About company:
Ally Bank - one of the leading online banks - acquired TradeKing in 2016. Ally renamed TradeKing to Ally Invest, the bank's new investment arm. TradeKing has been well known as one of the most inexpensive investment platforms around. Taking into account the successful experience, Ally Bank has added its own features and benefits.
Ally Bank offers some of the best interest rates. The bank is online and has no branches. The company has over 7,000 employees and holds over $ 70 billion in customer funds. In December 2016, Ally Bank was named the Best Internet Bank by Kiplinger's Personal Finance magazine.
Ally Invest now serves over 250,000 client accounts with a total of approximately $ 4.7 billion held in it.
Safety
Ally Invest is a member of the Securities Investor Protection Corporation (SIPC), which protects each client's brokerage accounts of up to $ 500,000, of which $ 250,000 can be in cash. Nevertheless, before opening an account with the company, we recommend that you familiarize yourself with the rating of Forex brokers on our page.
How does Ally Invest work?
Traders can trade stocks, exchange-traded funds (ETFs), and fixed-income securities (corporate, agency and municipal bonds). Trading with US Treasuries, Strips and Straps, CDS is also available.
Ally Invest offers its own Forex & Futures platform. It includes a wide variety of tools and resources. The company also boasts some of the lowest fees on Forex.
For those not interested in self-trading, Ally Invest offers a Managed Portfolios service, which is the equivalent of a robo-advisor service. The company can provide investors with professional investment management. The fees for such services are much lower than those of typical investment managers.
Commissions
Ally Invest's basic trading fee for stocks, ETFs and options is $ 4.95. They charge an additional $ 0.65 per option contract. The commission is considered to be the industry average.
The broker has set special prices for investors with high trading volume / high balance. They refer to traders who complete 30 or more trades in one calendar quarter and / or maintain a minimum of $ 100,000 in their account. For these investors, the commission on stocks, ETFs and options is only $ 3.95 per trade, plus $ 0.50 per contract for options trades.
There is no fee for “on-load” mutual funds, and $ 9.95 for “no-load” mutual funds.
No commission is charged when trading Forex.
There are no account maintenance fees, no trading for a long time and no annual IRA fees.
Ally Invest managed accounts
This service provides professionally designed and personalized portfolios tailored to the trader's goals. To open an account, you need to deposit a minimum of $ 2500. The annual service fee is 0.30%. This percentage is considered lower than the industry average (1.02%). Thus, a trader who has a $ 100,000 portfolio will pay $ 300 per year for maintenance.
Ally Invest Forex & Futures
You can trade over 50 currency pairs, gold and silver. All transactions are carried out in real time. The trader gets round-the-clock access to the market.
The Forex & Futures service offers a customizable trading platform that includes:
trading currencies, metals, commodities, indices and bonds of various exchanges; multi-level commission payments, which provide for a reduction in fees for trading large volumes; charting capabilities with more than 100 technical indicators.
You can open a Forex & Futures account for only $ 250. Trading operations are carried out on one of the terminals - MetaTrader4 and ForexTrader. Both platforms are available on PC and mobile.
When you apply for an account, you can open either a ForexTrader or a MetaTrader account. You can open a Forex & Futures account for as little as $ 250. We recommend $ 2,500 so you can take full advantage of the account. This will increase flexibility and diversification.
Forex Premium Charting - professional tools for identifying and decoding Forex patterns and trends.
Forex & Futures Practice Account is a free $ 50,000 virtual account that gives you full access to trading platforms and tools for up to 30 days.
It is important to note that Forex accounts are not protected by SIPC or FDIC insurance.
Analytical tools and training materials
Ally Invest offers a complete set of trading tools to help you make investment decisions:
Streaming Charts - Six charts with over 90 graphical studies and drawing tools to analyze the performance of securities.
Market and Company Overview - Market statistics, news and detailed indicators and opinions on individual companies.
Watchlists is a customizable list for tracking and viewing market data for groups of securities.
Profit / Loss Calculator - Allows you to understand the profit and loss potential of options trading. You can also see how the result changes based on fluctuations in volatility and time.
Market data - quotes, charts, high / low prices, dividend dates, summary of general options, news.
