Cornèrtrader Review

Cornèrtrader.ch briefly

Cornèrtrader is the brand of Cornèr Bank Ltd for online trading, which is authorized and regulated by the Swiss Financial Market Supervisory Authority (FINMA). It was established in 2012 and currently is one of the leading companies in the Swiss online investment sector. 

Cornèrtrader offers multi-product platforms that enable users to trade with over 20,000 products on international financial markets such as CFDs, futures, forex, options, and bonds. 

Regulation

Cornèr Bank Ltd is authorized and regulated by the Swiss Financial Market Supervisory Authority (FINMA). Any individual or company seeking to manage clients’ money or take money from investors, requires authorization from FINMA. Authorized companies are then supervised. This is the one of the strictest regulatory bodies.

Account Types

There are three types of live accounts that meet the varying needs of individual traders, the company says. All clients can choose to work with a personal relationship manager, who can help with setting up the platform or monitoring the risk, even initial education. Each account is accompanied with a set of additional services.

Private account – for less experienced or low frequency traders. It does not have a minimum initial fund requirement for Swiss residents. However, commissions profiles can be improved after reaching a given account value or monthly traded volume. The spread for the EUR/USD pair is 4 pips fixed. There is a USD10 commission if you trade less than 100,000 units.

Capital account – for bigger portfolios requiring optimized pricing. The minimum deposit amount here is CHF75,000. The spread for the EUR/USD pair is 3 pips fixed. There is a USD10 commission if you trade less than 100,000 units.

PRO or VIP account – for active or professional traders, who operate with high volumes. There is a requirement for minimum trade amount. The spread for the EUR/USD pair is 0.2 pips fixed.

You can also open a demo account where you can trade risk free because the money is virtual. The demo account offers access to all the same features as the real one but funded with CHF100,000 of virtual money. You can try your strategies here before implementing them into the real account.

What Type of Broker the Company Is

In the General Terms and Conditions document from the legal section of the bank’s website it is written that the bank will act as a counterparty for forex and CFDs transactions and all over-the-counter products. This means that the bank acts as a market maker. Market makers make money from customer losses and they are interested in such situations to happen. However, you can rely on its strict FINMA regulation that there will not be illegal tricks.

The same document also states that the execution of limit and/or stop orders and/or similar orders (such as “stop if bid”, “stop if offered”, “trailing stop”, “trailing stop if bid”, “trailing stop if offered”, etc.) at a specified price or amount is not by any means guaranteed. This means that stop loss orders will be filled at the first available market price (not the requested one); therefore, they are not guaranteed.

There is a warning and the client accepts that the transactions pose incredibly significant financial risk and in certain cases might cause unlimited losses that exceed the investments themselves. So, you may be required to make further payments because there is no negative balance protection and at the end you will owe money to this bank.

Fees

In addition to the spreads, swaps and trading commissions, there are some administrative fees such as fees for: account closing (CHF25), trading by phone (CHF50), cash conversion (0.5%), interest rates on negative cash values (market rate +7%), inactivity fee (CHF35/quarter), etc.

Deposits and Withdrawals

Cornèrtrader accepts deposits only through a bank transfer. There are no options for deposits through debit/credit cards or online payment systems.

In addition to bank transfer, Cornèrtrader offers exclusively a TradersCard that is linked to your trading account and you will be able to withdraw your money from any ATM counter.

Trading Platforms

There are three types of platforms called Invest, Flexibility and Advance. It turns out that all the platforms are some forms of the Saxo Bank’s SaxoTraderGo and SaxoTraderPro. Both terminals can be used through the white label partnership. Keep in mind that the Invest platform does not offer currency pairs. The company claims that all complications have been eliminated and is set up specifically to meet the needs of investors. You can run it without the need for setup, which the other two terminals require. It looks like a lot of SaxoTraderGo with some functionality removed.

Assets

Currency pairs – More than 160 major, minor, exotic and a combination of all three types currency pairs can be traded. Spreads depend on the account you have and for the EUR/USD pair it can be from 4 to 0.2 pips. There is a fee of USD10 if you trade less than 100,000 units.

Indices – You can trade 22 of the most popular major and minor indices globally, such as ASX, DJIA, US500, FTSE100, IBEX35 etc. The minimum spread for the DAX30 can be 3 or 2.5 points depending on the account.

Commodities – 20 of the most traded commodities are available such as Gold, Silver, Oil and Brent, as well as agricultural products. The spread for the Gold is USD0.52. The commission of USD10 will be charged if you trade below 50 troy ounces Gold or 5,000 troy ounces Silver.

Shares – more than 18,400 of global shares such as Apple, Google, Twitter, etc. There are commissions that depend on the market: 0.07% for the Swiss and German exchange; 1.5 cents per share for the US exchanges (NASDAQ and NYSE) and 0.12% for the Hong Kong exchange.

You can also trade cryptocurrencies, options, bonds and mutual funds.

Education

There is a dedicated educational section on the web page called Insight & Support. It is available at no additional costs. You can be informed about the financial research and trading signals, fundamental and technical analysis, and momentum-based financial analysis. There is also a large section of tutorials as pdf files.

Summary

Cornèrtrader is the brand of the Swiss bank Cornèr Bank Ltd, which is FINMA regulated and acts as a market maker, so the conflict of interest exists. You can trade a wide range of currency pairs, commodities, indices, shares and others through the Saxo Banks terminal, available as three different web-based versions. You can deposit only by bank wire and withdraw through the bank’s TradersCard that is linked to your account. Spreads of the most instruments are fixed but wider than most other brokerage companies. Be aware of the fees and commissions.