In the binary options trading industry, it is standard practice for brokers to require new account holders to deposit a minimum amount into their trading account before they can actually begin live trading. The amount required may vary from broker to broker. Some brokers only require that you deposit $10 to satisfy the minimum deposit requirement. Other brokers may require that you deposit a minimum of $5000 before that requirement is fulfilled. One of the rationales behind the requirement is so brokers can distinguish between the various levels of traders signing up with them. In theory, the more you deposit, the more committed you are towards binary options trading.

In this way, the minimum deposit requirement helps some brokers to focus more on traders who are more serious in their trading activities. On the other hand, this minimum requirement also helps some brokers to strategize their business strategies. For example, by offering a low minimum deposit of $10 with a minimum trading requirement of $1, the broker can easily target the small traders with better focus. This is because they have managed to open binary options trading to traders who cannot afford a large initial capital outlay but still want to try binary options trading. In fact, brokers with a low initial deposit requirement are quite highly sought after by binary options traders from all over the world.

Minimum Deposit Requirement at ZoomTrader

ZoomTrader is no different from the other binary options brokers in the industry. It also has a minimum deposit requirement for new traders who sign up for a trading account. For ZoomTrader, the minimum deposit requirement varies according to the different types of trading account they offer their traders. Currently, traders at ZoomTrader can choose from 4 different types of trading accounts namely Bronze Account, Silver Account, Gold Account and Platinum VIP account. Each of these types of trading accounts has its own specific minimum deposit requirement as well as their own special perks and trading benefits.

Bronze Account

The bronze account is targeted at beginner traders who just want to try out binary options trading. To help them get started, ZoomTrader has a $1000 minimum deposit requirement on opening the bronze trading account. Other benefits which the Bronze account holder is entitled to include:

• 1 trading strategy
• Introduction video course
• Weekly market reviews

Silver Account

The Silver trading account is for the serious trader which is why the minimum requirement is 5 times higher than those of the Bronze account. In order to open a Silver trading account, you need to make a minimum deposit of $5000. This will give you access to benefits such as:

• 2 trading strategies
• Advanced video course
• Daily market reviews
• Introduction video course
• Weekly market reviews

Gold Account

Geared towards professional traders, the Gold trading account minimum deposit is a cool $10,000. Of course, with such a high deposit amount, no one can doubt the seriousness of the trader in wanting to succeed in trading binary options. In order to cater to this group of traders, ZoomTrader has given them additional benefits over the bronze and silver trading accounts. Some of these benefits include:

• 5 trading strategies
• Advanced video course
• Daily market reviews
• Dedicated account manager
• Introduction video course
• Same day withdrawals
• Weekly market reviews
• Weekly one-on-one trading sessions

Platinum Account

The Rolls Royce of ZoomTrader trading accounts is the Platinum account. In order to open this type of trading account, you need to make a deposit of not less than $50,000. The benefits which the platinum account holder will receive are customized and are not divulged to the general public.

Deposit & Withdrawals

As for the transfer of funds to and from the trading accounts, ZoomTrader has provided 3 main methods of doing it. You can do it by using credit/debit cards, E-wallets and bank wire transfer. For E-wallets, the precise method is dependent on the trader’s physical location. Generally, the following methods are supported.

• Boleto
• iDEAL
• paysafecard
• Skrill
• Sofort

For funds which are transferred using credit/debit cards and E-wallets, you can expect the funds to be credited to your trading account balance within the same business day. As for bank wire transfer, this will depend on the banks concerned. On average, it will take 3 business days for the wire transfer to clear and the funds credited to your trading account. For some banks, the process might take even longer, up to 5 business days in some cases. Hence if you need the funds urgently then the best way is to make a deposit using your credit/debit card or E-wallets.

Withdrawal Methods

Withdrawals of funds can also be done in the same way as deposits. There is no restriction on the methods used to withdraw your funds. However, ZoomTrader does impose a minimum withdrawal amount. For withdrawals done through credit/debit cards and E-wallets, you will need to withdraw a minimum of $200 and the total amount that can be withdrawn within a single week is $5000. In addition, new account holders cannot make a withdrawal request until after 15 days from the date of their initial deposit. The reason for this particular restriction is the fact that ZoomTrader invests in the support of their client’s trading future through training and quality customer support. The provision of the training and support involve both financial and human resources on the part of ZoomTrader.

The normal processing time for a withdrawal request is 3 business days. However, gold and platinum account holders enjoy a faster withdrawal processing time which is done within the same day the withdrawal request is made. Nevertheless, traders should be aware that it will still take some time for the funds to show up in the bank account after their withdrawal requests have been processed. The average time for the whole withdrawal process to be completed takes around 5 to 10 business days.

Withdrawal with Bonus Terms and Conditions

ZoomTrader as a matter of standard business practice offers their new account holders a deposit bonus of up to 100% of the amount deposited by the trader. As the bonus amount will be reflected in the trader’s account balance, it can have an effect on what the trader is permitted to withdraw. This is because the bonus comes with a wagering requirement of 40x the bonus amount. For example, if the trader receives a deposit bonus of $1000, he is required to achieve a total trading volume of $40,000 before he is permitted to withdraw his bonus. If you wish to avoid this wagering requirement, then the best way is not to accept the bonus offer.

Trading with Minimum Deposits

We mentioned earlier that binary brokers with low minimum deposit requirements are highly sought after. While the low deposit requirement does have its positive aspect as it allows more traders to access the benefits of binary options trading, in the long run, this might not be so ideal. This has to do with the fact that traders who deposit the very minimum just to access the markets might not last long enough to enjoy the benefits of binary options trading.

