Admiral Markets Review12-min read

The availability of digital trading platforms has made it easier than ever to earn money by trading assets. With seamless onboarding processes, potential investors can quickly engage in trading activities. Despite unfavourable macroeconomic conditions, numerous investors are profiting from the stock, forex, and crypto markets with the assistance of Admiral Markets, now known as Admirals.

Admiral Markets is a popular and well-regulated global online broker which offers a multitude of assets for its customers to trade as compared to other brokers. It would be important to note that the platform is regulated by ASIC, CySEC, FCA, and FSCA and also includes the full support for the MT4 and MT5 platforms.

Moreover, Admiral Markets was founded in 2001 and is headquartered in Tallinn. It allows users to trade stocks /  shares, CFDs, cryptocurrencies, ETFs, bonds, forex, and many other financial instruments. The platform supports MetaTrader Supreme Edition, a plugin which gives each user the access to technical analysis on virtually every financial instrument.

In recent years, the platform has increased its presence in the UK, Cyprus, and Germany. Moving into the present, the exchange plans to establish a stronghold in India as well and provide the people in the country access to the international markets and foreign bonds, stocks, and commodities in a regulated manner. Interestingly, a report recently stated that India is one of the most suitable places for the development of blockchain and crypto-related activities.

In This Review:

1. History of Admirals (Formerly Admiral Markets)
2. Global Presence and Operations
3. Subsidiaries and Regulatory Compliance
4. Trading Offerings and Fees
5. MetaTrader 4 and 5 Support
6. Forex Trading
7. Share Trading
8. Crypto Trading
9. Index Trading
10. Bonds Trading
11. Commodity Trading
12. Account Types and Trading Platforms
13. Admiral Markets Trading Platforms & Trading Tools
14. Tutorial: How to Sign Up for Admirals
15. Trading Conditions
16. Asset Classes and Instruments
17. Education and Research Resources
18. Deposits and Withdrawals
19. Customer Support
20. Dividend Payments
21. Conclusion
22. FAQs

History of Admirals (Formerly Admiral Markets)

Founding and Early Years

Founded in 2001 by Alexander Tsikhilov, Admirals began its journey in Kesklinn, Estonia. Tsikhilov, an engineer by profession, set the wheels in motion for what would later become a prominent name in the realm of forex and CFD trading. The firm registered as a security and commodity contracts broker in 2003, indicating its early focus on providing comprehensive financial trading services.

Strategic Partnerships and Stock Exchange Listing

In 2019, the company sought to enrich its client offerings by partnering with renowned firms such as Trading Central, Acuity, and Dow Jones & Company. This strategic collaboration aimed to enhance the analytical portal provided to its clients, bolstering their trading decisions with detailed market insights.

Around the same time, Admirals further established its credibility by being listed on Nasdaq Tallinn’s Baltic Bond List in January 2018. This significant milestone represented the company’s commitment to transparency and adherence to stringent regulatory standards.

Accolades and Rebranding

Admirals’ dedication to providing high-quality forex trading services did not go unnoticed. In 2019, the company was bestowed with the Global Banking & Finance Awards for the ‘Best Forex Company Estonia 2019’. The firm continued its streak of recognition in 2021, securing the ADVFN International Financial Awards.

In the same year, the company decided to rebrand itself, moving from ‘Admiral Markets’ to ‘Admirals’. This rebranding also introduced a new logo, signifying a fresh identity while maintaining the firm’s core principles and customer-centric focus.

Expansion and Regulatory Approvals

By 2021, Admirals had achieved considerable global reach, with affiliates and trading licenses in the United Kingdom, Cyprus, Australia, and Jordan. In March 2021, the company obtained regulatory approval to offer CFD trading to investors in South Africa, opening up a new market for its expansive suite of financial services.

Admirals continued its global expansion efforts in 2022 by establishing its presence in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region, with the launch of operations in Jordan. Furthermore, it secured a license for financial activities in South Africa, bolstering its service offerings in this key emerging market.

As of 2022, Admirals boasts representative offices in 18 countries through its regulated investment company subsidiaries, serving a diverse client portfolio across more than 145 countries. This widespread reach showcases Admirals’ commitment to providing robust, accessible, and regulated trading solutions to a global audience.

In summary, Admirals’ history is marked by strategic partnerships, regulatory compliance, global expansion, and a consistent commitment to customer satisfaction. As the firm continues to evolve, it remains focused on delivering comprehensive, reliable, and accessible trading solutions to clients worldwide.

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Global Presence and Operations

Admirals, known for its strong presence across multiple regions, was established in 2001 with its headquarters in Tallinn, Estonia. Since its inception, the company has significantly expanded its reach, establishing offices in London, Zagreb, South Africa, and Australia to better serve its growing international client base.

