This review is a result of months spent with the brokerage firm, TD Ameritrade FX. The review team had performed an exhaustive examination on the offers and services of the firm to come up with a pointed assessment of the firm’s capabilities.
The review team had focused on the following facets of TD Ameritrade FX’s service:
1. The firm’s regulatory status
2. The firm’s industry tenure
3. The trading instruments that clients are able to access through the firm
4. The firm’s own trading platform
5. The firm’s research offerings
About TD Ameritrade FX
Seen by the online trading community as a low-risk and wholly reliable brokerage firm, TD Ameritrade FX specializes in trading Energy, Foreign Currency Pairs, Grains, Interest Rates, Livestock Futures Contracts, Metals, Soft Commodities, and Stock Indices. In addition, the firm also has provisions for Spot Trading and Social or Copy Trading.
But what really hooks traders into enlisting the brokerage’s services is its considerably long industry tenure. TD Ameritrade FX had been operating since 1955, probably the longest among the extant and active brokerages in the industry today. TD Ameritrade FX is publicly traded and operates alongside a central bank.
Within its long existence, the firm undergoes regulation through 5 financial authorities, namely, Investment Industry Regulatory Organization of Canada (IIROC), Securities Futures Commission (SFC), Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS), Financial Conduct Authority (FCA), and the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC).
With TD Ameritrade FX’s offers and industry tenure alone, trading with the firm appears attractive to both novice and seasoned traders.
Offers and Services
As already mentioned, the firm trades a wide range of trading instruments namely, Energy, Foreign Currency Pairs, Grains, Interest Rates, Livestock Futures Contracts, Metals, Soft Commodities, and Stock Indices.
The Currency Pairs that are available through TD Ameritrade FX amount to 73.
All these are already accessible through live accounts that do not demand any minimum deposit.
The firm employs a number of Liquidity providers so as to efficiently execute Forex trading. It had taken the services of LPs such as JP Morgan, Citadel Securities, XTX Markets, HC Technologies, and Virtu Financial. As this is the case, Forex trading through TD Ameritrade FX had been turned into 23 hours a day. The only consideration within these trading hours is a lull of 5-6PM ET, a time for suspended trading, the most lax of the all trading hours given the rollovers time.
The Average Spread for the pair, EUR/USD, considered standard, is at 1.065 pips as of September 2019. The all-in cost is pegged the same.
Offered Trading Platform: Thinkorswim
TD Ameritrade FX offers its desktop-based trading platform called Thinkorswim.
Thinkorswim cannot be thought of intuitive. Navigating through the platform requires a great deal of learning and patience. However, once the user is able to learn through it, it will render advantageous functions.
Thinkorswim’s charting facet contains 348 technical indicators, a number seen by many as the most among the other trading platforms in the industry. It also offers 77 indicator=based strategies that serve to trigger a trading signal.
The platform has over 80 common charting patterns. Clients are given the ability to customize candlestick patters.
The review team had noted that Thinkorswim’s web and mobile features could easily go head-to-head with that of industry favorite, MetaTrader 4.
Research
One field that TD Ameritrade FX really excels at is research. It is rare for the review team to focus on this facet, but had to for this specific assessment as it offers huge benefits for the more novice traders.
The Thinkorswim trading platform is furnished with a number of research tools, thus earning them the “Best in Class for Research” for the year 2020.
The trading platform has articles, live coverages form CNBC and its own TD Ameritrade Network TV. Other news streams also come from authorities such as Dow Jones, Thomson, Reuters, and the Morningstar.
Thinkorswim also offers an economic calendar has provisions for Social Research through the Global FX Chat channel and Social Signals which provides insights from Twitter.
Trade with TD Ameritrade FX Today!
The points discussed through the review is enough to paint a positive image for TD Amneritrade FX. The following had made the firm appealing to both novice and seasoned traders:
1. The many regulators that sanction TD Ameritrade’s Trading activities
2. The firm’s long industry tenure
3. The Thinkorswim trading platform
4. The research tools available through the trading platform