SpotOption Platform Review

SpotOption Platform Review – The most Popular Binary Options Trading Platform

By Richard Cox

The Spot Option trading platform has been in development since 2008 (which is a relatively long time in comparison to the competition) and since then the developers have structured a relationship with Reuters to receive their data and price feeds, which has helped to ensure trading accuracy and up to the minute market moving events. 

The front screen on the trading platform is an attractive design with special attention paid to clarity and ease of use, which will enable traders to make faster trading decisions when intra-day strategies are implemented.  This is also helpful for new traders that might not be fully accustomed to the typical elements of a binary options trading platform.  Additionally, the platform offers some of the best tools for risk management of any of the Binary Options platforms I have seen. 

Noticeable Brokers using SpotOption Patform

IOption, BBinary, TradeRush, TradersRoom

SpotOption Platform Ratings

Platform functionality (9/10) mostly based on the lack or tech. analysis that can be done

Platform efficiency (8.5/10)

Ease of use (9/10)

Additional information (8.5/10)

Average number of assets and expiry times – 60 Seconds, hourly, daily, weekly

Trading tools available – rollover, double up

Trading options available – Up/Down, One Touch, Options Builder, 60 Seconds

Prices & Rates: Highly Accurate

Why SpotOption doesn’t suck?

The most impressive aspect of the trading platform can be seen in its flexibility and clarity of use.  Trading choices are divided by tabs at the top of the platform, so the type of option contract can be chosen with little effort.  This is helpful because in some cases is it possible to make mistakes when placing trades (especially in short term intra day positions) and this level of clarity lessens the potential for opening an incorrect position.  Hedging positions is also possible, which is another nice flexibility feature.

The platform also offers one of the newest additions to the typical Binary Options platform, which is the “Options Builder.”  This is a highly valuable tool, as it allows traders to structure their risk management plans by offering stop losses and similar tools.  In all, the platform is very clearly structured and designed for efficient use. 

Why does SpotOption suck?

In my experience, the major weakness of the platform was the trading portfolio feature.  When opening this feature, active positions are not displayed unless you choose specific data and time parameters.  I found this to be especially troublesome because it gives the impression that there are no open positions when, in fact, there might be.  This can be a risky occurrence, especially for short term traders looking to open and close trades quickly. 

Another negative was the trade confirmation window, which requires you to approve of your trade in a new window before it is actually executed.  While this might be preferable for some, more conservative traders, I consider this a negative as it reduces the flexibility for news trading by limiting trading speeds. 

Platform Technology

Since Spot Option is one of the more established platforms in the industry, it is not surprising to see that they offer some of the newer advancements in platform technology and execution.  This can be seen in the Option Builder field tab, which allows you to determine your option criteria, with asset choices and expiry times as well as stop losses and profit targets.  This risk management feature is one of the Platforms strong points and this will be seen as particularly attractive for more conservative traders with clear risk tolerance levels. 

The other platform trading choices can be seen with the One Touch and 60 Second trading choices.  The One touch will be familiar to traditional options traders, as this entails price activity “touching” a predetermined price level within your chosen expiry time (for example, one week or one month).  The 60 Seconds feature is characteristic of the more modern, internet based trading environment, as these contracts will expire within 60 seconds of execution.  This will be an attractive feature for more aggressive traders, or those trading based on fundamental news releases.  The company platform itself is web based, and trades can be placed immediately after inputting your log in information (which is another aspect making the platform convenient for short term or news driven traders).

One downside is the limited ability traders have to alter the trading station to tailor it to your individual needs or specific asset classes.  If this is important to you, you might want to look for another platform.  Newer traders, however, without much need to change their trading stations might actually find this preferable, as most of the features are already clearly laid out and easy to find.

Finally, the Platform does offer some of the more common features, such as roll over and double up.  In rollover, traders are actually able to delay expiry time by as much as 30%, and this can be extremely useful when positions are working against you and creating losses.  This comes along with the double up feature, which allows traders to open a second position, using the same market conditions and price levels. 

My Trading Experience with SpotOption

Given the flexibility that is given to short term trading styles with the Spot Options Platform, I wanted to enter into some intraday positions to really test out the strength of these features.  Typically, short term trades are not my style or favored approach, but the 60 second trading choice really caught my attention and I wanted to give it a try.  Since this type of trade is not something I normally deal with, I decided to trade using a low volatility currency pair (the EUR/USD), which typically tends to obey support and resistance levels more than most other asset classes. 

To structure my trade, I first looked at my long term charts to get a sense of the general trend.  It was clear to me after doing this that most of the momentum is in the downward direction.  Since I am generally a contrarian trader I waited for a rally on the short term charts to enter into a 60 second put option (using the longer term momentum as the basis for my call choice).  In this case, I waited prices to move up to 1.2600, while at the same time showing an oversold reading on the 5 minute RSI indicator.  Once I saw that prices were stalling at 1.2595, I entered into my 60 second call position.  Prices ticked a few pips higher but never broke the 1.2600 barrier, and markets quickly gave up on the attempted rally and dropped back through 1.2590, which is where prices finished at the 60 second expiry. 

Overall, the trading experience in this case was favorable expect for the fact that I nearly missed my entry level because I was forced to approve the confirmation window before the trade could be triggered.  Needless to say, I would have been very unhappy if this caused me to miss my position, so I am a little unclear why the Spot Option Platform pops up this window for such short term positions. 

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