This MetaTrader-based forex and CFD broker operates under several regulatory bodies, ensuring a secure and trustworthy trading environment for its clients. It has secured approvals from the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA), the Cyprus Securities and Exchange Commission (CySEC), the Australian Securities and Investments Commission (ASIC), and the Jordan Securities Commission (JSC).

Subsidiaries and Regulatory Compliance

Admirals UK Ltd, the UK subsidiary, is registered with the Companies House under the registration number 08171762. It operates under the stringent regulations of the FCA. In accordance with FCA guidelines, the company segregates the assets of its UK-based customers from the company’s main assets, providing an additional layer of protection. The FCA also imposes restrictions on leverage (limited to 30:1) and provides negative balance protection, as well as a compensation scheme of up to 85,000 EUR under the Financial Services Compensation Scheme (FSCS).

Admirals Cyprus Ltd, regulated by the CySEC, carries the company registration number 310328 at the Department of the Registrar of Companies and Official Receiver. The Australian arm, Admirals Pty Ltd, is located at Level 10,17 Castlereagh Street Sydney NSW 2000, and operates under an Australian Financial Services Licence (AFSL).

Further east, Admirals AS Jordan Ltd serves the Middle East and North Africa region. Registered under the Jordan Securities Commission (JSC) with the registration number 57026, this subsidiary caters to traders from these regions, including India.

It’s important to note that traders under the Jordan subsidiary don’t receive negative balance protection. In case of a negative balance occurrence, traders are required to inform the company’s customer support services via email within two business days.

Trading Offerings and Fees

Admirals offers a vast range of assets to trade, boasting competitive spreads and low trading fees. Traders can choose from more than 45 crypto pairs, various shares, currencies, indices, gold and silver, and other commodities, CFDs, and options. It’s worth noting that due to FCA regulations, crypto CFDs are not available for UK traders.

Regardless of their trading experience, Admirals offers a suitable platform for investors, whether they’re just beginning their investment journey or are seasoned professionals. The company allows trading in more than 8,000 markets, making it a popular choice for investors around the world.

Supporting a variety of currencies such as USD, EUR, GBP, CHF, and JPY, Admirals facilitates a wide range of trading activities. Traders can buy and sell any kind of currency, stock, crypto, or bond they desire. The withdrawal fee depends on the trader’s chosen currency and region of residence.

MetaTrader 4 and 5 Support

As a broker that prioritises advanced trading technology, Admirals provides full support for both MetaTrader 4 and MetaTrader 5 platforms. These platforms are widely respected among traders for their robust features, user-friendly interfaces, and excellent charting tools. They also support automated trading systems, which can be particularly beneficial for experienced traders.

Forex Trading

Admiral Markets contains almost every major along with some minor currencies that the users of the platform can enjoy trading with. Furthermore, the broker also allows people to trade exotic currency pairs with flexible leverage (maximum of 1:500) along with tight spreads for all the 24 hours in the five week days.

Share Trading

The Forex users of Admiral Markets will have access to buy and sell the CFDs of some of the largest blue-chip companies like Amazon, Google, and more. The maximum leverage in this case is around 1:20 with no extra charges charged on short sales. Due to the presence of CFDs, the transactions will be completed in an instance.

Crypto Trading

Trading crypto is very easy with Admiral Markets and after signing up, a user will have access to multiple crypto coins like Bitcoin (BTC), Ether (ETH), and Ripple (XRP).

Index Trading

Users can trade stocks with indices without any commission or expiration and the best part about this is that the required minimum deposit for this is about $1. The leverage maximum for this is 1:500.

Bonds Trading

Admiral Markets allows its users to trade CFDs on government treasury bonds with a leverage of up to a maximum of 1:200, and without any commissions charged for CFD trading. The minimum deposit required is only $1. No extra charge will be levied on short sales.

Commodity Trading

The platform allows users to trade CFDs on oil, gas, and precious metals like gold and silver with an initial investment of $200. The trading of commodities is allowed for five days of the week for a period of 24 hours.

Account Types and Trading Platforms

Demo Account

Admiral Markets users can open a demo account with a total of $10,000 in virtual funds. For this, they need to choose the “Practice Account” tab on the sign-up window to obtain their Admiral Markets login credentials.

Using the demo account’s login information, one can explore all the trading features provided by the broker, including the Admiral Markets MT4 (MetaTrader 4) and Admiral Markets MT5 (MetaTrader 5) platforms, as well as leveraged trading on a variety of trading instruments. The demo account by Admiral Markets provides complete real-time market data found in the original version.

The broker’s website does not accept people from a number of nations, including the United States, Canada, Afghanistan, Iran, Iraq, Burundi, Equatorial Guinea, North Korea (DPRK), Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), Ethiopia, Jamaica, Libya,  Myanmar (Burma), Sudan, Syria, Somalia, Yemen, Turkey, and Vanuatu. Japan is also included on this restricted list, but the citizens are at least allowed to use the Admiral Markets demo account.

