Best New Zealand Forex Brokers for 2024

With forex trading, you can speculate on the future price of a currency and use leverage to make larger trades than your budget would otherwise permit. This is an exciting market with high liquidity and dozens of currency pairings, and the global nature of today’s markets means that currency exchanges are extremely busy. This, in turn, creates plenty of opportunities for traders, but how do you know which New Zealand forex brokers are right for you?

In this guide, we’ll highlight three of the best New Zealand forex brokers for 2024 to help you narrow the field. We’ll also explain everything you need to know in order to choose the forex broker that’s best for your trading style and goals.

What is a Forex Broker?

Forex brokers are firms or companies that provide a platform through which currency traders can access the international forex exchange markets. They may be independent retail forex brokers advancing their services to smallholder currency traders or large investment banks that offer the service to institutional investors like hedge funds or smaller commercial banks.

By providing the trading platform, a forex broker makes it possible for the currency trader to open and close currency trades. Most are online-based and integrate all the important resources needed to help the trader make informed trade decisions within this trading platform. These include trade/market analysis, technical indicators, real update on market data, financial news (Economic calendar), leverage, and adequate risk management tools.

A forex broker earns in either of these two ways – or both. First is the bid-ask spread of every currency pair traded on their platform. There is no standard spread for New Zealand forex brokers, and it varies from one platform to another. Secondly, forex brokers may impose a fixed or variable commission (fee) for every trade executed on their platform.

What Makes a Good Forex Broker?

When vetting different forex brokers, you have to take into account a host of security, operational, and regulatory measures. The bare minimum qualifications for a good forex broker include:

Regulation: A good broker is adequately licensed by different regulatory authorities and adheres to all the security measures stipulated by the operating license. These include encrypting user data and maintaining segregated bank accounts for client funds.

Advanced trading platform: A good forex broker should also work consistently towards improving their trading platform. They should include updated trading, market analysis, and risk management tools while maintaining the fastest order execution speeds and supporting a reasonable number of currency pairs.

Considerate pricing model: The good forex broker must also be considerate with their fees. In the recent past, most brokers have abolished trade commissions and lowered their bid-ask spreads.

Readily accessible: Registering a trading account with a good forex broker should also be easy and straightforward. They should also make it possible to access the account on multiple devices like web trader, desktop and mobile apps on both proprietary and conventional trading platforms like MT4/5.

What are the Pros and Cons of New Zealand Forex Brokers?

Best New Zealand Forex Brokers for 2024

With all that in mind, let’s take a closer look at our picks for the top three New Zealand forex brokers.

How Does Forex Trading Work?

Before we dive into reviews of our top NZ forex brokers, it’s important to understand a little bit about how forex trading works.

Currency Pairs

Trading currencies works a little bit different than trading other types of assets. When you buy a stock, you only buy stock for that company and whether it’s competitors rise or fall in value doesn’t directly affect the return on your investment.

But when you buy a currency, you purchase it in a pair. For example, you may purchase the US Dollar-Great British Pound pair. In that case, you could profit in two cases; if the dollar rises in value, or if the pound falls in value. All prices in currency trading are relative.

There are hundreds of currency pairs that you could trade, but in fact, just seven pairings make up the vast majority of forex trading. The major pairs, as they are known, pit the US Dollar against the world’s other widely used currencies. Major pairs include the USD-GBP, USD-Japanese Yen, and USD-Euro.

The minor pairs make up most of the remaining forex trading volume each day. These pair the alternative currencies in the major pairs, as well as pair the US Dollar with the world’s less widely used currencies. There are between 20 and 40 minor currency pairs, depending on what trader you ask.

Finally, there are the exotics. These currency pairs measure the value of one less commonly traded currency against another. For example, a South African Rand-Mexican Peso pairing is considered an exotic. These forex pairs typically have much lower liquidity than either major or minor pairs.

CFDs vs. Options

The other key thing to know about forex trading is that currency pairs are typically traded through derivatives. Traders rarely buy and sell currencies directly, since doing so requires costly currency conversions and can trigger some regulations like currency controls.

The two different types of derivatives used for forex trading are contracts for differences (CFDs) and options. CFDs allow you to speculate on the relative price of a currency within a pair just as if you were buying the currency itself, but without owning the underlying assets.

Options, on the other hand, require you to select an expiration date for your trade. That brings time in as a variable in the value of your investment. When trading options, you need to be right not only about the magnitude of a price movement but also when it will occur. The advantage of trading options is that you can hedge bets by trading options for the same currency pair over multiple timeframes.

Both CFDs and options also enable you to trade with leverage. Leverage lets you multiply the effective size of your investment by effectively borrowing capital from your chosen New Zealand forex broker. For example, if you invest $100 with 100:1 leverage, it’s as if you invested $10,000 in a currency pair.

Leverage is especially important for forex trading, since currencies rarely move more than 0.1% relative to each other in a single day. To make money with forex trading, you need a large effective investment size.

How to Choose the Best New Zealand Forex Broker

Now that you know a bit more about how forex trading works and our three best forex brokers in New Zealand, let’s talk about how to choose the broker that’s right for you.

Currencies, CFDs, and Options

The best place to start is by thinking about what currencies you want to trade and how you want to trade them. Most brokers offer major and minor currency pairs, but the number of pairs available varies. If you want to trade exotics, then you’ll need to look specifically for a forex broker that offers them.

In addition, you’ll need to consider whether you want to trade CFDs or options. Some brokers, like AvaTrade, offer both, which gives you the most flexibility. However, you may end up paying more for trading at brokers with options that you don’t need.

Leverage

Another thing to consider is how much leverage a broker offers. As we discussed, leverage is critical to forex trading since currencies rarely move by more than 0.1% in a day. So, you need large positions in order to see a sizable return.vBrokers vary widely in how much leverage they offer.

When thinking about leverage, you’ll also want to look at a broker’s overnight interest rate and its margin requirement. The overnight interest rate is the amount you’ll be charged each night for borrowing money to trade on leverage. This is especially important if you plan to hold leveraged CFD positions for weeks at a time rather than just a day or two.

The margin requirement is how much money you need to have in your account relative to your leveraged position. The lower the margin requirement, the more you can use the money in your account for other trades.

Fees and Spreads

Trading fees are of course a key consideration when choosing a brokerage. None of the three top New Zealand forex brokers we recommended charge trade commissions, but many brokers do. Avoid these whenever possible, since commissions add up quickly and make it costly to scale in and out of positions.

The spread is where many low-cost brokers make their money. Spreads can vary widely, from just 0.025% at Investous to more than 0.2% at AvaTrade. Also note that spreads vary between major and minor currency pairs, and are often significantly higher for low-liquidity exotics.

Many brokers don’t charge other fees, but it’s important to check. You’ll find that some online brokers charge deposit or withdrawal fees. There are also inactivity fees that are assessed if you don’t place a trade at least once every few months.

Research and Education

For many forex traders, a broker is more than just a trading station. It’s also a hub for currency research and education. Some brokers offer advanced charting tools and online academies for traders, while others leave these resources out entirely.

It’s up to you to decide how much you want to rely on your broker for these resources. Having charts integrated with your trading account may be especially important for day traders, since you need to be able to place orders as quickly as possible. Beginners may prefer simpler charting interfaces and a heavier emphasis on educational articles and demo accounts.

Conclusion

Forex is an exciting market with a lot of opportunities for traders, but getting the most out of your currency trading requires having the best broker for the job. You need to consider the tradable currency pairs, the trading format, fees and research tools, among several other factors.

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