That’s right, we have more than doubled our US Equity product line to 110 US equities. We want to ensure that our traders have the best costs, spreads and range of products, so it’s important to us that the most actively traded equities on the US market are available at Fusion, with no commission.

We now offer all equities in the NASDAQ 100 and more.

You’ll be able to find the entire list of newly added US Share CFDs in the table at the bottom of this page. For a complete list of all our trading products visit our trading product page.

When you open your MetaTrader 5 platform and log into your Fusion account, you should already be able to access the entire range of new US Equities. If you don’t see all products, you need to right click in the “symbols” tab of the “market watch” and select “show all”.

Trading of US Equities on Fusion Markets follows the normal trading times of the US Equities market. This means trading hours are between 9:30 - 14:00 New York time, or for Australians, that translates to 01:30 - 08:00 Australian Eastern Standard Time (AEDT).

No. It’s important to remember this is a Contract for Difference (CFD) and not a share. In a CFD you don’t own the underlying stock, but are instead trading on the underlying asset price.

We use CFDs as they are one the best financial products for traders to capitalise on the price action of an asset via leverage. This form of derivative gives traders the best opportunities to take advantage of movements whether up or down. If you believe an equity is overvalued, a CFD is an excellent way to enter a position that will profit if the equity price falls. Additionally, with a CFD you are also able to increase your position size with leverage.

We are available around the clock, so if you have any further questions you can check out our FAQ page (most questions are answered here) or visit our contact page to get more information.

You’ll often hear in the media or from professional market participants that retail clients “shouldn’t try to compete with the professionals”.

Ignoring the condescension here for a moment (“the adults will take it from here”) it is my firm belief after ten years of trading that this isn’t always true.

Sure, any beginner will find it challenging at the beginning to trade successfully, but you can’t expect to play like Roger Federer after one match of tennis, can you?

Charlie Ellis, the man who oversaw the $24 billion Yale endowment fund in the US once, said “watch a pro football game and it's obvious the guys on the field are faster, stronger and more willing to bear and inflict more pain than you are. Surely you would say ‘I don’t want to play against those guys.”

But Charlie is wrong in a few ways.

Yes, professional traders and institutions have many advantages at their fingertips. They get news faster than you do. Their trades go more quickly than yours. They pay far less than you do. You get the picture.

But it’s not all doom and gloom. Here are a few reasons why:

Time

No, not in the sense that you have more actual time to trade than them.

You probably don’t.

You’ve probably got a full-time job.

You might have kids or ailing parents to look after.

Trading is like a side hustle for you.

BUT your time horizon is different from theirs.

You can hold a trade for days or weeks without a Manager yelling at you “Why the hell are you selling euros, you dummy… the market is going up”. You might enter a trade on gold and plan to hold it for months.

A professional fund manager or trader might not have that luxury due to quarterly reviews, investor pressure or whatever else.

Professional Risk

Professional or Career risk is one I picked up from famed value investor, Howard Marks. In his book “The Most Important Thing” (one of my favourite investing/trading books of all time – buy it!) he talks about how in the GFC there was so much pressure on investors to not look silly by calling the bottom of the market or “catching a falling knife”. No one wanted to be the guy in the office who was buying Citibank at $1 per share!

Similar to my time point above, you don’t have that problem.

You don’t have your colleagues questioning you why you’ve bought or sold some instrument. Or a boss that is screaming at you and putting you into an emotionally defensive position trying to justify your actions.

Will you lose your job for selling USDJPY? No.

Does a professional trader get fired for always missing targets or taking on too much risk? Yes.

You need to work out what you’re happy with in your trading goals and go for them.

It’s entirely up to you what you define as success. The Pros don’t have that luxury.

Benchmarks

Which brings me to my next point.

Most professional traders and investors have a benchmark. If you’re a fund manager you’ll send out your monthly report to your investors saying “here is how much we made/lost.. and here is what the benchmark did”.

If you miss that benchmark, get ready for investor withdrawals. As a professional, you’re judged on your performance. Simple as that. The more investors leave. The more you have to sell. The more you sell, the worse your performance!

What’s your benchmark? You get to set your own. Happy with 1% a month? Awesome.

What about $100 a month so you can buy your wife dinner? Happy days.

Or $5,000 a month so you can pay off your mortgage? Even better.

It comes back to autonomy and your desires. No one else decides that but you.

Fees and Expenses

Believe it or not, you do have a HUGE advantage here, especially if you’re trading with a low-cost broker (hello, Fusion!)

If you’re a professional investor/manager, you’ll often have a significant research team, a very fancy office with lovely views, staff bonuses, visits to various investment conferences etc.

Not to mention all that travel to see your clients and investors!

Putting that aside for a moment, if you choose a good broker, you’ll pay zero spread and a small commission that is not far off what the pros trade. They’ve got $100,000,000 though, you’ve got one thousand!

So, ignore the haters telling you to stay out of the market because its only for the big boys.

However, let me be clear.

I’m not saying trading is easy and (unlike some) and that you can soon retire on the beach. It’s not. Trading FX, in particular, is a highly challenging exercise.

But don’t just assume because there are so many professionals in this that you can’t succeed or you’ll never be good enough. You have to play your own game, and for me, that’s the best part. I set my own rules as to what I consider success. That’s something the pros will never get.  

If you’d like to start trading and use your advantages to outperform the pros, Sign Up to Fusion Markets and get your feet wet with our demo account. When you're ready start a live account to start making real-time trades.