Micro Account

Admiral Markets allows micro account users to trade micro quantities of currencies, such as 1000 units of the base currency.

Mini Account

Mini account users are allowed to trade mini lots of currencies but larger quantities as compared to micro account users, for instance, 10,000 units of the base currency.

Standard Account

Admiral Markets allows its Standard account users to trade in standard quantities of currency pairs, for instance, 100,000 units of the base currency.

ECN Account

Electronic Communications Network or ECN account links a buy or sell order with a network of banks, liquidity providers, and other brokers. ECN accounts users enjoy variable spreads and the freedom to experiment almost all the accounting strategies, including scalping.

Admiral Markets Trading Platforms & Trading Tools

Here are the trading platforms that Admiral Markets provides to its users in partnership with MetaQuotes Software Corporation:

MetaTrader 4 (MT4)

MataTrader 4 is a Forex and CFD trading solution for Admiral Markets users to analyze and trade the financial markets. You can monitor your positions quickly and inexpensively, thanks to advanced order management solutions and charting functionality by MT4.

MT4 account (either a Demo or Live account) can set up Acuity Trading Widgets by simply downloading and updating to the latest version of MetaTrader 4 Supreme Edition.

Unlike its competitors that have only been around for a few years with a small number of traders and trading volumes, MT4 is used by hundreds of thousands of users for more than a decade. As a result, the platform has undergone extensive testing and improvement over time, making it highly smooth, secure, reliable, and almost free from bugs. Notably, MetaTrader 4 is accessible on all Windows and Mac devices. Here are some of the key features of the software:

• User-friendly with multi-language support
• Highly secure
• Flexible, fast, and responsive
• Advanced charting capabilities
• Multiple time frames, ranging from 1 minute to 1 month.
• Automated trading through APIs
• Customisable indicators
• Rich historical data.

MetaTrader 5 (MT5)

MetaTrader5, which is one of the most popular multi-asset trading platforms around the world, is the latest evolution of MetaTrader 4. It is specifically designed to serve more experienced traders with more advanced analytical and technical trading tools. It has a fully customizable user interface with advanced charting, as well as options for automated trading.

The fact that traders are not limited to using the built-in analytical tools, such as MT5 tables, indicators, and graphs, is one of the main advantages of the MT5 platform. They can design their own technical indicators thanks to MQL5, an object-oriented and high-performance programming language. Here are some of the key features of MT5:

• Superior charting
• Free market data and live news feeds
• Education market
• Thousands of markets
• Level 2 pricing
• Advanced trading robots
• VPS support

MetaTrader Supreme Edition

MetaTrader Supreme Edition is designed for veteran traders who want to improve their trading activities. The platform incorporates powerful technical and analytical indicators, advanced day trading strategies, top-notch pattern recognition technology, and a number of holding timeframes. Additionally, the platform has widgets for managing multiple market orders and currencies called Global Opinion widgets.

MetaTrader Web Trader

MetaTrader WebTrader is an easy-to-access web-based platform by Admiral Markets that offers users with a good internet connection to create an account and trade from anywhere. It allows users to manage their trades by enabling them to conduct their own price analysis.

On the WebTrader platform, users have access to a wide variety of trading tools and indicators, including pivot points and Bollinger Bands, as well as an intuitive calculator for foreign exchange pip amounts. In addition to these, the platform supports highly popular techniques like hedging and 1-minute scalping. MetaTrader WebTrader users can also implement various risk management and charting tools like the guaranteed stop-out levels, which aims to minimize losses.

To get instant access to WebTrader platform and EUR 10,000 in virtual funds with MetaTrader 5 demo trading account to practice, users only need to sign up by entering their email address.

Tutorial: How to Sign Up for Admirals

Opening an account on Admiral Markets is very easy and the creators have included a straightforward approach for new investors.

The first step is to sign in with your mobile number or email and then, putting in a password of your choice. However, if you do not have an account, you will need to register first.

Click register and then, you will be asked to enter your name and other important details that will be necessary to continue your journey with Admiral Markets.

Thereafter, you will be asked to go back to the login page and visit your email to complete the activation process. After verifying your email, you will be able to login into your newly created account from the main page of the website.

Additionally, in order to activate your wallet, you need to first select your client type and then, select the country of your residence.

Then, you will be asked some additional personal details along with the basic details of your account to activate your wallet.

You will also have the access to live news feed from different sources on your dashboard so that you can decide which asset to trade in and also get the general overview of an asset class.

Trading Conditions

The trading costs are low for all the users of Admiral Markets and most of the fees are generated from spreads which are initiated at zero pips. Considering major pairs like EUR/USD and GBP/USD, the spreads on these are 0.6 pips and 1 pip respectively while the spreads on indices come like US Dow Jones are around 1 pip.

