Trade Now!EZTrader sticks to its name in trying to make online trading easy. It offers a comprehensive selection of binary options in stock indices, commodities, forex and single stocks, all in a simple, fast and effective trading environment.
EZTrader is a binary options broker that claims to have been the first provider of an online binary options trading platform, back in 2008. In this review, we examine whether being the first also means they are the best.
EZTrader – Binary Options
Tradable Assets
EZTrader is geared very much towards simplicity and efficiency of execution. This is evident in their name, and also their tagline: ‘Option trading made easy’. As such, they don’t offer some option types that other brokers do such as pairs and 1-touches – they concentrate instead on providing a solid service for their core offering of vanilla binaries.
This does not mean however that they skimp on tradable assets. They have a comprehensive selection of single stocks from the US, EU and Asia. They also offer about 20 equity indices, and although a few of the very exotic indices that others claim to offer are missing, all the major liquid ones are included. Commodities are also available: copper, gold, oil and silver, which probably accounts for 90% of traders out there. The other 10% however would probably have liked to see a few of the soft commodities like coffee or sugar available to bet on.
The weakest offering is, surprisingly, forex. All the major USD pairs are represented but there are some surprising omissions in the crosses (EURAUD, AUDCAD, etc). Also only G10 currencies are available; those looking to bet on emerging markets currencies such as ZAR, TRY, CNY, INR, MXN, won’t get their fill here.
In terms of timeframes available, EZTrader again, depending on your point of view, either keeps it simple or is shallow. I was only able to get 1 and 2 hour durations, and end-of-day expiry. With a little digging I found a ‘long term’ option but it only gave me one possible expiry, for the end of the week (see screenshot 1).
Asset range: 3/5
Spreads
EZTrader is a little odd when it comes to payouts. Generally, payouts are in the 72-75% region which is pretty typical for online brokers. However, that is the payout if you win. If you lose, they give you back 10% of your betting amount (see screenshot 2)! When you work it out this is equivalent to an 82% payout, which puts it in the top category of brokers for spreads.
What about the 115% payout in the screenshot of the long-term expiry above? Well, this is extremely odd at a first glance. As should be obvious, if a payout is really above 100%, the broker is offering you free money (simply buy both a put and a call and you make anything in excess of 100% no matter what).
After chatting to an account representative to clarify this point, I found out that long-term trades have an automatic 2% spread added: that is, the current rate of the underlying asset +2% is the benchmark for calls, and -2% for puts. This is a crippling and punishing spread, and makes profitable trading on their long-term options all but impossible. It is also poor form for the broker to have these hidden costs not listed anywhere else on their website.
Spreads: 1.5/5 (severe penalty for long term trades, would be 3.5/5 for non-long term)
Platform
The platform for EZTrader tries to be lightweight and easy to use. It largely succeeds in this by keeping graphical pleasantries to a minimum. The main trading page allows you to display 4 assets, as shown screenshot 3, in a pretty Spartan format with just a line graph and binary payout information.
You can click the magnifying glass in the corner of any one of the above windows to expand a single graph to take up the entire space available for a closer look. There are not many options once you do, however; you cannot change from a line graph to bar or candlestick chart and there are no technical indicators available. The timeframes extend from the last 15 minutes to last 1 day: longer timeframes would have been very beneficial for long-term trades, but as they have such wide spreads, you won’t be trading those with this broker anyway.
In its favour, the sparseness of the platform does enable it to remain generally pretty responsive and quick.
Platform: 2.5/5
A few words about account types and bonuses on offer. The minimum deposit is $200 which gives you a standard account. The broker strongly recommends starting with a deposit of at least $1250 however, which enables a bonus of $650. Depositing is very simple and can be done by credit and debit card. There do not appear to be VIP account privileges for larger depositors, nor are volume bonuses for heavy traders mentioned anywhere – though it is quite likely that they are negotiable. There is however a $100 bonus available for downloading their iPhone/iPad app.
Overall, EZTrader succeeds in its goal of keeping trading simple and straightforward for typical binary options traders, with a decent selection of underlying assets. However, it does not provide capabilities for non-vanilla option types and does not cover slightly exotic assets such as emerging market currencies. Furthermore, the fact that they add crippling spreads to their long-term binaries which are not explicitly stated anywhere on their website is for me a warning sign as to their trustworthiness as a company.
Screenshots