We are excited to launch Soft commodities on our MT4/MT5 platform now to help you succeed in the markets.

Read Time: 7 Minutes

If you’ve hung around the Internet in the past five years, you’ve probably heard of the term “Bitcoin” or “cryptocurrency” being thrown about.

But what is cryptocurrency, and how does it work? How is it any different from the money we’ve grown used to over the past century? And how does cryptocurrency trading work?

People are talking about getting rich or blowing away their savings on this new technology, and it’s safe to say that cryptocurrency has taken the finance and tech industries by storm.

If you’re a little unfamiliar with cryptocurrency and you want to see what the hype has been all about, read on to get answers to your questions about cryptocurrency and cryptocurrency trading.

What is cryptocurrency?

In simple terms, cryptocurrency is a digital currency. It doesn’t exist in physical form and exists only in the digital world.

The main uses for cryptocurrency are “store of value,” currency, and as a traded item.

Cryptocurrency as a store of value is a fairly simple concept: you buy it and hold on to it while its value increases. This kind of use is why phrases like “investing in cryptocurrency” have popped up.

Since, for some people, the value of cryptocurrency will only increase as it becomes more widely accepted, they see cryptocurrency as more of a speculative investment than a commodity.

Whether or not cryptocurrency is a good investment will remain to be seen in the future, but it’s definitely true that the value of Bitcoin, the most popular cryptocurrency, has skyrocketed in the past years. Although with much volatility along the way to say the least.

As a currency, it works fairly like money, where you can use it to buy goods and services. A decade ago, you could use it to buy things only in the niche areas of the Internet. However, the acceptance of cryptocurrency is spreading more and more, and in some countries like El Salvador, Bitcoin has even become legal tender.

Like our typical currency (called fiat), the value of cryptocurrency also changes constantly. This is why there are markets for cryptocurrency trading available, and we’ll talk about that more later on.

What are the most popular cryptocurrencies to trade?

There are plenty of digital currencies around, and the most popular one, Bitcoin, is just one of many. There’s also Ethereum, Stellar, Ripple XRP, and Litecoin, which are some of the most traded cryptocurrencies around.

In more recent news, you’ve probably heard of Dogecoin as well. It’s a more niche meme that has gotten a lot of attention (Thanks, Elon!) as a cryptocurrency for trading, mostly because it saw a sudden increase in trading volume.

There are thousands of different cryptocurrencies out there, which just shows how versatile cryptocurrency is. If you want to trade cryptocurrencies, you can easily do so on platforms like Fusion Markets. These work very similarly to forex markets, where people buy and sell cryptocurrency regularly.

However, if you’re looking to trade cryptocurrency, it’s always important to do your research on which ones are good and which ones are not.

Benefits of cryptocurrency trading

For most traders, the biggest benefit of cryptocurrency trading is its novelty. Since cryptocurrency is still in its relative infancy, it has plenty of room to grow, and as it does, many believe that the value will only go higher and higher.

Another benefit is the fact that the cryptocurrency trading market is 24/7. Unlike trading individual stocks between 10am and 4pm (like in Australia), or even 24/5 like Forex, Crypto runs 24/7.

As long as people are willing to buy and willing to sell, the market will always run. This means that you don’t have to wait for market hours if you want to make a trade.

One more thing to note is the volatility. Cryptocurrency is volatile, much more volatile than forex and stocks. The prices of cryptocurrency can rise and plunge in a matter of seconds for seemingly no good reason, and for a lot of people, this volatility brings in a lot of excitement yet is not for the faint hearted.

Risk management

Of course, the things that make cryptocurrency trading the most exciting are also the biggest risks.

The volatility of cryptocurrency means that it can plunge just as easily as it rose. In fact, if you look at a price chart of Bitcoin, you’ll see that there have been multiple plunges that caused people to think that it was the end of crypto.

Additionally, the fact that the markets are open 24/7 means that the price can change significantly while you’re away, much like forex trading. It’s on you to make sure that you can trade while maintaining a good work/life balance.

Main differences between crypto and forex/fiat

While cryptocurrency is a digital currency, it doesn’t mean it’s the same as the money you have on a wallet such as PayPal.

Fiat currency like the US Dollar or the Euro is backed by physical currency. This means that for every dollar you have on your online account, there’s an equivalent physical form stored somewhere.

In contrast, cryptocurrency is purely digital. There’s no withdrawing it for cash, and the closest you can get is putting it in cold storage wallets instead of keeping it at an exchange, but that’s about it.

One more thing to note is that fiat currency is centralized finance, meaning that it’s regulated by the government that issues it. The US Government regulates and prints the US Dollar, for instance.

On the other hand, cryptocurrency is decentralized finance or “defi.” There’s no particular institution that regulates it. Instead, every single computer that’s on the network, or the “blockchain,” works to validate every transaction that takes place.

Basically, all computers monitor everything instead of trusting one institution (like a government) to do it for everybody. This aspect of cryptocurrency is the most appealing for many people because of its libertarian aspects since it’s free from government or bank control.

Additionally, the decentralized nature of the blockchain makes it so that it’s harder to commit fraud. Since all computers monitor the ledger of transactions, anyone who would want to make a fraudulent transaction would have to defraud all the computers on the blockchain.

That’s a lot of computers across the world.

There’s so much more to cryptocurrency, and we’ve barely scratched the surface of the technology behind it. We are witnessing a digital revolution in the making, so if this article has gotten you interested, and if you want to dip your toes in, it’s always best to do a lot of research and practice on a demo account first before spending your hard-earned money.