Overall Rating = 9.75/10 – 24Option Broker Review (June 25th, 2012)
Deposit: Rating – 9/10
Like everyone else, they accept major credit cards (Visa and Mastercard) as well as Wire Transfers. Thus, like all the other brokers, they get a rating of 9/10 on deposits. This category isn’t really anything special but is needed for the review. It would be stupid to give a low score since what they offer is the industry standard for deposit methods. I only give 10/10 ratings to brokers who accept PayPal, Money Bookers and the like.
Platform: Rating – 10/10
The reason why I waited so long before I wrote this broker review was due to my 100 trade rule. It wouldn’t be fair to the broker if I wrote a review without fully using their platform. The 100 trade rule is set by me and I think that’s a sufficient number to see any imperfections in the platform. I started trading on 24Option on Jan 23rd, 2012 and just reached the 100th trade today.
Trade Size: Depending on what trade feature you’re utilizing, their high / low (aka call / put options) goes up to $20,000 and Touch / Boundary go up to $10,000. I have never even reached an account balance of this balance let alone make a trade of this size. So I don’t have much to comment here except that the minimum trade size is $24. What this means is, you should deposit a fair amount in order to measure your money management properly. For example, $24/$250 = 9.6%, $24/$500 = 4.8% and so on, risking almost 10% per trade is a bit much.
Trade Features:
- High / Low: Standard trades, they just renamed it. These are the same as Call / Puts on other brokers. Within the High / Low category, they also have Above / Below, these are traded exactly as they’re named. Pick Above if you think the price is above a price and vice versa for Below. I’ve never really found a use for these features and quite often, I don’t even bother with the traditional High / Low trades.
- Touch / No Touch: There are normal options and high yield options. The high yield options are kind of like the traditional “weekly touch” options that you see brokers offer over the weekend for the impossible targets; except these are offered during the day and usually within the next hour or so. Touch Options are great for trending markets and even ranging markets provided the range is large enough for price to travel in your favor. Out of all the trade features, I LOVE touch options the most. Thus, I primarily trade Touch Options (I haven’t had much success with No Touch however). In short, I basically only trade on 24Option because of their touch options, they work for my strategy. You have to find what works for yours, but from talking to others. Most people love touch options as well.
- In / Out Boundary: Same as the Touch options, these come in normal and high yield options. Same concept as the Above / Below except they strapped on a lower and upper bound on the price and you have to trade accordingly. If you think price will stay within a boundary then trade inside, if not, then you’d trade outside. Like I said above, I haven’t found much use for these types of trades yet.
- Two Minute Trades: Their so called “60 second” trades are actually just 2 minute trades with a 1 minute lock out time. Unlike traditional 60 second options which expire 60 seconds from the point of entry, these expire at the minute every minute. This can be useful if you know how to trade 1 minute charts.
Trade Execution: Every broker has its own safety mechanism. The other 2 recommended brokers, BBinary and Trade Rush both have trade confirmation screens. 24Option has about a 3-5 second pause between trade entry and execution. In this pause, they check the market price and if it hasn’t moved that much, then you’ll get your entry. If it moves in their favor, you get your entry. If it moves in your favor, you get an error “Price has changed, please try again”. This is annoying until you figure out how to trade around it. It’s embedded into the platform, there’s nothing you can do about it. After realizing this, I stopped trading touch of S/R levels and waited for confirmation since the touch would be brief and thus, impossible to get a trade entry.
Conclusion: Once you learn to trade with the nuisance of trade executions and work your strategy to include a pause, this isn’t a severe problem. Every broker platform has some trade issue with it; you just have to find a way to deal with it. This is a just minor imperfection in the grand scheme of things. The wide variety of trade features far outweighs the issue with trade execution (which only causes a problem from time to time). Thus, the platform rating gets a perfect 10/10.
Price Quotes: Rating – 10/10
I haven’t found any issues with the price quotes by 24Option. I’ve compared quotes of FreeStockCharts, MT4 (Oanda), TOS, ForexPros and NetDania. All of which has similar price differences between 24Option and the charting platforms. As long as the price difference is constant, there shouldn’t be any issues with your trading. When you get a signal, enter your trade; don’t worry about the price differential. For example if 24Option is always 1 pip higher than your charting platform. Then regardless of where you enter/expire, the price will always be 1 pip higher.
Withdrawal: Rating –
I haven’t made sufficient profits with 24Option yet to warrant a withdrawal (currently only at $108 profit from my $250 initial deposit). I’d imagine it would be a fast process since they ask you to send verification documents within a week of opening your account (like Trade Rush does). This speeds up your withdrawal if you’re already verified. Credit card withdrawals should be the same as any other, what I’m interested in finding out is whether or not their bank wires are as fast as people claim. Some people in the US have told me they receive bank wires from 24Option within 3-4 days! I will update this rating in the future when I get the chance.
“Live” Chat / Support: Rating – 10/10
Unless you catch them during peak hours like US opening, London opening or Asia opening, they usually have available agents around the clock. They also have different agents depending on what language you speak. This alone is a plus in my books, this shows they care about people who don’t speak English as their first language and prefer to speak their mother tongue.
Hopefully my 24Option Broker Review has helped you out in deciding if 24Option is the right broker for you.