Any forex investor knows that in order to trade currencies online, you need a trading platform to do it on. Ideally, this company should have a diverse selection of assets on offer, great customer service, and super low fees.
Longhorn FX is a forex trading platform that also specializes in CFDs. All in all, the broker has an impressive amount of tradable financial instruments on offer. Just some of the assets available here are FX pairs, stock CFDs, cryptocurrencies, metals, and indices.
Sound good? We’re going to run you through everything there is to know about this online trading platform, from what the company is all about and what you are able to trade, to what leverage and fees you can expect.
LonghornFX – Best Forex Trading Platform
- A high leverage ratio of up to 1:500
- LonghornFX offers a free demo account
- Low trading fees and tight spreads
- Trades are backed by institutional grade liquidity
- Allows you to use bitcoin as a payment method
What is LonghornFX?
As we touched on, Longhorn FX is a forex and CFD broker offering a plethora of financial instruments to the trading community. You can trade everything from currency pairs and crypto coins to stocks commodities and indices – all of which can be accessed by means of a CFD. In a nutshell, this means you can short-sell and also buy if you wish.
When it comes to fees, commissions on this broker platform is set at a $6 flat rate for each and every lot you trade. Interestingly, on LonghornFX whatever you deposit will be converted into Bitcoin on your trading account. Traders are also invited to pay by Bitcoin directly if they wish.
What can I Trade at LonghornFX?
LonghornFX has more than 150 tradable instruments on offer. On top of that, there are nearly 60 FX pairs available on this platform, 35 cryptocurrency pairs, 64 stocks, and 11 commodities and indices. Moreover, you are able to easily diversify your forex pair portfolio and all through the same broker.
- Majors including the likes of EUR/USD, AUD/USD, GBP/USD, USD/CAD, GBP/JPY, NZD/USD and USD/CHF.
- Cross pairs such as EUR/AUD, AUD/JPY, CAD/JPY, AUD/NZD, EUR/GBP, and GBP/CHF
Furthermore, there are plenty of emerging currencies like the Mexican peso, the Turkish Lira, and the South African Rand to name a few.
We’ve talked about forex, so we’re now going to run through what else you can trade on LonghornFX
Commodities
If you don’t fancy trading forex, not to worry, as there are heaps of assets to be traded on this platform.
Indices
If you’re interested in steady growth and relatively low risk, there are nearly a dozen indices on this platform. Some are better known such as the FTSE 100, NASDAQ 100, and Dow Jones 30.
Stocks
Access to over 60 stock CFDs such as American International Group, Alibaba Group Holding Ltd, Volkswagen AG, Teva Pharmaceutical Industries Ltd, Procter & Gamble Co, and heaps more.
Due to the fact these are stock CFDs, you can both sell and buy positions on companies like Coca-Cola, Amazon, American Express, Google Inc, Facebook etc. In addition to this.
Cryptocurrencies
There are nearly 40 cryptocurrency pairs at LonghornFX, so if you want to try and predict the future of crypto coins you won’t be short of options on this platform.
LonghornFX Fees to Expect
LonghornFX promises narrow spreads and low commissions. The fee structure is easy to understand and transparent for clients. Below we’ve gone into a little more detail on what fees you might expect on this broker platform.
Commission
The commission framework at LonghornFX is fairly standard in this sector. For every ‘lot’ traded, there is a $6 charge. Whether you are trading with small amounts or large the charge is the same.
This means that each and every time you buy or sell you will pay $6 per lot at the beginning when you enter your position, and $6 per lot again at the end when you decide to close your position. This is quite competitive when you look at the trading fees of other online brokers
LonghornFX – Best Forex Trading Platform
- A high leverage ratio of up to 1:500
- LonghornFX offers a free demo account
- Low trading fees and tight spreads
- Trades are backed by institutional grade liquidity
- Allows you to use bitcoin as a payment method
Spreads
The spread really depends on what instrument you are focused on trading. As we said, LonghornFX offers considerably narrow spreads on most assets.
Let’s delve a little deeper into the spreads on offer from this broker.
- In the case of currencies, NZD/USD can be traded with a spread of 0.7 pips. Then you have USD/JPY and EUR/USD with a highly competitive spread of 0.8 pips.