Educational resources cover information from the basics of Forex and futures trading to technical and fundamental analysis. There is also a glossary. Ally Invest also offers tuition for a fee, which provides more professional training.
Ways of payment
The easiest way to deposit funds is with a debit card. In this case, the money is credited instantly. Depositing funds via bank transfer takes one to two business days. ACN credits take up to five business days, check - 5 to 10 business days.
You can deposit the following currencies: USD, EUR, CAD, JPY, GBP, AUD, CHF.
In addition, Ally Invest clients can use the services of Ally Bank.
Pros:
variety of services offered; industry average commissions; managed accounts; 24/7 customer support by phone, mail or skype.
Minuses:
lack of an office where clients are received and local branches; crediting funds may take a long time.
TRADEKING is a brokerage company, meaning a professional participant in the Forex market. Such organizations have the right to conduct transactions on behalf of their clients, that is, to provide intermediary services between sellers and buyers.
What services brokerage companies provide
Most traders use the opportunities provided for trading currency pairs. The essence is roughly the same as when buying currency in a bank - buy cheaper, wait for the price to rise, and sell at a higher price. But trading through a broker has a number of undeniable advantages:
- the rates are much more favorable, and the costs are significantly lower;
- there is an opportunity to trade not only on the rise but also on the fall of currency rates;
- dozens, and in some companies up to a hundred currency pairs are available for selection;
- there are many auxiliary tools.
In addition, with the help of TRADEKING, a client can conduct transactions with precious metals, indices, bonds, company stocks, cryptocurrencies, raw materials, and other goods. Without resorting to the services of a broker, it would be quite problematic for an ordinary person to buy, for example, a barrel of oil. But on a special trading platform, an order is opened with one click.
Stocks can also be purchased without the services of intermediaries. But this will be a much more complex process. It will be necessary to visit the websites of a large number of companies, compare data from them, and make a purchase directly from one of the firms. Difficulties will also arise because companies from different countries of the world maintain pages on the internet in their own languages, requiring translation. A broker provides a ready list of stocks, usually of the most profitable global brands with an abundance of information about them. After making a choice, again, it only takes one click.
The client can also receive a kind of loan from the broker, which in professional trading language is called leverage. That is, a person has the opportunity to operate with amounts that are many times, tens, or hundreds of times greater than their own funds. The size of the leverage is determined in each individual case by agreement between the client and the organization.
In addition to all this, brokerage companies are ready to assist clients in making decisions at their request. There are several options for this:
- auxiliary tools, technical indicators that automatically provide the necessary data for analysis;
- trading signals that suggest whether to buy or sell an asset at the current moment based on data from special programs analyzing market processes;
- access to analytics, news, event calendars published on the official website and social media pages;
- individual consulting by company specialists, which is usually available to those with substantial deposits.
Thus, trading through a brokerage company allows anyone to make a profit, limited only by their own level of knowledge and preparation.
What benefit does the broker receive?
The brokerage company TRADEKING is interested in having more clients who conduct numerous transactions for significant amounts. The organization's profit directly depends on this. It is derived in the following main ways.
The broker TRADEKING may charge a fixed commission for each transaction made. For example, 1 dollar. This type of cooperation is suitable for clients who open a small number of orders, aiming to make significant profits from each of them.
Another option is a bit more complicated but more popular. The broker receives a spread, which is the difference between the best buying and selling prices at the current moment. This form of payment for the company's services is suitable for traders who open many orders. The spread can be either fixed in size or variable depending on the situation.
The same broker can offer traders different payment options for their work on several types of trading accounts.
Brokers - Scammers
The Forex market is extremely attractive to people from all over the world who want to earn money. Unfortunately, where there is money, there are always deceivers and scammers. Among the organizations calling themselves brokerage companies, there are many firms operating illegally or officially registered but still using schemes to deceive clients.
In many ways, this is possible due to the vast size of the global financial markets. Regulation of activities in different countries varies, in some matters there are no unified standards, and the internet space, meanwhile, is unified. Finding various loopholes, scammers often evade responsibility.
There are countless fraudulent websites. They easily close after money is collected from deceived clients and refund demands start coming in. And immediately their organizers create new pages offering even more favorable conditions.
Such firms are called kitchens in trader slang. What do you think, is TRADEKING a kitchen or not? Share your experience in the reviews.
