Lightspeed Trading 评论

On-line since: 1994
Country of origin: USA
Regulation: FINRA, NFA, SEC
Payment options: bank wire
Minimum account size: $10000
Minimum lot size: -
Leverage: -
Spreads: -

About the company:

Lightspeed Trading is a company which renders risk management and brokerage services to private traders, institutional investors, and hedge funds.

About the company. Security of funds

The company belongs to Lightspeed Trading, LLC, which is headquartered in New York. The broker is licensed by reliable US regulators: Financial Industry Regulatory Authority; National Futures Association; Securities and Exchange Commission. There is no doubt whether the company is reliable. In addition, the broker is a member of the Securities Investor Protection Corporation (SIPC), so that a client will be able to return up to $500,000 in case the company goes bankrupt.

Trading conditions

With Lightspeed, customers can open accounts of the following types: individual, joint, corporate, trust, LLC, separated accounts for hedge funds, and retirement accounts.

All the company's transactions are executed based on the DMA technology that ensures a little delay in trading. Among trading instruments are shares, options, and futures.

Minimum deposit

It depends on the platform chosen by a client:

$25,000 – if you use the Lightspeed Trader, RealTick, or Sterling Trader platforms;

$10,000 – when using the Web Trader platform;

$25,000 – when using the Livevol X platform.

The minimum amount which must be deposited by a customer is $10,000. It is considered to be the biggest minimum deposit in the industry of trading. However, the holding of licences by serious regulating authorities most likely means a sound reputation, so you can invest large amounts. We recommend all those who just start to master trading to choose brokers with the smallest deposit. You can look through the companies in our rating.

Commission

Standard commissions: $0.0045 per share, $0.60 per options contract, $0.60 per futures contract.

However, Lightspeed encourages active traders by offering lower commission rates. Active traders who trade more than 500 options contracts per month can claim even lower rates. Those who trade more than 100,000 contracts per month will pay only $0.20 per contract.

If you trade more than 1,000,000 shares per month, then you will be entitled to pay a commission of $0.0025 per share.

If you consider yourself an active trader, then call or email the broker to apply for access to lower commission rates.

Trading platforms

Lightspeed Trading offers several trading platforms: Lightspeed Trader, Lightspeed Web/Mobile Trader, RealTick Pro and Express, Sterling Trader, and Livevol X.

Lightspeed Trader is a flagship trading platform and, according to the broker, one of the best trading platforms available in the market. The platform with a fully configurable and intuitive interface, charts, and filters provides fast execution of all transactions. Since 2017, the platform has been also available on mobile devices.

Sterling Trader Pro offers an expanded graphical package, direct electronic access to all exchanges and ECN, full control over the system components for quick access to markets and exchanges.

RealTick is suited to active traders, registered investment advisors (RIA), and hedge funds. It provides news feed.

Customer service

Lightspeed offers support by phone and email. The broker used to provide clients with consulting by chat, but the service was cancelled in the middle of 2012. Connection with specialists mostly takes less than 1 minute. However, if your question is not answered at once, you can wait for an answer during an hour or even several days. Unfortunately, the customer service does not answer all questions of clients. Traders will find many useful training information divided into different product classes. These are short video tutorials lasting 3 minutes on average.

There are also regular webinars, and the portal publishes news, including the company's updates on social media such as Twitter.

The website is accessible in the English, Spanish, and Chinese languages.

Payment options

Only bank wire is available. Deposits of funds are free. As for withdrawal, the fee of $20 for internal transactions and the fee of $50 for international transfers are charged. Requests to withdraw are processed on the day of submission of the application, funds are credited to an account during 3-5 days.

Advantages:

• regulated broker;
• active traders are provided with low commission rates for trading instruments;
• a wide range of trading platforms.

Disadvantages:

• big minimum deposit;
• payments are received by bank wire;
• the commission is charged for deposits and withdrawals.