News

Review of Exante’s demo account

Exante is a leading online brokerage firm, offering trading services in a wide range of financial products including equities, options, futures, bonds, currencies, funds, and precious metals. Established in 2011 by Anatoly Knyazev, Gatis Eglitis, and Alexey Kirienko, the broker is headquartered in Malta and operates in several jurisdictions across the globe. In this review, we will explore the demo account offered by Exante, as well as the functionalities of its web trading platform.

Features of Exante’s demo account

When a trader registers at Exante, they automatically open a demo account and gains access to their trading platform. The demo account offers each trader virtual funds of 1 million euros, so they can practise their trading skills and test their strategies. It also gives users the chance to try out the functionalities of the platform so that they can manoeuvre it more efficiently when trading live.

Traders will have access to the same instruments and markets that live traders do. For Exante users, this is a large variety of over 600,000 instruments across 50 markets. These markets include the Australian Stock Exchange, the NASDAQ, the New York Stock Exchange, the Singapore Exchange, the Hong Kong Exchange, the London Stock Exchange, and more.

When traders want to reset their accounts, they can do so by toggling a reset in their account settings. From there, their trading history will be removed, and they will regain the 1 million euros of virtual funds they started out with. This gives traders plenty of opportunities to optimise and re-optimise their strategies until they reach conclusions and see positive results.

Finally, traders who want to share their trading journey with others can do so easily by creating sharable links of price charts to send to friends. They can even set certain timeframes when sharing, so that others can access the same trading timeframes as them. There are some limitations to this feature, depending on whether a user is sharing price charts in Guest Mode or Registered User Mode, but overall, it is a good and handy feature to have in trader communities.

Major differences between the live and demo account

Most demo accounts provided by investment firms are not exact replicas of the live account, nor can they be. This is because they often do not provide live market rates, and execution speeds may also differ when it comes to placing trades in a simulated environment versus a live one. Here are some of the major ways Exante’s live and demo accounts differ.

Documents for verification

When it comes to creating a demo account, no documents are required from the trader to verify their identity. You simply need to sign up with Exante and set a password. Creating a live account, however, requires a separate list of documents, depending on whether you are applying for an Individual or Corporate account.

Market data

As stated on Exante’s official website, market data on demo accounts are delayed by at least 30 minutes, while live accounts receive real-time market data. This is something that traders should account for when they practise trading.

Minimal account deposit

There is no minimal account deposit amount on demo accounts at Exante. The demo account also offers users a virtual 1 million euros to practise their trading skills. The amount of currency can be adjusted by sending a direct request to Exante’s support team.

On the other hand, there is a minimal account deposit for Exante’s live accounts. A basic account requires a deposit of 10,000 EUR/GBP for individuals, and 50,000 EUR/GBP for corporate representatives. If your account balance dips below this amount when trading, you may receive a reminder from the Exante team.

Monetary profit and loss

Finally, as we should all know by now, demo account in which paper trading takes place cannot generate profits, nor can paper traders suffer losses. Conversely, traders with live accounts have the potential to generate profits and losses depending on their predictions and market performance.

Trading platform user experience

As a user, the trading platform offers a good experience with its clear, simple, and intuitive interface. Exante has ‘modules’, which are essentially panels that cover different types of market information, such as Market Depth, Time & Sales, market performance, instrument performance, and more. Traders can save their favourite instruments in one panel and access them easily.

There is also the ability for traders to keep tabs on their trading history with an easy-to-understand Account Summary. This is a replica of the Account Summary that live traders will use and experience. It contains active trades and historical trades, prices in relevant currencies, and performance. It is a great way for traders to have an overview of their trading history and their active trades, despite buying and selling in different currencies.

Customer service responsiveness

Finally, even as a demo account holder, Exante is extremely responsive as a 24/7 customer support team. With their website promising to get back to inquiries within one business day, they have a multilingual team that supports conversations in English, German, French, Portuguese, Italian, Chinese, and more languages. This is a great addition to the international traders they appeal to as an investment firm, and Exante has put sufficient thought into curating a seamless customer support process.

Final words

It is extremely important to remember that trading contains all risks once a trader migrates from a demo account to a live one. Therefore, using a demo account is a great way for all traders to hone their skills and test out new strategies until they are ready to trade live. If you are unsure of anything mentioned in this article, you can visit Exante’s official website for more information on their services and offers.