PorterFinance

Editor’s Note – Why Does Porter Finance Suck In 50 Words?

Because of their Asset Index, that’s why. I mean, I could find other reasons as well, but their asset pool just stands out at first glance: it’s too limited (numbers coming up later on). There are traders who only trade 1 to 5 assets and for those, Porter Finance’s asset index will not be a problem, but others want to have hundreds of markets to choose from so I guess they’ll be disappointed.

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Why Porter Finance Doesn’t Suck?

They offer a demo account for registered users and they accept clients from the United States (more on that later). We know that U.S. traders are a little left out when it comes to binary options as they have limited choice of brokers, so seeing a U.S. friendly platform is nice. Whether they are recommended or not, that we are about to see next.

PorterFinance Review – Pret-a-Porter for Binary Options Traders? 

Porter Finance was launched in 2014, owned by Oracle Stone Ltd., a company with offices at 20-22 Wenlock Road, England N1 7GU (formerly owned by Running Forest Partners Ltd.). They are not regulated unfortunately and I believe it’s time to for us to start demanding that we deal only with regulated brokerages. Sure, in the past, when we saw a regulated brokerage we would say “Oh, that’s so great, I wish more will become regulated soon”. Ok, that is great but a lot of time has passed since the first brokerages got regulated. Now it must become a standard. This was the path taken by the Forex industry: a few got regulated, then more and more and soon people were running from all unregulated brokerages; after all, why would I deal with a brokerage that is not under the supervision of a regulatory authority if I can deal with a regulated one? Ok, enough of my ranting, regulated or not, let’s focus on Porter Finance.

The trading platform used is Panda Trading Systems and if you look for brokers that use this software you will realize there are not too many. The reason for that is the platform itself (duh!): although it’s not the worst, it doesn’t excel in any way. The charts are very small and there’s absolutely no way to change timeframes or use the tiniest shred of technical analysis. You might say: Hey but that’s the case with 99% of the brokers. But if you say that, I will answer: And that makes it ok?

Anyway, overall it has satisfactory features, with the possibility to copy the trades of others (through their Social Wall) and some training videos plus other educational material that is pretty well put together; however, most of it is only available to registered users with funded accounts. And speaking of funded accounts: their minimum deposit is 1,000 units of your account currency (USD, EUR, GBP). That’s huge, right? Yea, right but when I spoke to one of their live chat representatives and asked why it’s so high, she appeared puzzled and told me the minimum is 200 units. Indeed, in their Frequently Asked Questions they clearly say that the minimum deposit is 200 units. But their Account Types page states just as clearly that the smallest account needs a deposit of 1,000 units. The representative told me that you will have absolutely no benefits (bonuses, educational material) if you just deposit 200, but obviously you will have an account so I don’t understand why the 200 account is not listed in the Account Types page.

I promised earlier that we are going to talk about accepting U.S. customers: well, the picture is kind of blurry because in their Terms and Conditions they clearly state: “USA citizens are restricted on this trading platform from trading currencies and commodities due to U.S. regulation by CFTC”. But one of their representatives informed me they don’t restrict anyone and instead the client has to check if they don’t break any laws by trading binary options. On the internet people are mostly confused by the whole Accept/Don’t Accept situation so I guess the long story short is: Do it at your own risk, check CFTC rules and then decide.

Overall they are not bad and I am sure U.S. clients will be happy to have another brokerage option but I just don’t see them as one of the leaders of the industry. Sure, there is time to improve because they are pretty new on the scene, so we will have to wait and see how they mature over time.

Is Porter Finance A Scam?

Calling a brokerage a scam is a big deal and I will never do it lightly. At least not without hard evidence and so far no such evidence appeared against Porter Finance. Porter Finance are not a transparent brokerage as we know don’t know their address. When I input their listed address into a Google search I get websites specialized in Mail Forwarding and Virtual Office Services… hmm if I want to visit their offices, I don’t know where they actually are. On top of that, PorterFinance are not regulated so all I have is the name of the company and that doesn’t help a lot because I couldn’t find much info about them. Bottom line is: if you run out of regulated brokers, with known physical addresses and good reputation over a long period of time, then give Porter Finance a shot. Otherwise, why bother?

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Porter Finance Complaints

There have been reports of problems with withdrawals, cancelation of profits and money taken from credit cards without the account owner’s permission. That’s the worst it can get but hey, you cannot believe everything you read on the Internet, so take that with a pinch of salt but please be careful if you are going to deposit.

Porter Finance Bonus

The bonus percentage received depends on the amount deposited as usual. It can go up to 80% and the required turnover can be 30, 40 or 50 times the bonus received. If you ask me, this is unacceptable because a trader needs to know exactly what is the volume required. Note that you will not be able to withdraw your own funds either if the bonus turnover is not reached.

Porter Finance Withdrawals

They offer the normal credit card and wire transfer methods and on top of that, they allow Neteller which is fast and easy. The minimum withdrawal is 100 units and it usually takes up to 7 working days for the funds to show up. Their processing time is up to 2 working days so roughly 9 days should pass until you can get your money.

Porter Finance Extras

Hyper Options (very fast expiries) and the Social Wall (easily copy other traders) could be considered extras but then again, Hyper Options is just another name for Turbo Options or any option with 30 seconds, 1 minute, 2 minutes expiries. Social trading is also getting old so I don’t think they should get extra points for the extras.

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Porter Finance Ratings

User Friendly 12/20

The trading platform is not the most user friendly but it can be used without major issues after a period of accommodation. The biggest problem when it comes to user friendliness is that the website is only available in English, so I don’t see how it can be friendly to a guy who doesn’t speak the language.

Number of assets and expiry times 13/20

As stated before, the asset basket is tiny, composed of just 13 currency pairs, 23 stocks, 4 commodities and 8 indices. The expiry times range from 30 seconds (Hyper Options) to long term (6 months). Step up your game.

Commissions, Support and Effective return 14/20

Wire transfers will be charged a $30 fee but there are no fees for credit card withdrawals. Live support was quick to answer but got a bit annoyed when I asked why the 200 units minimum deposit is not listed in their Account Types page. Returns range between 70% – 81%, which is medium for the industry but refunds for Out of the Money trades can reach 10%, which is very good (assuming the refunds don’t stay in the lower bracket of 1-3%).

Deposit, Payment and Bonus 14/20

The minimum deposit is 200 account units (depending on the currency used to deposit) and can be performed via credit cards (including but not limited to Visa, MasterCard, Maestro, and Visa Electron), Withdrawals must be made via the same method used to deposit and can take up to 9 business days in total. The bonus structure is fuzzy, especially the part about the required turnover: it can be 30, 40 or 50 times the bonus received.

Website Extras 12/20

As mentioned before, Hyper Options and Social trading may be considered an extra but that’s only if you really try hard to find something. A true extra is the fact that the trader doesn’t know how much turnover he must reach before he can withdraw his money… I mean, I never saw that before with other brokers so it is something out of the ordinary… extraordinary.

Porter Finance Overall Rating = 65/100

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