IQ Option Review

IQ Option is an established broker that specializes in binary options and classic (vanilla) options trading. Their website is available in 13 languages and is accessible globally. The site is operated by IQ Option Europe Ltd company based in Nicosia, Cyprus. The website offers something of a “no frills” approach to binary options trading, which may be simply because it is relatively new. The trading platform is proprietary and a little hard to grasp at first, but it is one of the most advanced trading terminals in the binary industry and it has some interesting features for controlling your investment amount. IQ Option also offers a fully functional demo account. The company itself is regulated in Cyprus by the Cyprus Securities and Exchange Commission.

Getting Started with a Demo Account or a Real Account

You can sign up in under a minute and get started right away on IQ Option. One of the best things about this broker is that they offer a demo account which you can use indefinitely. There are no limitations as far as time goes, and you do not even need to make a deposit to use the demo account. This is a wonderful feature. It is also really uncomplicated to access; you do not need to get in touch with customer service or anything. You will find the link to open a demo account at the top of the page right next to the link for opening a real account.

At any time, you can choose to deposit funds through one of the numerous deposit methods which the site offers. You can open an account in US dollar, Russian ruble, euro, Great Britain pound, Brazilian real, Malaysian ringgit, and Indonesian rupiah, and the minimum deposit size is $50 ($10 if you leave outside of the European Economic Area) or equivalent in other currencies. Along with credit and debit card, the site offers a variety of e-wallets and online payment services, most of which are Russian. No withdrawal fees are posted, and neither are any minimum withdrawal thresholds. One of the advantages of the IQ Option deposit system is that it allows you to save your favorite payment method and then use it in a one-click mode. This significantly simplifies the funds deposit process.

VIP Account

You can open a real account with as little as $50 ($10 in most countries). This is amazing for traders with small bankrolls or those who want to practice live trading with real money without risking much. There are some great benefits that go with this type of account. But what really is impressive is the VIP account.

You can qualify for the VIP account just by depositing $3,000 or the equivalent in another currency. You can participate in trading competitions, you are given a personal manager, and you also can enjoy monthly analysis of your trading by qualified experts on the IQ Option Team.

In addition to that, VIP account holders enjoy increased rewards on binary options in a range of trading assets.

The Trading Platform

IQ Option updated their trading platform in 2015, and let me say, the updated platform is very impressive to see. Forget about your boring white label SpotOption interface. This one-of-a-kind interface displays beautifully with a high contrast graph on a dark screen. The chart updates live, and the bright glowing green dot immediately grabs your attention with its pulsing movement. If you hover your mouse over “Call” or “Put,” an arrow appears pointing in the direction that you are saying that price will move. For a trader who learns visually, this is a wonderful feature to provide clarity and focus.

You can select your trade amount in the top right. If you want, you can trade as little as $1. This is wonderful flexibility for traders with small accounts! On the left, you will see your open and closed positions. You can also look through assets, top performing traders (for copy trading), signals and news. This is very convenient! Don’t like the black background? Change it to white by clicking on the moon-shaped icon at the top of the page.
The platform is supported in several versions, making IQ Option accessible to traders with nearly any device:

• Desktop – Windows and Mac OS
• Web-based
• Mobile: Android and iOS

It is an interesting platform, and there are 73 different assets to trade. There is a shortage of some traditional trading tools, but there is a great feature for analysis – historical prices for assets going back to 2013. The historical quotes can be adjusted using a custom time zone and are available down to seconds.

The platform features 20 built-in technical indicators:
Momentum indicators: Aroon Oscillator, Awesome Oscillator, Balance of Power, Belkhayate Timing, Center of Gravity, Chande Forecast Oscillator, Chande Momentum Oscillator, DeMarker, Detrended Price Oscillator, Klinger Oscillator, MACD, Momentum, Price Oscillator, Relative Strength Index, Stochastic Oscillator, True Strength Index, Vortex Indicator, Williams’ Percent Range, Woodies CCI.
Trend indicators: ATR Trailing Stops, Aroon, Average Directional Movement Index, Bollinger Bands %B, Chop Zone, Commodity Channel Index, Ichimoku Cloud, KDJ, Mass Index, McGinley Dynamic, Parabolic SAR, Supertrend.
Volatility indicators: ATR Bands, Average True Range, Bollinger Bands, Chaikin Volatility, Donchian Channels, High Low Bands, Keltner Channels, STARC Bands, Standard Deviation.
Moving average indicators: Arnaud Legoux Moving Average, Kaufman’s Adaptive Moving Average, Least Squares Moving Average, Moving Average, Rainbow Moving Average.
Volume indicators: Accumulation/Distribution, Net Volume, Volume Oscillator, Weis Wave Volume.
Other indicators: Accumulative Strength Index, Bollinger Bands Width, Chande Kroll Stop, Choppiness Index, Coppock Curve, Fractal, High – Low, Highest High.

