IQ Option Review 2024: Complete Beginners Guide

In this IQ Option review, we are going to take a look at one of of Europe’s largest CFD brokers.

This review will give you everything you need to know about the IQ Option platform and whether it is the broker you should consider. We also set up a live trading account which will give us first-hand experience of the broker from the perspective of a client.

Let's dive right in and put the broker through their paces...

IQ Option Offers

Is IQ Option Safe?

This is probably one of the most important questions for any trader that starts on a platform. Safety of funds and data are essential to a secure trading environment.

In the case of IQ Option, they are a regulated broker that has a licence to provide investment products in the European Union. The licence that IQ Option has if from the Cyprus Securities and Exchange Commission (CySec).

In order to obtain this licence, the broker has to meet numerous minimum requirements as it pertains to client funds, trading products and marketing restrictions. You can read more about CySec regulations on their website.

Client Funds Safety

In the case of client funds, all of the money has to be kept in a secure segregated account that is off limits for broker business. You can think of this as a safe deposit box for all client funds that has to be monitored on a regular basis.

This will ensure that IQ Option will always have a certain minimum of funds should the clients all decide to withdraw. This is very important as it ensures that there is liquidity at the exchange in times of market stress.

Moreover, the CySec regulators also have something akin to deposit insurance at the regulator level. This means that should anything ever happen to IQ Option, your deposit is insured up to a certain level by the regulators in Cyprus.

Communication

As is standard with most trading platforms these days, IQ Option is fully SSL encrypted. This means that all trader communication that is sent to IQ option servers is encrypted using AES 256 Bit encryption standards.

Why is this important? Well, hackers.

There has been a great deal in the news about the tactics of hackers when it comes to man in the middle attacks and phishing. Put simply, an SSL certificates are meant to limit the effectiveness of these attacks and protect the trader.

While we are on this point, it is worth mentioning that you should always make sure that you see the green padlock in your browser address bar (image right) to make sure that you are not visiting a phishing site. This goes for any broker or exchange.

Asset Coverage

IQ Option started out as an option platform that offered traditional assets to trade. These included assets such as stocks, commodities, ETFs and plain vanilla forex. However, they have greatly been increasing their offering of cryptocurrency assets.

In the chart to the right, you can see a list of all the cryptocurrency pairs that are on offer at IQ Option. There are over 12 pairs that you can currently trade and they are always adding more. These include the likes of Bitcoin, Ethereum, Ripple, Dash, Litecoin, Monero, Zcash etc.

Although these may be just perfect for the normal cryptocurrency trader, there are numerous other assets that remain on the legacy platform of spot that you can dabble in. They are listed below:

• Forex: For those traditional traders who like trading Fiat Forex, you have a great many options for traditional currency trading on IQ option. There are over 188 currency pairs from you to choose from as well as a range of different crosses between the pairs.For those crypto traders who are slightly more advanced, you can use the forex pairs in order to set up a crypto trade in your own local currency. You can open a CFD position on the USD cross as well as that of the cryptocurrency USD cross in question.
• Stocks: There are also hundreds of traditional stocks that you can trade on the IQ Option CFD platform. You have a selection of over 7,500 stocks to trade that are on a number of different global exchanges. These include the NASDAQ and the FTSE etc.
• ETFs: ETFs, or Exchange Traded Funds, are collective investment funds that allow you as the investor to trade on an index of stocks. IQ option has some of the most extensive lists of ETF instruments to trade with over 4,288 to choose from.

Trading Instruments

For their crypto, FX and stocks they currently offer these products as Contracts for Difference (CFDs). CFDs are derivative instruments that will pay out the trader based on the difference in price at the beginning and the end of the trading day.

CFDs are also levered instruments which means that you can take a much larger position on a trade than you have available. This could amplify your returns provided that you manage your risk in an appropriate manner.

In terms of the leverage the IQ Option provides with these CFDs, it differs according to the asset class. For example, you have leverage of 10x on Stocks, 20x on Cryptocurrencies and a really punchy 200x on Forex. It goes without saying that you should trade such instruments very carefully.

Of course, IQ Option is known for their option instruments. These include their Binary Option and digital option offerings. These instruments are asymmetric instruments which means that they have a defined loss and profit.

With these instruments, you will lay out a premium for the option trade that will usually be a small premium of the asset in question. You will also have an expiry time and an expiry price. If the option expires in the money then you can make a large return on your investment. If it expires out of the money then you will lose the premium.

Funding / Withdrawal

IQ Option has a number of payment options that traders can make use of. They accept cards from Visa and Mastercard. They also accept funding through numerous online wallets including Web Money, Skrill, Cash U and Neteller.

For those who would prefer to fund their account through a simple wire option, they also have that option. This will usually take a bit longer than a deposit via card but the fees will be lower for larger amounts.

For those traders who are merely starting out trading, the minimum account funding size is a mere $10. This will give you access to the real account (explained below). Payments that are made via wire can take a bit more 2 days and this depends on where you bank is located.

