Worked example
Practising on BlackBull Markets's numbers
This is an exercise sheet, not a review. We are going to take three things that BlackBull Markets 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
The spread is the gap between the price you can buy at and the price you can sell at, and you pay it the instant you enter. BlackBull Markets publishes 0.8 pips on EUR/USD. On its own that number means nothing. Here is how it becomes money.
Compare this broker's 0.8 pip EUR/USD figure against the "from" number in its own advertising.
Now do it without us
Take the spread of any other firm on the practice index, run the same four steps, and write both figures down — per lot and per micro. When you can do that in your head you have stopped shopping on marketing copy and started shopping on cost. The pip value calculator will check your working on pairs where the pip is not a flat ten dollars.
Exercise two — read the account ladder
Account tiers are a pricing structure dressed as a status ladder. BlackBull Markets offers 4 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.
- ECN StandardThe entry rung. Whatever the published spread applies to, it is almost always this one — so this is the rung your arithmetic above describes.
- ECN PrimeA higher rung usually trades a tighter spread for a commission, a larger deposit, or a status test. Convert both pricing models to money per lot before you decide either is cheaper.
- Prime+A higher rung usually trades a tighter spread for a commission, a larger deposit, or a status test. Convert both pricing models to money per lot before you decide either is cheaper.
- ECN InstitutionalA higher rung usually trades a tighter spread for a commission, a larger deposit, or a status test. Convert both pricing models to money per lot before you decide either is cheaper.
Account names as published: ECN Standard, ECN Prime, Prime+, ECN Institutional. Platforms listed: MT4, MT5, cTrader, TradingView, BlackBull CopyTrader.
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 BlackBull Markets's lines, each with a plain reading.
| Regulator | Entity on the register | Number | What that means for a beginner |
|---|---|---|---|
| FMA New Zealand · New Zealand | Black Bull Group Limited | FSP403326 | a mid-tier regulator: real supervision and a register, usually with a smaller or capped compensation scheme |
| FSA Seychelles · Seychelles | BlackBull Group Limited (Seychelles) | SD045 | an offshore registration: a company exists and pays a fee, but expect little practical recourse from that entity |
No top-tier line appears on this file. That does not make the firm illegitimate, but it does mean the compensation-scheme and capital-rule protections a beginner usually assumes are present are not evidenced here. 1 line is offshore registration; treat those as a company address rather than as supervision.
The record behind these numbers
- Founded in 2014 in Auckland, New Zealand by Michael Walker and Selwyn Loekman.
- The ECN Standard account has no minimum deposit and quotes spreads from 0.8 pips; ECN Prime quotes from 0.0 pips.
- The ECN Institutional account requires a $20,000 minimum deposit.
- Non-New Zealand clients are onboarded through the Seychelles entity licensed under FSA licence SD045.
What we could not verify
The following are unconfirmed and are deliberately left blank rather than estimated: negative balance protection; exact legal entity name for the Seychelles licence holder; minimum deposit for the ECN Prime account (sources give $2,000). Confidence in this file overall: medium. 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
PipMentor 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.