- At the other end of the scale, there is fiat-to-crypto pairs like BTC/USD with a spread of 20.1 pips, DASH/USD 0.34000 pips, BCH/USD 0.71000 pips, and ETH/USD at 0.83000 pips.
- When it comes to commodities on this platform – the spread is super competitive. To give you an example of what to expect: XAU/USD (gold) has a spread of only 2.4 pips, and XAG/USD (silver) is at 2.6 pips. You can also trade XPT/USD (platinum) at 20.1 pips.
- US and UK oil CFDs both come with a spread of 0.8 pips – this is a good value spread.
Trading Platform Compatibility
As we mentioned, this broker is fully compatible with the ever-popular trading platform MT4 (MetaTrader4). MT4 is an extremely useful tool in anyone’s trading arsenal. This third-party platform gives traders access to heaps of technical analysis tools, price charts and many more useful features.
- MT4 technical tools such as Position Size Calculator, SHI Channel true, i-Profit Tracker, Undock Chart, Orders Indicator, Autofibo, NewsCal, SL & TP values, Breakout zones, Xandra Summary, and lots more
- Indicators like Money Flow Index, Market Facilitation Index, Trendline, Accelerator Oscillator, Envelopes, Fibonacci, Stochastic, ZigZag, The On Balance Volume indicator (OBV), The Money Flow Index (MFI), RSI – there really are heaps on offer.
- If you want an indication of trends then indicators like The Moving Average Convergence Divergence (MACD), Ichimoku, Exponential Moving Average (EMA), and Bollinger Bands are available
- Features like being able to trade more than one account, MQL4 community,
- On top of the aforementioned features, MT4 also enables you to use an automated forex robot (otherwise called a forex EA) to trade for you – meaning you can buy and sell whilst trading completely passively.
- There is a vast assortment of market order varieties for you to choose from, so you shouldn’t have trouble finding one to suit your own trading strategy.
There’s also the Web Trader, the app (iOS or Android) or desktop – all of which enable you to access your LonghornFX account to buy, sell and deposit wherever you are, as long as you have an internet connection.
In addition to this broker’ compatibility with MT4, LonghornFX also allows you to trade via STP (Straight Through Processing). This means you can benefit from some of the biggest liquidity providers in the trading space.
Deposits
When it comes to depositing into your LonghornFX account, there are two different options for you to choose from. You are able to fund your account using a credit or debit card if you wish.
As we pointed out earlier on, when you deposit into your account – Instacoins (a third party payment provider) facilitates it and converts it to Bitcoin, so you are essentially purchasing Bitcoin via your credit/debit card.
You may also deposit into your account by buying some Bitcoin from another broker and depositing those coins into your LonghornFX account wallet.
Of course, if you already have some Bitcoin then you can go ahead and fund your account directly, cutting out any need for an external payment provider.
In this case, you need to
- Select ‘deposit’
- Make a copy of the Bitcoin wallet address on screen – because your funds will be sent to that address.
- You then need to go to your private Bitcoin wallet
- Paste in the Bitcoin wallet address you copied earlier on
- Input the Bitcoin value you want to send to your LonghornFX account
- You have now funded your account with Bitcoin.
If you are depositing using a debit or credit card – LonghornFX has a minimum deposit of $50. If however, you fund your account with Bitcoin in the first place, you only have to deposit $10 minimum. In both scenarios, you can trade on a smaller scale if that’s what you feel comfortable with.
Withdrawals
On this platform, LonghornFX says it processes withdrawal requests within the same day, in most cases. Some broker platforms we’ve come across need a day or two to go through the withdrawal procedure, so this is great.
The minimum withdrawal amount you can request is $10, and as soon as Longhorn FX has authorised your request you will receive your Bitcoin equivalent in your private wallet.
Leverage Limits
One of the most impressive things about LonghornFX is the generous amount of leverage offered by the platform.
If you happen to reside in Europe or the UK, then you will know this that usually means being heavily limited by ESMA leverage caps, like 1:20 on exotics and 1:2 on cryptocurrencies.
On the contrary, when it comes to LonghornFX they are very generous with leverage – offering as much as 1:500. This does depend entirely on which asset class you are trading. We’ve put together a list of leverage offered by the platform.