How Dishonest Brokers Deceive
Primitive scammers simply collect money and then block the user's personal page. And the user can no longer even contact the company by any means. Before that, the scammers are in constant contact with the client. Their task is to convince the person to top up the trading account with as much money as possible, for this they sometimes urge selling property, taking loans from banks. The blocking occurs at the moment when it becomes clear that there is nothing more to take from the victim. As a rule, such sites close quickly after managing to deceive several wealthy clients.
But there are also such schemes that work much more subtly and manage to exist for years with a huge queue of people wanting to get their money back. Often they manage to officially cover up their actual scams. The user agreement includes clauses whose meanings a novice in trading simply does not understand or does not notice at all due to inattention and low level of financial literacy. Later, when claims arise, the company refers to the document, and there is nothing to counter this.
Another way of withdrawing money from clients' deposits is called quote manipulation. On its website, the scheme shows the user quotes that differ from the real ones. And the client does not actually trade on the market, but only within the same scheme. The charts and images are drawn in such a way that the trader ends up at a loss. One by one, the trades gradually zero out the deposit.
Even the generosity of a company, which is of course illusory, can pose a danger. For example, a client may be given bonuses expressed in real money for registering on the site, for replenishing an account, and others. Bonus currency units are mixed in the deposit with the client's personal funds, and the income received from them can no longer be separated. And when a trader tries to request a withdrawal, they learn about additional bonus usage conditions that will be impossible for them to fulfill. And all this was stated in the bonus program, written in small print in the farthest corner of the site. The fact that the client did not read the terms in advance is only their problem.
Places of registration of brokerage companies
Deceiving people from one country, fraudsters often hide in the territory of another, skillfully using discrepancies in the laws of states.
For these purposes, companies are often registered in offshore zones. These are either separate countries or parts of their territories with a registration regime loyal to any business and a low level of control. Simply put, to attract foreign capital to their territory, some small island in the ocean is ready to register a company with just an application and a minimal set of documents and does not interfere with an audit in its internal affairs.
The most popular offshore zones among brokerage companies are Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, Cyprus, Mauritius, Belize, the Marshall Islands, and the British Virgin Islands.
Official proceedings, for example with the broker TRADEKING, will have to be conducted by traders in accordance with the laws of the specified states. And it is practically impossible to do this independently. It is also extremely difficult to find lawyers who know foreign laws. In some cases, presence at court hearings at the place of company registration may be required. All this makes the proceedings not only complicated but also expensive.
However, the mere fact of the broker TRADEKING being registered in an offshore zone does not necessarily indicate dishonest intentions. Many reputable companies that have proven their high level over decades also have offshore registrations. The goal is to reduce tax expenses. In the 21st century, many strive for this. Therefore, the largest global banks and manufacturers, whose reputations are unquestionable, conduct business through offshore zones.
Moreover, not all countries attracting foreign capital can be called exotic. Cyprus is part of the European Union and adheres to its rules. The Virgin Islands belong to the United Kingdom.
How to Choose an Honest Broker
When choosing a brokerage company, many parameters need to be considered. The place of registration is one of them. But it is more important to assess who regulates the organization's activities and how. Local government regulatory bodies do this based on the location. You need to find their websites online and check the information about the issued permits. There are also supranational structures, membership in which obliges brokers worldwide to adhere to established internal norms and rules. Major Forex market participants often represent financial groups whose subsidiaries are regulated in multiple jurisdictions. In any case, brokers' official websites should provide information about the issued licenses. It is better for the client to verify its authenticity in the manner described above.
It is important to study what is written about the company on external resources. If there are no mentions of it at all, that's a negative. If its experts appear on leading thematic platforms, that's a positive.
Don't forget to read customer reviews on as many sites as possible. But approach them critically. Especially if one place writes exclusively good things and another exclusively bad. Look for reviews with specific examples, facts, and mentions of pros and cons, rather than unfounded praise or criticism.
The company's website should be detailed, and the information on trading conditions should be thorough, specific, and clear. It's not enough to say 'We have low spreads!'; exact sizes in points are needed.
By following all these rules, you will be able to choose a solid brokerage company, cooperation with which will help you enter the intriguing world of Forex, which has made many people on the planet millionaires.
