Pros & cons of Trade Nation

Trade Nation Fact sheet

When speaking about the safety of any broker, regulations are by far the most critical metric. If a broker is not regulated, then all other aspects become meaningless. The more regulatory oversight the broker has the better it is for traders’ safety. 

Four different regulatory authorities regulate Trade Nation including:

• Financial Conduct Authority or FCA of the UK
• Australian Securities and Exchange Commission - Australasia 
• Financial Sector Conduct Authority - South Africa
• Securities Commission of the Bahamas

This is a decent number since the UK is on the list together with Australia, making it almost impossible for Trade Nation to be a scam or fraud. It seems the broker is very legit, and the client's money is in safe hands. 

Policies of Trade Nation

Trade Nation is a part of the Investor Compensation Fund, which makes it possible for clients to get their money back if the broker becomes insolvent or loses assets.

When trading with leverage, such as with Trade Nation’s 1:200, it is possible to lose more than the account balance and become indebted to the broker. To avoid this, there is a measure in place that prevents this from happening. It's called negative balance protection and Trade Nation offers it to its traders.

The broker keeps all client funds in segregated accounts; this is critical for traders who want to make sure their money is in safe hands and brokers can not use it for their own interest.

Forex trading on Trade Nation

The broker focuses mainly on stock CFDs and Forex as their main trading instruments. Still, there are many other assets for trading as well, and the 36 Forex pairs should enable most Forex traders to find their preferred currency pair. Couple this with the low fixed spreads and Trade Nation can be a good deal for FX traders. All brokers with variable spreads may offer a lower than 0.6 pip spread, but this is dramatically changed during important macroeconomic news events, making it much less profitable to trade. Trade Nation offers a fixed spread of 0.6 on EUR/USD and 0.7 pips for USD/JPY at all times, no matter the news. Fixed spreads are only available for CloudTrade accounts though, while MetaTrader 4 (MT4) account holders will have dynamic or variable spreads. We will provide detailed information about trading accounts below. 

Stock CFDs trading on Trade Nation

The main focus of Trade Nation is on offering various stock CFDs for trading. There are 100 CFDs for stocks in total, making it easy to find what you are looking for. The spread is fixed and very low starting at 0.1%, making it very cheap and consistent for traders to trade while confidently controlling the risks. CFDs or contracts for difference are speculative derivatives that represent an underlying asset. It is possible to short-sell CFDs, making it possible to make profits in both bull and bear markets. When trading CFDs, traders don't own the underlying assets, which makes CFDs great short-term speculative instruments. Traders should use other instruments such as real stocks for long-term trading and investing.

Indices trading on Trade Nation

To long or short the sector of the market is a nice advantage of trading indices with low fixed spreads on Trade Nation. Some of the indices and their spreads include:

• Wall Street 30 - 1
• Germany 40 - 0.9
• UK 100 - 0.4
• US Tech 100 - 0.7

As you can see the spreads are competitive at Trade Nation and indices’ spreads are also fixed as with the asset types mentioned above. Indices are great for analyzing the whole sector. The S&P 500, for example, shows the overall performance of the US stock market and is a great indicator of the overall strength of the market. 

Commodities trading on Trade Nation

There are low fixed spreads on the commodities as well. Trade Nation offers 9 commodities including:

• Gold - 0.4
• Crude oil - 3 pips

Commodities, especially precious metals like gold, often become a safe haven for investors during economic crises or when inflation is high. In general, commodities prices are dependent on supply and demand. 

There are currently two main account types offered to Trade Nation clients: CloudTrade account and MT4 account. There is a third option for a spread trading platform, which is also on the cloud platform. The main difference between the two trading account types is that on an MT4 account, the spreads are variable and not fixed. Fixed spreads are on CloudTrade accounts but come with the disadvantage of not being able to use Expert Advisors. So traders will have to choose between the two options, knowing that they will have to sacrifice fixed spreads or the ability to use automated software. For other purposes, both accounts offer good flexibility with low spreads and commissions. The MT4 platform is a CFDs trading platform and all assets offered are CFDs.

Pros & cons of Trade Nation account types

Trade Nation Demo account

Trade Nation tries to make beginners open a Demo account and learn to trade. A Demo account is a very important step before trading live markets, and it makes it possible to check trading skills and test strategies in a live environment. A Demo account is crucial for any trader and it is a must for a broker to offer it to their clients. 

Opening a Demo account is easier with Trade Nation, and it requires only some basic information. After which, traders can test their strategies with virtual funds in a live market environment. There is also a simulation available that is slightly different as it doesn't offer real market data and is simulated from historic price data. 

Trade Nation CloudTrade account

There is not much information traders can find out about trading account types and details unless they have a registered account, which makes it hard to figure out what the broker has to offer. While this is a bit of a drawback, we have put in the legwork so you won’t have to.

The CloudTrade account has got fixed spreads starting from 0.6 pips for EUR/USD. This is very cost-effective for news trading. News traders are traders who specifically trade markets when major indicators are coming out, as markets are very volatile during these times. Spreads are usually wider during higher volatility times like global economic news, which makes it possible for spreads to eat up most of the profits during these times. With fixed spreads, this is no longer an issue. 

The CloudTrade account is equipped with various technical analysis tools and built-in indicators, making the market analysis experience similar to TradingView. 

Trade Nation MT4 account 

The famous MetaTrader 4 (MT4) platform makes it possible for traders to trade at full capacity by enabling Expert Advisors (EAs) and using a wide variety of indicators and analysis tools. But there is a catch, the spreads are not fixed for the MT4 account and they vary during different times. Other than that, MT4 is a very advanced platform, offering everything that a professional trader might look for. EAs can make the whole trading experience fully automatic and are very useful for experienced traders. As with the other account type, spreads also start from 0.6 on the MT4 account.