Offered education is minimal; there are how-to pages, FAQ, glossary, some newbie’s articles, and financial news.

The range of trading instruments (assets) is astonishing. It includes hundreds of stocks and also currencies, commodities, indices, and even cryptocurrencies.

Alerts

IQ Option supports price alerts which you can set for any asset and then get notified either via the platform’s window or via a push notification to a mobile device – like phone or tablet.

Tournaments*

Earlier, IQ Option organized a series of binary trading tournaments with prize funds from several thousand dollars to as much as $100,000. The tournaments lasted from one day to several weeks and offered an opportunity for the top binary options traders to earn additional cash based on their trading skills and luck. The tournaments were held using virtual funds (usually, $100) but there was a small entry fee ranging from $1 to $100. Some tournaments allowed re-entry after failure after paying additional fee. Most tournaments added up a part of the entrants’ fees to the prize pool, increasing the winning bonus for the top scoring traders. There were multiple tournaments held simultaneously or awaiting traders in preparation stage.

The IQ Option tournaments have been discontinued on November 1, 2017, due to regulatory rules imposed by CySEC.

* Tournaments are subject to Terms & Conditions.

Classic (Vanilla) Options

In addition to binary options, IQ Option offers classic options – American style Calls and Puts on 500 assets traded during the US trading session. Traders can buy the classic options at varying strike levels and varying expiry time. IQ Option lets traders sell their options before expire similarly to early close facility in binary options. However, there is no way to short-sell (write) a classic option with the broker due to potentially unlimited risk of such action.

Trading in classic options opens a lot of opportunities to savvy traders as there are many interesting combinations of binary and vanilla option contracts.

Geographic Presence

IQ Option is a truly international binary broker. From 2016 on, they offer their trading services in 178 countries:

Austria, Bangladesh, Brazil, Cambodia, Chile, China, Colombia, Costa Rica, Croatia, Czech Republic, Denmark, Dominican Republic, Ecuador, El Salvador, Estonia, Finland, Germany, Greece, Haiti, Hong Kong, Hungary, Indonesia, Ireland, Italy, Jamaica, Kenya, Kuwait, Latvia, Malaysia, Malta, Mexico, Mongolia, Morocco, Netherlands, New Zealand, Nigeria, Norway, Oman, Pakistan, Peru, Philippines, Portugal, Qatar, Romania, Saudi Arabia, Singapore, Slovakia, Slovenia, South Africa, South Korea, Spain, Sri Lanka, Sweden, Switzerland, Thailand, Tunisia, Turkey, United Arab Emirates, United Kingdom, Zimbabwe, etc.

Reputation

After a period of establishing as a rather popular online trading company, there is now a lot of information available about this company and their services. They are no longer new, which means that there is plenty of reviews posted about them in the Web. At the same time, IQ Option strives to be transparent and informative about its business. Their website is not difficult to navigate and you can get answers to most of your questions just by reading through the material. Customer service is available via email, web form, Skype, phone, or paper mail. Their support team is truly multilingual, providing help in 13 languages: English, Russian, Turkish, German, Spanish, Portuguese, Chinese, Swedish, Korean, French, Italian, Arabic, and Indonesian. However, nobody was on Skype when I checked during business hours on a weekday, which was disappointing.

Conclusion

This broker is a real mix of pros and cons. The flexible minimum trade size can make this a great choice for a small account holder who wants to conserve money and trade wisely. The fully functional, unlimited demo account is excellent. You can practice here as long as you need to and also learn your way around the unique interface without risking a penny. This proprietary trading platform and the control you are given over your payout and risk percentages is also very interesting. The company only offers short-term trades, few trading tools, and otherwise is quite limited on features, however, which are all substantial drawbacks.

IQ Option goes in the category of binary options which are definitely worth checking in with regularly as they look to be rapidly developing new features. They were off to a good start and has already proven to excel in the binary options field. At the same time there is still much of what they could do in the future. Hopefully they will decide to offer more types of options to trade, longer-term options and other tools, and improved access to customer service.

Interview

You can read our interview with the representative of IQ Option, which we have done in November 2014.