They also claim that you can withdraw instantly with no questions asked. They state that these can be withdrawn in under 24 hours and that you can process any withdrawal amount that you would like.

We wanted to test this so we opened an account at IQ option and deposited $100. Our deposit was a wire payment and took about 1 day to arrive (our bank is in the EU). We then requested a withdrawal of $10 after placing a few trades.

The team at IQ option told us that we still had to verify our account. After verification went through, our funds were indeed sent and took a little over a day to hit our account (less wiring fees). One thing that the trader has to consider is that they can only withdraw in the same manner through which they funded.

Customer Support

Customer service is something that is often in short supply among brokers and exchanges. This of course makes sense given the immense amount of people who want to invest and the limited number of exchanges where they can do this.

Hence, we wanted to test the customer support response times and effectiveness at IQ Option. We did this initially in the verification phase when we were waiting on our documents. For KYC purposes, IQ option required our proof of identity and address.

We sent our docs off and they took about 2 days to verify. During the period we send out a number of support tickets on the platform as well as corresponded with them on email. Response times were about 2 hours on average.

While these response times are not the best we have encountered, they are definitely below average. We also have to take into account that IQ Option has millions of accounts at the moment which is considerably more than all of the other brokers and exchanges on the market now.

There also seems to be a dedicated phone number for the team at IQ Option. This is not something that one often sees at exchanges or other CFD / Stock brokers in general. It gives a slight personal feel to the trading experience.

Jurisdictions & Languages

As mentioned, IQ Option is owned and operated by a company in the European Union. They are also a registered financial services provider in Cyprus with the registration number of 247/14. This means that they are legally allowed to take European clients. These clients will also have full protections afforded by CySec.

IQ Option has also spent a great deal of time translating their website and platform. For example, they currently have support for up to 13 different languages.

So that these traders could feel comfortable trading in a balance of their local currency, IQ Option allows funding in GBP, USD, EUR and the following other currency groups: RUB, IDR, MYR, Yuan.

In terms of the local laws, there are some countries that they are not operating in. Traders from the following countries unfortunately cannot make use of their services: The USA, Canada, Israel, Palestine, Australia, Russia, Syria, Iran, Japan, Belgium.

Demo Account

One of the great advantages that we found out about IQ Option was their free demo accounts. Unlike other exchanges and brokers, IQ option gives the trader $10,000 of demo funds that they can use to test out the platform.

They can trade on the demo platform as long as they like and there are no time restrictions. If you have depleted the practice funds then you can always have it replenished. This is a great way for new traders to test out their skills before they invest any live money.

You can also do this with practice funds without having to give over any personal information to start. Hence, you can quickly and easily test the platform without worrying about having to hand over any phone numbers or identity documents.

Live Accounts

Once you are satisfied with the trading platform and are comfortable with your trading skills, you can move onto a live account and invest your real funds. There are two types of accounts at IQ Option for you to utilise. They are the Real account and the VIP account.

• Real Account: This is the entry level account at IQ Option and only requires a minimum funding amount of $10. With this account, you have access to over 70 asset to trade across a range of asset classes. This will have exactly the same platform functionality as the demo account.
• VIP Account: If you fund more than $3,000 then you will be placed into the VIP category. This has added benefit of a VIP account manager who is on hand to answer any questions that you may have with regards to the platform.The VIP account also allows traders to gather monthly reports on their trading record. This is put together by the analysts at IQ Option. These reports can help the larger traders to properly analyse their returns and make sure that their trading strategy was appropriate.

When we did our tests, we did it on the live trading account and not on the VIP account. Hence, although we have no reason to doubt the benefits, we cannot verify the exact customer support that you are likely to get from an account manager.

IQ Option Trading Platform

One way in which IQ Option really stands out is their state of the art trading technology. Apparently, there are over 100 developers who are constantly working on the platform in order to improve its efficiency. They have also consulted traders who have collaborated with these developers.

We went over the platform and were quite impressed with how functional it really was. Surprisingly, unlike numerous other platforms, it did not sacrifice the layout or simplicity in order to integrate the range of sophisticated trading tools available.

These tools include numerous charting packages such as technical indicators and studies such as Bollinger bands and moving averages. This could no doubt be a great advantage for all of the technical analysts out there.

There are also numerous layout options that are available on the web interface. This is achieved through the use of widgets which can be positioned to the trader’s preference. This is helpful for those traders who would like to be able to trade on numerous different assets simultaneously.

What is also great to note is that IQ Option offers its platform not only as web based platform but also as computer based programs. You can download the proprietary IQ Option Mac or Windows trading software. This will connect to the IQ Option infrastructure.

We tried these out and they were much faster than the web based platform. This makes sense as our trading instructions were going straight to the servers at IQ option and not through a website interface first. Moreover, there was no browser software to slow down our experience.

Platform Functionality

While the IQ Option platform no doubt looks impressive, the most important consideration is it's functionality. No matter how impressive a platform's UI is, the tools at your disposal are what make or break the trade.

Let's run through some of the most important functions and tools that you can use on the platform.

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