Olymp Trade
The allure of getting rich, quick and the easy way, without burning down the calories of your brain; has made many broke. But, this is also how the mass psyche of naive, but greed-driven general public constructs itself. I've seen the cycle of retail-trading boom and bust, at least three times since 2002.
No matter how one dresses it up, and I don't care, even if you went to the number one business school in the world - the all-knowing HBS - the fact of the matter is that any form of financial trading, regardless of the timelines: seconds, minutes, weeks, days, is a well-cloaked, acceptable-to-the-society version of gambling.
And it's an undisputed truth of life that gambling, legal or illegal, is culturally well-engrained in the human ecosystem. Simple yes-no dice-shaped objects were found going as far back as 40,000 years; considering the modern humans popped on to the scene about 50,000 years ago. So, it's settled then. We should approach all forms of investing in the liquid financial markets, in a manner that resembles throwing the dice on the roulette table.
Zooming back to the current day. It's the era of can-do-anything smartphones. Trading that was done over the phone in the 80s, accessible only to the ones who made it, is now just a finger-tip away, even for a person selling burgers by the curb.
Good things? Well, the retail trading world is now flush with more cash they can handle. The Bad? that money, generally moves up north into the pockets of the market makers, and fiercely south for a man who doesn't know the difference between an Income and a Cash Flow statement. If you don't know which currency Germany uses, chances are real high, your demise would be fast and furious in the ferrari-like-speedy forex markets.
Enough of the dark side. For now.
This page is more about accentuating the reasons, on why Olymp Trade can be trusted; is it for real or fake as a $10 Rolex watch sold on the streets, for the ones who know what they're doing or at bare-minimum want to learn vs. their actual clients' postive and negative experiences.
I'll start with Reddit first. It's a mix bag of hate and love. And it's also hard to know who's lying, who is on the side of the righteous, who wants to help, and who's just trolling. The reviews, however, make a few points very obvious: Olymp Trade, although not an online investment scam, in a traditional sense, still needs to be looked at from an eye of caution. I tend to agree with this overall consensus. It is afterall a binary options trading platform, at its very core. The epithets used on its website to divert the attention from this very truth, doesn't change the reality. The yes-no, will-the-price-go-up-or-down form of investing (trading is the more apt word) can bring about a calamity of horrors on one's personal financial and mental well-being; once unchecked that is.
TrustPilot, a more commercially manageable, review site, does hold Olymp Trade very close and dear. The review ratings there stand close to or above 4.0/5.0 at any given time. With over a thousand real and tested human evaluations of this retail trading brand - some look fishy of course - I've decided to put my hands down and give the benefit of the doubt to Olymp Trade. Do I trust every upvote given to them on TrustPilot? Probably not. Do I have a choice to make my case backed by rock-solid evidence of review rigging? I don't. Therefore, I can't help but endorse them as a reasonably trusted broker for the masses, who want to take online trading, like they would a cup of coffee; in other words, taking it easy, and not going crazy depositing, and then losing 10s of thousands of dollars.
I must have visited their official website, like at least 30 times, before writing this piece. Professionalism is the term that comes to mind. I love the dark-purlish, modern Gen-Z-prone colors and the graphics that reflect their tenacity to hit the good books of the young 20-or-30-something audience, preferably who want an uncomplicated, hip-and-cool route to trading online.
Their questionable, but still legally-passable license from the Island-nation of Vanuatu; doesn't seem to have stopped the onslaught of new signups by literally millions of people. Yup, their website swaggers 88 million registrations, though I don't know how many actively trade. Still, even then, it's indeed an impressive number, by all counts. If anything, today's retail brokers have learnt to crack the code of the modern day trading industry.
Then there's this always-Googled question: is it legal in XYZ country? Well, it doesn't hold any brokerage-services license in places like India, Indonesia, Bangladesh, even the UAE. Legally speaking, it's Olymp Trade who's breaking the local laws, and not you as their client. Perturbed that the police would come knocking on your door; they wouldn't. But, then these state of affairs also makes every-man-for-himself scenario. The government can't bail you out, if you lose all your funds.
Nothing to brag about, when it comes to their client support system. Live Chat and Email. My experience with them handling pre-sales questions was much better than their ability to tackle issues pertaining to account maintenance and KYC. I don't dislike it, but more work is definitely needed.
With over 100 million downloads and 4.0-rated reviews hitting over a million, Olymp Trade's app is definitely one of the biggest in terms of users, matching with a similar site IQ Option, a goliath from Israel, with offices in Cyprus. A crypto giant like Binance is another, and possibly the only real alternative to it. Together all three seem to rule this bulging industry, with majority of its users coming from places like India, Indonesia, Pakistan and Bangladesh. The UAE is surprisingly also bringing in strong growth. In fact, let me go out on a limb and say that both the IQ Option and Binance can serve as credible alternatives to Olymp Trade.