Getting started on Trade Nation - Main steps 

Step one: Opening an account

Account registration is very simple with a Trade Nation and to open an account, just click on “Trade Now” at the top of the brokers’ website. This will open the registration form shown below. Just fill in the fields and you should be fine. All procedures are easy to follow and very intuitive, which enables traders to create a trading account in under 3 mins. 

Step two: account verification and waiting times

Without registering an account and offering your personal information like mobile number, email, etc. you won’t be able to see exactly which documents you will need to verify your account. This seems a little inconvenient from the broker’s side, but we got all the necessary information to state that the broker will require proof of identity and proof of residence documents, as these are required by multiple regulatory bodies. Traders will get verification in under 24 hours when all requested documents are submitted. If anything else is required, the broker will get in touch with the client to make sure the verification process is fast and comfortable. 

Step three: make your first deposit and start trading

Deposit methods for Trade Nation clients are limited to Visa, Master Card, Skrill, and PayPal with the latter only for UK residents. There are also bank wire transfers available for more conservative traders and there are no commissions charged at this time for withdrawals other than the payment systems’ fees themselves. Deposits are instant depending on the payment method selected and withdrawals will take somewhere between 1-2 business days. Everything on deposits and withdrawals seems within healthy durations. 

Comparing Trade Nation fees with other brokers

The field of brokers is extremely competitive, with many experienced brokers offering the lowest spreads and commissions possible. Trade Nation claims their fixed low spreads on the CloudTrade platform are very competitive and beneficial to traders. To compare and see if Trade Nation spreads are really advantageous, let’s compare it with popular brokers. 

Trade Nation fees compared to Interactive Brokers fees

*Inactivity fee was eliminated by IB in 2021, it used to be $20/m

Trade Nation fees compared to eToro fees

Trade Nation fees compared to IG fees

Trade Nation fees compared to XM fees

Trade Nation fees compared to AvaTrade fees

Trade Nation fees compared to Capital.com fees

There are two trading platforms offered for traders, the proprietary cloud-based trading platform and MetaTrader 4. There is no support for MetaTrader 5. The cloud-based trading platform CloudTrade is the proprietary trading platform from the broker, providing a TradingView-like experience with over 90 built-in indicators and more than 30 technical tools. But, the platform lacks support for trading robots, and users will have to open an MT4 account to use Expert Advisors if they want to automate their trades. Only the CloudTrade platform offers traders fixed spreads, and users will have to choose between using EAs and fixed spreads, which is unfortunate, as fixed spreads with EAs could amplify trading profits even further. 

The broker offers trading platforms designed specifically for smartphones for both Android and iOS users. The mobile platform is fast and responsive, and it is fairly simple to navigate and trade. The mobile app has features such as stop-loss and take-profit inbuilt, making it comfortable for traders to open and manage multiple trades with ease. The mobile app makes it possible to trade from anywhere and is very helpful on the go. Users will find all the necessary features to trade except custom indicators and EAs. 

When it comes to education and research, Trade Nation shines with a multitude of educational resources. They offer extensive educational knowledge on their website and try to simplify the process. Beginner Guides include materials and articles about Forex trading. The “how-to start guide” is also included together with “how-to practice trading” tutorials. The website has a special button for beginner guides, and they explain the trading platform and how to use it for demo trading. There is a one-to-one trading course offered with expert guidance that should be sufficient to teach beginners how to start trading CFD markets. Trade Nation has an advantage when it comes to trader education, as they offer a trading simulator to test trading strategies in a simulated environment. This will make it easy and fast to test any strategies, unlike the demo account, which is like live markets and takes some time to catch exact formations and setups on the charts. 

Customer support is very important to communicate issues with and ask questions to a broker directly. Trade Nation support was not in the mood to answer simple questions about trading account types during our research. They didn't offer details about cloud and MT4 accounts about ECN or STP which made it hard for our team to deduce what exactly they are offering without extensively searching through their website. The website is mainly focused on the broker’s offered values about education and simplicity. This is very good and helpful, but a few more details about trading platforms would be nice, since it is not sensitive information and is provided by all brokers freely. The broker is legit and well-regulated but lacks information and clarity on their website about the trading instruments list, trading account types, the technology used for order execution, etc. 

Trade Nation is a regulated Forex and CFDs broker that was focusing on spread trading during 2014-2019 and then switched to become a full-fledged broker offering more than 150 trading instruments in multiple asset classes. The broker offers some decent educational resources and tries to remove everything that is not necessary in order to make the trading experience better and more comfortable. Because of this, there are only two account types offered. CloudTrade is a broker’s proprietary trading platform, offering a trading experience similar to TradingView, and comes with fixed spreads that start from 0.6 pips. This account is very beneficial for news traders as spreads don’t eat up most of the profits. The second account type, the MT4 Account, comes with CFDs and variable spreads. MT4 is not good for news trading but has its own advantages of custom indicators and automated trading support. The registration process is intuitive, and the broker has simulation software to support traders who want to test their trading strategies. Overall, the broker is well-regulated, is focused on education, and offers competitive spreads and commissions. Educational materials are excellent and abundant on the platform. Support was not talkative though, offering limited information about trading account types when we asked, but was polite and offered a link to register a Demo account and test their trading services ourselves. A little inconvenience but still, the broker is regulated by multiple reputable regulators including the UK’s FCA. All this makes Trade Nation a very reliable and legit broker.