- Minimum Deposit: $10
- Products: Forex, Shares, Indices, Commodities, Cryptocurrencies
74-89% of retail CFD accounts lose money
BlackBull Markets offers the full MetaTrader suite (MetaTrader 4 and MetaTrader 5) alongside multiple social copy trading platforms and TradingView.
However, its sparse education and modest research materials leave BlackBull Markets struggling to compete with the best forex brokers in those categories.
Pros
- Available to residents of New Zealand – unlike many brokers that don’t have the required full FMA license.
- Provides the full MetaTrader suite (MT4 and MT5).
- Offers a growing range of third-party trading tools from Autochartist and Acuity.
- Supports multiple third-party copy trading platforms, such as ZuluTrade, Duplitrade, and Myfxbook.
- Integration with the TradingView web platform was made available in 2021.
- With the launch of BlackBull Shares, traders can access overwith over 26,000 tradeable symbols.
Cons
- BlackBull lacks additional Tier-1 regulatory licenses outside of New Zealand.
- BlackBull’s Seychelles-licensed entity only offers light regulatory protection.
- The narrow scope of BlackBull’s educational content can’t compete with what the best MetaTrader brokers offer.
- Based on the average spreads we obtained, commissions and fees at BlackBull Markets appear to be in line with the industry average.
Offering of investments
BlackBull Markets has significantly expanded its range of markets with the launch of BlackBull Shares. The broker now offers over 26,000 tradeable symbols; 2,500 are available on MetaTrader 5 and TradingView, and 311 symbols on MetaTrader 4. The table below summarizes the different investment products available to BlackBull Markets clients.
Cryptocurrency: Cryptocurrency trading is available at BlackBull Markets through CFDs, but not available through trading the underlying asset (e.g. buying Bitcoin). Note: Crypto CFDs are not available to retail traders from any broker’s U.K. entity, nor to U.K. residents.
Commissions and fees
Trading costs at BlackBull Markets are about average for the industry, and will vary depending on which of its three account types you choose.
Spreads: The average spread for the Standard account came to 1.25 pips in October 2021, making it a pricier option than BlackBull Markets’ ECN Prime account (my preferred choice). After including the round-trip commission equivalent of 0.6 pips per trade on the ECN Prime account, the effective average spread for the EUR/USD is 0.824 for October 2021.
Accounts comparison: The Standard account is commission-free and has no minimum deposit requirement. The ECN Prime account offers lower spreads, but requires a $2,000 minimum deposit, and there is a commission of $3 per side or $6 round turn per lot. The ECN Institutional account is BlackBull’s more exclusive option for active traders that deposit at least $20,000, with commission rates that are negotiated with the broker on a case-by-case basis.
Market Research
BlackBull Markets recently expanded its market research coverage with the acquisition of research firm ATM Strategy. Considerable progress has been made in the broker’s research offering, though BlackBull Markets still trails behind the best forex and CFD brokers in this category.
Research overview: BlackBull Markets produces a daily series featuring technical and fundamental analysis for specific trading symbols. For example, the Trade in 60 Seconds series are one-minute recordings that focus on a particular trading symbol – such as a given forex pair or CFD.
Market news and analysis: Both the Market Reviews articles and the selection of videos produced by BlackBull Markets’ in-house team are high-quality, and provide depth from a technical and fundamental analysis perspective. I was just disappointed to find that there isn’t more daily content.
Resuming the production of live streams would be a step in the right direction for BlackBull Markets, along with a general expansion of daily content.
Final thoughts
Despite a growing product range on MetaTrader and support for social copy trading tools, BlackBull Markets falls behind the best brokers in several key categories, such as education and research. It’s also important to note that BlackBull Markets currently has a relatively small number of regulatory licenses.
BlackBull Markets is a maturing broker that has been in operation for nearly a decade and has made great strides over the last 12 months toward improving its value proposition to traders and investors. That said, BlackBull still has some room to grow in order to become more competitive. We’d love to see the broker acquire more regulatory licenses in Tier-1 jurisdictions, which would only improve its Trust Score.