Worked example
Practising on ACY Securities's numbers
This is an exercise sheet, not a review. We are going to take three things that ACY Securities publishes — a spread, a ladder of account types and a list of licences — and turn each of them into something you can do arithmetic with. By the end you should be able to repeat the whole exercise on any firm you come across, which is the actual skill being taught.
The figures we are working from
Nothing below is our estimate. Where a firm has not published something, or we could not read it on a source we trust, the box says so instead of guessing — a habit worth copying when you build your own broker notes.
Exercise one — turn the spread into money
ACY Securities does not publish a EUR/USD spread we were able to verify, so there is no honest arithmetic to do on this page. Do not substitute a number you read on a comparison site: an unverified spread quietly becomes an unverified cost, and then an unverified plan. Use one of the other examples on the practice index for this exercise and come back to this file for the account ladder below.
Exercise two — read the account ladder
Account tiers are a pricing structure dressed as a status ladder. ACY Securities offers 0 rungs. Read them as a question — what does each rung ask of me, and what does it give back? — rather than as a set of prizes to climb towards.
Exercise three — what this licence list means for you
A long licence list is not automatically a good sign. What matters to a beginner is a narrower question: which entity would hold my money, and who supervises that entity? Those are often not the same as the impressive name at the top of the list. Here are ACY Securities's lines, each with a plain reading.
| Regulator | Entity on the register | Number | What that means for a beginner |
|---|---|---|---|
| ASIC · Australia | ACY Securities Pty Ltd | 403863 | a top-tier regulator: compensation scheme, capital rules and a public register you can search yourself |
| FSCA · South Africa | ACY Securities SA Pty Ltd | 51008 | a mid-tier regulator: real supervision and a register, usually with a smaller or capped compensation scheme |
| St Vincent and the Grenadines Companies Registry · St Vincent and the Grenadines | ACY Capital LLC | 2610 LLC 2022 | an offshore registration: a company exists and pays a fee, but expect little practical recourse from that entity |
1 of these line is top-tier — held by ACY Securities Pty Ltd. If you are onboarded to a different entity than those, the protections attached to the top-tier line are not yours, however prominently the regulator's initials appear in the marketing. 1 line is offshore registration; treat those as a company address rather than as supervision.
The record behind these numbers
- ACY Securities Pty Ltd (ABN 80 150 565 781) is licensed by ASIC under AFSL 403863, registered address ACY Tower, Level 18, 799 Pacific Hwy, Chatswood NSW 2067 (company regulations page).
- ACY Securities SA Pty Ltd (registration 2009/008731/07) is regulated by the Financial Sector Conduct Authority (FSCA: 51008), 4 Stan Road, Sandton, Johannesburg.
- ACY Capital LLC is incorporated in St Vincent and the Grenadines (company number 2610 LLC 2022) — a company registration, not an investment-services licence; the site states non-Australian residents may be onboarded with ACY LLC.
- The broker's regulations page states all client funds are held in fully segregated client trust accounts at Commonwealth Bank, and its site displays 1:30 leverage for the ASIC segment and up to 1:500 for the international segment.
What we could not verify
The following are unconfirmed and are deliberately left blank rather than estimated: founded year not verified; minDeposit not verified from own pages; spreadEurusd not recorded — '0.0 pips from' is an advertised floor, not a EURUSD figure; accountTypes not verified (the compare page was not captured); negativeBalanceProtection not verified from legal text; VFSC 012868 for ACY LTD appears only in a 2020 company news item; the current regulations page claims only SVG incorporation 2610 LLC 2022 — current Vanuatu licence status unverified. Confidence in this file overall: high. When you build your own notes on a firm, keep a list like this one — the gaps are more useful than the figures, because they tell you what to go and check.
Run the same exercise on another firm
pipdojo.com does not rank brokers, does not award badges and does not tell you where to open an account. This page exists so the arithmetic you learn in the curriculum has real numbers to bite on.