When you think of Ayondo, you probably think of social trading, and indeed that is one of the main purposes of the company. However, Ayondo moved on from providing signals to other brokers, and now has its own broker connection, based on Gekko Global Markets, and called TradeHub. This review is concerned with how well Ayondo performs as a broker.
Here’s what I like about the Ayondo Tradehub platform:
- The Ayondo Tradehub platform is web based but there are also iPhone and Android versions for those on the move.
- Overnight financing is only charged on the borrowed amount.
- Free Guaranteed stops on ALL MARKETS subject to a minimum stop distance / maximum stake size.
- Dividends are credited on a 100% basis (no not 80% or 90% unlike others such as Capital Spreads)
- Leverage is customisable (you can leverage yourself to the tilt or utilise zero, nada leverage if you so want)
- Ayondo enforces a no-negative accounts policy meaning that clients can never risk more than the amount they deposit.
- Free insurance policy on retail accounts up to 500k.
- Ayondo offer both self trading and social trading where you could copy the trades of other ‘star’ traders.
TradeHub is the name of the trading platform which Ayondo has incorporated, and is usually used with social marketing signals. Ayondo give you the opportunity to follow one or more of over a thousand traders through their social network. But TradeHub is a fully featured platform that you can use independently. It is designed to trade spread betting and CFDs, and these are the preferred trading instruments for many clients, because of their tax and capital gain advantages.
As a modern piece of software, TradeHub is based on the latest HTML 5 technology. The interface itself is intuitive and sophisticated, and Ayondo offer a demo account so that you can take it for a test run. Unfortunately, the demo account is only available for 15 days, so you must make sure that you are ready to try it out before you open the account.
The account has several features that you may not find with other brokers. While you can argue that one of the points of using CFDs or Spreadbetting is the leverage that you can obtain, it is true that this can also prove to be a curse, drawing you into wagering more money than you should be risking, and perhaps causing a problem should your trades go the wrong way.
Ayondo has an answer for that with the TradeHub software. The software allows you to choose the amount of margin that you use on any particular trade, right up to paying the full cost. The amount is variable from full margin, which might be 5% required, up to 100%. Of course, this means you must put up more money to achieve the same profit, so relatively your profits are down if you use the variable margin.
For instance, if you have a 5% margin on a trade that goes up 1%, then your profits are 20% on the margin that you put up. If you pay 100%, then your profit will simply be 1%. This would be the same result as simply buying shares, but with the tax benefits of CFDs and spread betting, and no stamp tax.
Whether you like this feature depends on your risk profile. If winning or losing 20% of your money on a 1% move in price is something that would keep you awake at nights, then you can scale back using the variable margin to, say, winning or losing 5% of your money on a 1% move in price, by putting up 20% margin.
The further incidental benefit of staking a greater margin is that your finance costs will be lower, should you hold positions open overnight.
Another feature offered by Ayondo is what it calls “notional value trades”. This is a different method of determining the size of your bet. Instead of simply stating number of pounds per point for a spread bet, you can also place the bet by naming the actual value of the contract that you want to underlie your bet.
The example given by Ayondo is for trading the FTSE index. With the FTSE at 6000, suppose you wanted to do the equivalent of investing £25,000 in the index. Usually you would have to divide the 25,000 x 6000, and calculate that you need to stake £4.17 per point. This would be the amount you staked in the spread bet. With notional value trades, Ayondo allows you to enter £25,000 directly, if this is the bet you want to place, and set up the same spread bet.
If you have been spreadbetting for a time, it may seem that this is superfluous, as you probably do the calculations in your head automatically. However, if you do not do much betting or you are new to the game, you might find it a useful feature.
One criticism that has been levelled at Ayondo as a trading desk is that it does not have all the financial securities that you might wish to bet on. Therefore, you should make sure that the ones that are your favourites are included when you take out your 15-day trial. It is understood that the range of underlying securities will be increased over time.
In summary, Ayondo provides a cutting-edge interface with many features and is worth looking at. Execution is fast, and provided it allows you to trade the securities you are interested in, you may find that it represents the best option for your spread betting or CFDs.