial Industry Regulatory Authority (FINRA) as a brokerage firm and by the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) as an Investment Adviser Firm. Its subsidiary TD Ameritrade Futures & Forex Llc is also a futures commission member of the US National Futures Association (NFA) since 2014 and a forex dealer member since February 2016.
Overall, the US forex market is very tightly regulated and the watchdogs keep a very close eye on the brokers. They also watch for “intruders” who are not authorized to provide their services to US residents and are no shy of imposing strict fines.
Trading Conditions
Minimum deposit
TD Ameritrade Futures & Forex Llc offers just one type of live trading account: a standard account, which can be individual or joint. In theory there are two options for minimum deposit requirements: $50 for a standard account and $2000 for “margin privileges”. In practice, however, the minimum deposit requirement for trading in forex is $2000, as per Ameritrade’s conditions for margin trading.
Its American peers like FXCM and Forex.com, for example, require a $5000 for the Standard account for US clients and $50, respectively.
Spreads & Commissions
TD Ameritrade offers trading on currency pairs: standard non-commission and commission-based.
The non-commission pairs trade in increments of 10 000 units (mini lots). The commission-based pairs trade in 1000 units (micro lots) and since they are unmarked up from the interbank provider, can have tighter spreads or wider spreads, as their quotes are not regulated by the dealing desk. The commission is in terms of the counter currency but will be approximately $1.00 minimum, and approximately $0.10 per micro lot.
Leverage
The leverage on forex trading in the US is limited to 1:50. TD Ameritrade complies with the regulatory requirements and gives a maximum leverage of 1:50 on major forex pairs. That for exotic pairs is even lower: 1:20.
Trading Platform
TD Ameritrade has a proprietary trading platform, called thinkorswim. It is an all-in-one and users can trade forex, as well as futures, stocks options, etc. from one account. It is a powerful and versatile platform and offers advanced analysis tools, educational materials and tutorials, real-time data, customizing strategies, live chat, statistics, etc.
thinkorswim provides access to more than 400 technical studies ranging from support and resistance to candlestick and profile. There is also a choice of 20 drawings, including eight Fibonacci tools. The platform lets users build their own trading algorithms with thinkScript.
However, TD Ameritrade does not offer other trading platforms, like the popular MetaTraders for example. In comparison, in addition to its competitor on the US market FXCM offers the MetaTrader 4, in addition to its own Trading Station.
Promotions
TD Ameritrade has several types of promotions in terms of trading bonuses: Joint or IRA TD Ameritrade account opened by 3/31/2017 and funded within 60 calendar days of account opening with $3,000 or more. To receive $100 bonus, account must be funded with $25,000 or more within 60 days of account opening. To receive $300 bonus, account must be funded with $100,000 or more within 60 days of account opening. To receive $600 bonus, account must be funded with $250,000 or more within 60 days of account opening.
Methods of payment
TD Ameritrade accepts account funding through its own Automated Clearing House (ACH) services – electronic funding. Other means of account finding is through a bank transfer and with checks.
We could not find information whether the broker accepts other methods of funding like PayPal, for example, but most likely the answer is “no”.
