Why I chose Global Prime as my Forex Broker

Choosing a reliable forex broker is not easy. It feels like there is an endless list of brokers available online, and many seem to be much of the same. Most brokers offer the same currency pairs, trading platforms, funding methods, commissions, spreads and so on.

Before starting my journey into the world of live forex trading in earnest, I spent several months looking into and trying several brokers. I was always underwhelmed and often disappointed one way or another. After opening trading accounts with numerous brokers, I finally discovered Global Prime. Knowing how difficult it was to find a broker that matched my expectations, I feel it is important to share my experience and hopefully help other aspiring or established traders like you. Here are the reasons why I use Global Prime as my forex broker.

Recently, Global Prime started adding crypto CFDs to their portfolio, allowing traders to access a growing selection of coins (already over 35) with 0.1% commissions and the ability to trade on margin with far lower costs than most crypto exchanges. This allows crypto traders to tap into the vast experience of Global Prime as a forex broker and to benefit from their professional tools as well as all the other positive features outlined on this page, especially when it comes to reliability and security of assets.

Why Global Prime stood out to me?

The way forex brokers position and brand themselves is very uniform and feels a lot like being in an echo chamber. Frankly, I don’t care which football team my broker supports, what kind of news and narrative they are pushing, or whatever else they have going on. I want consistently favorable and reliable trading conditions that will allow me to prosper and profit.

The first thing that stood out to me was the design and language on the company’s website: https://globalprime.com - This broker has a minimalist, professional and institutional tone that I connected with. It grabbed my attention because the site doesn’t just throw out jargon and buzzwords like ‘ECN’ or ‘STP’; they go into specifics and clearly explain the business model behind the company. I haven’t seen this approach taken before.

What Makes Global Prime a Real ECN Broker

Global Prime offers one trading account for all clients. It’s an ECN account, but it genuinely is an ECN account. Many brokers mislead traders into believing they offer ECN trading. In reality, they offer ECN pricing, which means quotes are derived from an ECN but not executed that way. Or they offer so-called ECN accounts, which is normally used to describe a low spread account rather than an execution method.

The Global Prime business model is simple; provide the best possible quotes and be remunerated a fixed commission for every trade processed. They do not profit from client losses, which means there is no conflict of interest between me being profitable as a trader and them being profitable as a business. They want me to be successful.

You might wonder how you could ever know if a broker is really ECN or not. Global Prime figured it out; they are the first broker to offer trade receipts which will verify the counterparty (usually a major bank or similar type of liquidity provider) that took the other side of your trade. In addition to showing you which liquidity provider filled your trade, trade receipts will show other essential information, such as spread, market profile, execution time, slippage and more.

There are many benefits to receiving trade receipts from your broker, and it goes further than fairness, honesty and showing that your broker doesn't profit from your losses. You can use this information to understand how the market behaves and understand how orders are executed in a wider context, on a global scale.

Why Execution is Important

There are different business models that forex brokers operate; they are broadly categorized as A-book and B-book. The vast majority of brokers use a B-book execution model, which means your trades are executed inside a black box that traders do not have visibility into. With a B-book broker, you have no idea how your trade is filled; the broker could match it against another client, hedge externally or - what typically happens - your broker could be the counterparty profiting if and when you lose.

An A-book broker uses a straight-through-processing (STP) technique to execute orders with external counterparties. Many traders mistakenly assume A-book is perfect and B-book is terrible, however, it’s a little bit more complicated than that. It still matters who a broker is executing trades with, after all, and A-book brokers can STP trades to a B-book broker. That is why the trade receipts feature offered by Global Prime is a gamechanger in execution transparency. After spending a considerable amount of time looking into forex brokers, I have not found any other broker that offers a similar level of transparency.

Accessible to Traders Around the World

Forex trading is incredibly accessible these days thanks to an abundance of retail brokers and online trading platforms like MetaTrader. One area that still restricts traders from emerging, and sometimes even established, economies is funding methods. If you have a credit card such as a Visa or MasterCard, or a bank account in a major currency, then it’s pretty easy to transfer money and fund a trading account. Traders from Europe or Australia might not give this a second thought. However, if you have Nigerian Naira, Vietnamese Dong or Thai Baht, it can be difficult and expensive to do an international bank transfer.

Traders can deposit using local transfers in their native currency. Global Prime will then convert your deposit into one of the supported trading account currencies (USD, AUD, GBP, EUR, SGD, CAD). The exchange rate they use to convert deposits is set to spot +2%. Most payment service providers charge much more than this. For example, PayPal charges 4-5% for currency exchange. Global Prime will absorb any fees more than 2%.