Another important factor to note here is Admiral Markets charges a $10 inactivity fee in cases of accounts that have remained dormant for more than two years. On the other hand, swap rates or interest fees are charged for all the clients that hold their assets overnight.

Additionally, the platform offers leverage up to 1:30 for all its retail users:

• Forex – 1:30 maximum leverage
• Indices & commodities – 1:10 maximum leverage
• Stocks, ETFs & bonds – 1:5 maximum leverage
• Cryptocurrency – 1:2 maximum leverage

However, the clients of Admiral Markets Jordan, whether domestic, EU or non-EU, will have access to leverages up to 1:500.

In order to calculate margin, there is a calculator present at the website which is fully capable of revealing the margin required. Here are three examples provided on the Admiral Markets websites for easy understanding:

Asset Classes and Instruments

As mentioned above, Admiral Markets allows users to invest in 8000+ asset classes via CFDs and these include:

• 50+ forex pairs
• 3,000+ stocks
• Crypto coins like BTC, ETH
• Commodities like oil
• 40+ indices like the US Dow Jones

Also, users can trade in more than 400 ETFs along with 700+ fractional shares. Furthermore, blue chip dividend paying stocks and spread betting are also a part of the services offered by Admiral Markets.

With a huge number of instruments provided, almost every transaction is executed under 150 milliseconds.

Education and Research Resources

Admiral Markets also provides analytical tools combined with educational resources for both the processional and new traders. The platform does not charge any additional fees to access these educational resources.

The platform includes webinars, seminars, e-books, and guides along with the “Zero to Hero” feature which allows traders to learn the basics and advanced knowledge of trading and become a professional.

The educational material is available on demand and users can learn everything online whenever they want to do so.

Deposits and Withdrawals

Deposits can be easily made via a number of methods including:

• Bank transfer
• Visa & Mastercard
• iBank&BankLink
• Przelewy
• Safety Pay
• Neteller
• Skrill
• Klarna
• PayPal
• iDEAL

Different accounts have different minimum deposit fees as explained in the sections above. On the whole, the minimum deposit is around $100 while most deposits are free of cost excluding e-wallets Skrill and Neteller, which charge 0.9% (minimum $1).

When it comes to withdrawals, transactions can be processed via bank transfer, PayPal, Skrill, and Neteller. While the latter two are processed instantly, bank transfers can take up to three days. The minimum withdrawal amount is $1 while traders will be allowed only two withdrawals per month.

Customer Support

The customer support provided by Admiral Markets is reliable and the team can be contacted via the following means:

• Email address: global@admiralmarkets.com
• Telephone support number: +442035041364
• There is also a live chat option at the bottom right of the screen
• A feedback form available on the ‘contact us’ page

The team can also be reached out via:

• Facebook
• Instagram
• YouTube
• LinkedIn
• Twitter

Multiple languages are also supported including Arabic, Bulgarian, Chinese, Croatian, Czech, Dutch, English, German, Hungarian, Italian, Latvian, Lithuanian, Polish, Romanian, Russian, and Spanish.

Dividend Payments

On April 20, 2023, Admirals Group AS, the sole shareholder of Admiral Markets AS, made the decision to distribute 2,618,700 euros of undistributed profits to its shareholder as a dividend, in accordance with the approved annual report of 2022. The dividends are expected to be paid by no later than April 30, 2023, ensuring timely distribution of profits to the shareholder. This move reflects the company’s commitment to providing value to its stakeholders and rewarding them for their continued support. By paying out dividends, Admirals Group AS is also acknowledging the financial strength and stability of Admiral Markets AS, which can confidently distribute profits while continuing to operate and invest in its business activities.

This makes Admirals itself one option to consider when buying stocks with dividends, to generate passive income, which you can buy on the platform itself after opening an account, depositing and claiming a 100% match bonus, effectively doubling your available investment funds.

Conclusion

Admiral Markets (Admirals) is a leading asset broker which is regulated in multiple jurisdictions around the world and is capable of satiating any financial investment needed for a trade. The platform offers a demo account for new traders and thousands of assets to choose and trade. All the transactions are settled in the fraction of a second and every customer query is solved by the customer support team.

The platform allows users to trade Forex, CFDs, indices, shares, commodities, cryptocurrencies, ETFs, bonds, along with spread betting and much more. It is regulated by the FCA, CySEC, ASIC, and JSC. With multiple offices around the globe, the company now plans to expand in India and provide financial services to the world’s largest internet market.

Admiral Markets provides a variety of educational resources to increase the knowledge and resources that each user can use in their financial journey. Moreover, the platform also supports multiple analytical tools which allows traders to see how the market is doing.

Crypto products and NFTs are unregulated and can be highly risky. There may be no regulatory recourse for any loss from such transactions. CFDs trades also pose significant risk if investing more than you can afford to potentially lose.