So You’re Looking for Some Good Forex Options Brokers!
Forex Options Brokers give you a little more than traditional forex brokers because they also provide the ability to choose options on foreign currencies as either an alternative financial instrument to the spot market, or as a hedge for existing leveraged spot positions.
Most foreign currency brokers don’t boldly advertise their willingness to include options as part of your trading suite, firstly because they are less well known and second, because it is more marketable for them to make their commissions on the spread rather than having to charge a fixed transaction fee for the option trade itself.
Here are a list of forex options brokers
we have found that are recommended by real people who are using them for options trades on currency pairs:
1. Saxo Bank – www.saxobank.com
Saxo Bank is located in Europe but also have offices in Sydney, Tokyo and Singapore. They provide live streaming forex options quotes through their trading platform on nine major currency pairs. They claim to be able to provide larger strike price ranges together with longer expiration dates than other brokers. They don’t charge commissions on the trades but build it into the option spread, unless the trade is low value in which case there is a $US10 fee. Forex options expiring in the money are converted to a spot position but a trader may choose to convert it to cash by exiting at the mid price.
2. ThinkorSwim – www.thinkorswim.com
ThinkorSwim is located in the USA and are part of the Ameritrade Group. Their downloadable trading platform is second to none for options and includes advanced options analysis capabilities which makes them one of the best forex options brokers around. Unfortunately, you cannot join ThinkorSwim if you are a UK resident but you can from most other countries. The way you trade forex options with ThinkorSwim is to select options on futures, followed by the currency of your choice. Options on currency futures are not as liquid as stock options but you can utilise some of the more popular option trading strategies with them.
3. IG Markets – www.igmarkets.com
IG Markets are a UK based brokerage firm but they have offices in all major trading countries. Their main focus is CFDs but they also include option trading on all the major forex pairs. Their platform however, doesn’t seem to be set up for more exotic options strategies, only simple open positions. You could “leg in” to an option spread or a straddle on currencies but risk slippage in the process. Nevertheless, they are a forex options broker worth considering.
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