- Metals – 1:500
- Forex – 1:500
- Energy -1:200
- Indices – 1:200
- Crypto – 1:100
- Stocks – 1:20
In an instance of 1:500 leverage, let’s say you have an account with $200 in it. This means that you could effectively trade up to $100,000. Always be mindful and proceed with caution when using leverage – as it can quickly lead to losing capital should the trade not go in your favour.
Customer Support
Customer support is one of the most important metrics to think about when choosing a good broker. We tried and tested it for ourselves, and were impressed at the speed at which a member of the customer support team was available to answer our queries on live chat.
Having a live chat option is always a bonus, and seems to be the fastest route when it comes to speaking to a knowledgable human being. On top of the super quick live chat, those of you who are a little more traditional can hit ‘request call’ and a member of the customer service team will call you back fairly promptly.
If you don’t want to talk to anyone and your query isn’t urgent, you can always send them an email outlining what you need help with – the team will get back to you asap.
Demo Accounts
On LonghornFX you are able to create a demo account via MT4 or Web Trader. For our example, we’ll use MT4.
For traders who do not yet have MT4, they simply need to download the software and install it – it’s really easy. Simply select a folder for the downloaded file to go in, and tick ‘create desktop shortcut’ so you know where to find it.
Assuming you have downloaded the file, you can set up your demo account by following these simple steps:
- First things first, click ‘file’
- Next, you need to ‘open an account’
- Complete full name, address, phone number, account type – followed by ‘next’
- Now, in terms of server options, you need to select ‘LonghornFX-Demo’ – followed by ‘next’
- Next, you need to choose ‘New demo account’ – click ‘next’
- Fill in necessary details
- Click ‘Finish’ and you should be logged into your new demo account automatically.
Now you can get started with your free demo account. The demo account can be used as often and for as long as you like. You can demo trade with BIT, GBP, EUR or USD with any amount of mock funds you want.
Demo’s are invaluable to experienced traders and newbie traders alike. Not only can you experience real market conditions without spending a penny – but you can try your hand at new strategy ideas and hone in on your skills. We think a brokerage with a free demo account can only be a useful thing, as not all platforms offer this tool to its clients.
Supported Countries
There are heaps of countries supported by this platform, but just in case you live in any of the places not included, we’ve saved you some leg work and listed the countries not accepted by LonghornFX:
- The United States
- The Islamic Republic of Iran
- Iraq
- North Korea
- Ecuador
- Myanmar
- Japan
- Canada
- Algeria
- Cuba
How to Sign up to LonghornFX
Now we’ve gone through the most important metrics of LonghornFX, you might be eager to get up and running.
It’s really easy and should take less than 10 minutes from start to finish.
Step 1: Sign up
Go to the LonghornFX website and hit ‘sign up’. You will have to enter your first and last name, email address, and a unique password – which must be at least 8 characters long.
Step 2: Fund Your Account
Next, you need to deposit some money into your account so that you can begin to trade in your chosen market.
Step 3: Start Trading
Now you can start trading via Longhorn. It might be a good idea to start off using the demo account we mentioned earlier.
As we touched on, whether you are experienced or not, using a demo is a terrific way of trying out the platform. Not to mention being able to test different trading strategies without using your hard-earned cash. LonghornFX demo accounts can be utilised via MT4 on Windows, Web Trader, and MT4 for iOS or Android.
Conclusion
We think that all in all, this trading platform has a lot to offer. Not only can you access super-tight spreads, tonnes of assets and markets, but fees are competitive at $6 for a ‘lot’.
The fact that LonghornFX works on the MT4 platform is a huge benefit as there is a vast amount of technical analysis tools, financial news, price charts and features to take advantage of.
All of these things are essential to being a successful trader – that is of course unless you decide to trade on Longhorn FX via an automated robot. In which case, you just sit back and let it trade on your behalf.
It is important to note that this platform does not hold a licence and therefore is not regulated. The benefit of this is, of course, you can access huge leverage limits of 1:500. Due to ESMA regulations, licenced brokers are not permitted to offer this much leverage to traders anymore.
LonghornFX – Best Forex Trading Platform
- A high leverage ratio of up to 1:500
- LonghornFX offers a free demo account
- Low trading fees and tight spreads
- Trades are backed by institutional grade liquidity
- Allows you to use bitcoin as a payment method