A new account requires a minimum of $10. Deposits can be made using cards, cryptocurrencies (USDT, BTC etc.), e-wallets, even wire transfers. Withdrawals will demand one to submit personal ID docs. Most negative reviews around funds withdrawal issues stem from users' inability to comply. I can't vouch for Olymp Trade on whether they will pay out, but I have traded their platform with amounts ranging from $100 to $500. They did make a $876 payout to me, after I did all the necessaries. It took about 5 days to process, could have been less chaotic, but I did get paid. And I'm happy about that.
I declined to take their deposit bonus. Perhaps that could have been the reason why they didn't reject my request. I would suggest newbies do the same. Just don't take it. You wouldn't make it big by losing $50 of free money. By the way, they offer something like 30% to 50% of a new deposit as a bonus. For accurate details, just contact their support.
Right, time to wrap this up.
Would I recommend Olymp Trade to someone who has never traded before? I think yes, I would, but with an ominous caveat. Retail trading platforms - doesn't matter what you trade, forex, stocks or crypto - can never replace a good job or a proper businesss. They can't be viewed as the ultimate means to financial freedom. That only comes through experience and doing what you love, over the course of many years, if not decades. Confident and shrewd investment takes patience and an unfathomable fortitude to bear the brunt of the losses that come as resoundingly natural to it, as trees to a jungle.
Adopting a concerted, more-effort-less-talk philosophy towards managing your
financial objectives in life, can take you out of whatever hell-hole you're
currently trapped in. Olymp Trade can't.
Arpita Singh
As a senior investment professional with 10+ years of experience working at top-tier Private Equity and Sovereign Wealth Fund; I'm also responsible for fact-checking concepts, reviews, and related details about brokers and exchanges listed on this website.
How I tested Olymp Trade
- Olymp Trade was tested for at least 3 months. Points were awarded for trust from 1 to 10.
- I spent AED 10,000 of my own money. This was done to remove any sponsorship or selection bias.
- Factors like how easy or hard it was to create a new account; initial KYC procedures; deposit methods; bonuses; trading platform stability and its overall features; order execution speeds on dealing desks, DMA, ECN account types; efficient opening and closing of trades; and the time taken for withdrawal (including their max limits per week) of profits, were all examined.
- Its operating license was checked for validity at the regulator's official website.
- I checked the background history of the regulator fines for Olymp Trade.
- Sites like TrustPilot, Reddit, Quora; forums like ForexFactory etc., were examined for real reviews for Olymp Trade. I then came up with an overall consensus.
- I opened multiple accounts at Olymp Trade, and allocated the funds for trading based on the type of the account.
- I checked for minimum deposit amounts, the maximum leverage or margin allowed (and the balance required on when a margin call triggers), the fees and commissions.
- The charting tools and technical indicators present on trading platforms, particularly in MT4 and MT5, among others, were tested. Mobile compatibility on Android and iPhones was graded by installing Olymp Trade's app. I also evaluated the mood of the people using its trading app and then posting their reviews on Google Play and Apple Store.
- Diversity of products (CFDs, options, cryptocurrencies) offered by Olymp Trade was examined.
- I tested the deposit and withdrawal methods using credit cards, debit cards, e-wallets and even wire transfers.
- Support for multiple languages, and in our case, Arabic and English was important for our rankings. I phoned them up to verify if a real person with an ability to speak Arabic was there on the other end.
- Its support response time rated through email, live chat and live phone calls. The questions ranged from account basics to advanced technical levels.
Disclosure: ForexBroker.ae may be compensated for sending new trading clients to Olymp Trade, however we do not get paid any affiliate commissions for broker brands mentioned on the rest of the website. All outgoing links are kept free from affiliate tracking codes, to make sure there isn't any conflict of interest. Our users' financial safety is placed above everything else.
Factors Influencing Our Broker Evaluation Metrics: It's in the interest of ForexBroker.ae, a website that lists the names of the best forex broker sites, to be honest in its dealings. We try out our level best to be helpful and upfront, when writing opinion pieces for companies operating in this space. It's nevertheless prudent to always dabble into the forex markets with disposable income. The rags-to-riches stories, often promoted on places like the YouTube, TikTok and other social apps are generally fake. You should always disregard claims of online trading successes, unless a legally valid and provable paper-evidence is presented for due diligence. Depending upon your current financial standing, it may be advisable to seek the guidance of a certified professional before making long-term investment decisions.