Besides the major currencies USD, EUR, GBP, CHF, JPY, AUD you can deposit instantly with THB, MYR, VND, IDR, PHP, NGN, ZAR and within 24-to-48 hours with MXN, ARS, COP, BRL and more. Global Prime also supports popular forex funding methods Skrill and Neteller.

Personally, since I live in Canada and have a Canadian bank account, I can use Interac e-Transfer to fund my account. This is extremely convenient for me, entirely free of any fees and essentially instant. After a long search, I have not found any other broker that makes funding and withdrawals this straight forward and easy for me.

Mature Community

Global Prime runs a Discord chatroom for clients to interact not just with each other, but also the owners, management and support team.

There are more than 4000 participants in the chatroom, and it’s a great place to go for a lively discussion. Many traders pay monthly subscriptions to join mature forex trading communities, which makes this feature a great selling point for serious traders. Additionally, this community of traders not only helps each other, but also holds Global Prime accountable to the high standards and expectations they set out for themselves.

Trading Academy

Recently, Global Prime began building out multiple, fully featured trading courses. From understanding why traders fail, choosing the right technical tools to understand market conditions, all the way to the importance of risk management; it’s all covered in their courses!

Their courses are just the tip of the iceberg and serve as an entry point. They have also put together several integrated communities, bound in camaraderie as part of Discord rooms, where traders can communicate with each other and with their mentor, ask questions, analyze each other's trades, and so forth. Overall, this is a great example of how Global Prime wants their traders to be successful and it illustrates one of the major advantages of working with a broker that operates off of a commission model instead of profiting from their client's losses.

Great Reputation

The way Global Prime operates is widely endorsed by forex traders, thus validating their fresh take on running a forex broker.

According to Forex Peace Army, Global Prime has an impeccable track record with over 300 detailed, highly positive reviews. This makes Global Prime one of the most highly rated brokers, especially when taking into account the high amount of reviews from actual retail traders.

Why it is Important to Trade with a Broker Like Global Prime

There is a large disparity between retail and institutional forex trading services. Logically, any benefit that a broker offers, be it a bonus, a rebate, a lucrative competition or a gift, it will all be factored into the cost of every trade they facilitate. Most brokers make money from their clients' losses, much like a casino; this is how they can afford such lucrative sponsorships and incentives for clients.

If you want a competition, consider playing poker or maybe even the lottery. If you aspire to be successful at trading forex, follow me and choose a broker with a transparent pricing model, the tightest possible spreads, with stable technology, who maintains reliable services and supports you as a trader. Bottom line; using Global Prime as my forex broker doesn't guarantee that I will be successful, but it puts me in the best possible position to succeed - it is entirely up to me and my skills as a trader whether I am profitable trading the markets.

Drawbacks and Other Tools

One of the few drawbacks of Global Prime as a broker is that they only offer MetaTrader 4 and Trader Evolution for trading platforms. I use MT4, which is perfectly fine for everyday trading, but is lacking certain features that other platforms offer these days. Trader Evolution looks interesting and appears to be on a promising trajectory for the future, but is still in fairly early development.

To compensate for this situation, I am using TradingView, mostly for charting purposes. TradingView offers a very good (and highly popular) web-based charting platform, not just for forex but for all major financial markets. I have come to appreciate how it allows me to navigate the markets and currency charts without having to do that in my trading platform MT4, that I almost exclusively use just to execute trades. This creates a natural separation between doing my research and actually putting money on the line.

Disclaimer

There are substantial risks associated with trading and investing in securities or other financial instruments. Trading and investing in stocks, bonds, exchange traded funds, mutual funds, money market funds, and cryptocurrencies involves risk of loss. Loss of principal is possible. Some high risk investments or trading certain financial instruments may use leverage, which will accentuate gains & losses. Trading in foreign exchange ('Forex') on margin, as well as trading cryptocurrencies, entails particularly high risk and is not suitable for all people. Before you decide to trade or invest in foreign exchange, or any other financial market, you should carefully assess your objectives, experience, financial possibilities and willingness to take risks. Past performance is not an indication of future results!

Lastly, please note that the links to Global Prime and TradingView on this page are affiliate links. If you use them to register an account, I may earn a small commission, you may get a discount or other benefits, and I will be identified as your introducing broker. This helps support the companies and both of us. I only endorse these companies because of the positive experience I've personally had using their products and services.