With a low investment capital, your chances of making a good profit within the short term or even medium term are pretty slim. Instead, you have to use what limited capital you have to slowly build up your investment capital to a level that will help give you gain sufficient returns each time you make a trade. You might be asking yourself why this is the case. Well, a prudent trader will always have a risk management strategy in place to help him maximize his chances of trading successfully.

Risk Management

In the world of online financial trading, risk management is an essential part of any successful trader’s trading strategy. This is because a good trader recognizes that there is no such thing as winning all the time. There will be days when the winning trades exceed the losing trades and there will also be days when the number of losing trades will exceed the winning trades. Regardless of the case, the objective of the trader with proper risk management is to ensure that he can stay in the game long enough for the returns to average out on the positive side. If he tries to get greedy or tries to recoup his trading losses, he could end up losing all his investment capital.

Limiting the Trades

It goes without saying that when you keep making bad trades one after another, you will eventually exhaust your trading capital. So in order to prevent yourself from being tapped out, you should keep your investment amount for each trade between 5% to 10%. By keeping your investment amount to these percentages, it would take around 10 successive losing trades to wipe out all your investment capital. This means if you have $1000 balance in your trading account, you should only risk around $50 to $100 each time you make a trade. Any amount which is more than the stated percentage is considered extremely risky.

Unlike forex trading where it is possible to cut your losses and run, with binary options trading you either win around 60% to 80% or lose everything you invested. This is why risk management is even more crucial in binary options trading than for spot forex trading.

So if you are trading with a low minimum deposit broker, you are actually starting your binary options trading career off with a very big disadvantage.

Supposing a trade pays out 80% return if it closes in the money. Now let us make a comparative example with a trader with a $100 trading account balance (Trader A) and a trader with a $1000 trading account balance (Trader B).

So if we go by the investment ratio of 10% for every trade made, trader A should only invest $10 in his trade. And if his trade is successful, he will get back $18 in total. Now compare this to trader B who invests 10% of his investment capital which is $100. Now if he is successful, he will receive $180 back. Now we can see the difference in the profit earned is huge, $8 vs. $80.

Now if trader A maintains his investment amount at the 10% level, then he should not have any problem in staying in the game for the long term. But ask yourself this, how many of us actually have the patience to sit by the computer for hours on end to make $8 or even $10? Sooner or later trader A will be tempted to wager a larger amount in order to increase his returns. This can easily happen especially when the trader has been making successive winning trades. He gets too confident and decides to invest a larger amount to earn a higher return and we all know what happens when a trader starts to get greedy.

As mentioned earlier, the essence of keeping to a specific investment ratio is to protect yourself from devastating losses because of one single trade. ZoomTrader, by requiring that their traders start with a minimum trading capital of $1000 is actually a wise move. Their traders are able to stay in the game longer and are not so easily tempted to invest more than what they should since they start with a large enough trading capital.

Some traders might think this is over the top but they should also realize that the hardest thing to conquer is actually ourselves. So many traders have succumbed to greed because they didn’t have enough investment capital to achieve a worthwhile return. So rather than waiting to slowly build up their investment capital, they risk more than what they should and ultimately ended up losing it all. So just because a binary options broker is offering a low deposit requirement, it is not necessarily a plus point.

References/Further Reading:

1. Commercial bank net interest margins, default risk, interest-rate risk, and off-balance sheet banking  (Lazarus Angbazo)
2. Optimal stock trading with personal taxes: Implications for prices and the abnormal January returns (George M. Constantinides)
3. CHIBUENE—AN EARLY TRADING SITE IN SOUTHERN MOZAMBIQUE (PAUL SINCLAIR)
4. What kind of multinational deposit-insurance arrangements might best enhance world welfare?  (Edward J Kane)
5. Estimating the Interest Rate Sensitivity of Liquid Retail Deposit Values (James M. O’Brien, David H. Small)
6. On avoiding bank runs (Irasema Alonso)
7. Diversification, Size, and Risk at Bank Holding Companies (Rebecca S. Demsetz and Philip E. Strahan)
8. The Effects of Stock Index Futures Trading on Stock Index Volatility: An Analysis of the Asymmetric Response of Volatility to News (Digest Summary) (Antonios Antoniou, Phil Holmes, and Richard Priestley)
9. Discretionary Trading Accounts in Commodity Futures—Are They Securities? (SCOTT HODES and DONALD DREYFUS)
10. Continuous Auctions and Insider Trading (Albert S. Kyle)
11. Bank holding company mergers with nonbank financial firms: Effects on the risk of failure (John H. Boyd)
12. Margin Requirements, Speculative Trading, and Stock Price Fluctuations: The Case of Japan (Gikas A. Hardouvelis and Stavros Peristiani)
13. BANK RUNS: DEPOSIT INSURANCE AND CAPITAL REQUIREMENTS (RUSSELL COOPER, THOMAS W. ROSS)
14. Margin requirements, positive feedback trading, and stock return autocorrelations: the case of Japan (Toshiaki Watanabe)
15. Optimal Bank Interest Margin under Capital Regulation and Deposit Insurance (Emilio R. Zarruk and Jeff Madura)
16. Institutional affiliation and the role of venture capital: Evidence from initial public offerings in Japan  (Yasushi Hamaoa, Frank Packer, Jay R Ritter)
17. Learning by Trading and the Returns to Human Capital in Developing Countries (Christopher A. Pissarides)
18. The Impact of Capital Structure Change on Firm Value: Some Estimates (RONALD W. MASULIS)
19. The Relation Among Capital Markets, Financial Disclosure, Production Efficiency, and Insider Trading (Stanley Baiman and Robert E. Verrecchia)
20. The Optimal Trading and Pricing of Securities with Asymmetric Capital Gains Taxes and Transaction Costs (Robert M. Dammon and Chester S. Spatt)