Worked example

Practising on Decode Global's numbers

This is an exercise sheet, not a review. We are going to take three things that Decode Global 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.

Attached to: Turning a spread into money·The lesson this practises

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.

0.9Published EUR/USD spread, pips

$100Minimum to open, USD

2004Trading since

Port Vila, VanuatuHead office

up to 1:2000Retail leverage cap

3Licence lines on file

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. Decode Global publishes 0.9 pips on EUR/USD. On its own that number means nothing. Here is how it becomes money.

1Fix what one pip is worthOn a one standard lot EUR/USD position — 100,000 units — a one-pip move is worth $10. That is a property of the contract size, not of Decode Global, and it holds wherever you trade.

2Multiply the spread by the pip value0.9 pips × $10 a pip = $9.00. That is what it costs to open and close one standard lot here, before any commission the account may also charge.

3Scale it down to a size you should actually tradeA beginner has no business trading a standard lot. At 0.01 lots — a micro — every figure divides by a hundred: the same round turn costs $0.09. Small enough to practise with, large enough to be real.

4Ask what the cost buys youA $500 float would be entirely consumed by 55 standard-lot round turns at this spread and nothing else. That is the number that should change how often you click.

A 1.0-lot EUR/USD round turn here costs about $9.00 in spread at $10 a pip — before any commission.

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. Decode Global offers 3 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.

StandardThe entry rung. Whatever the published spread applies to, it is almost always this one — so this is the rung your arithmetic above describes.
ProA 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.
CentA 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: Standard, Pro, Cent. Platforms listed: MT4, MT5, DecodeFX App, DecodeFX Web.

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 Decode Global's lines, each with a plain reading.

Regulator	Entity on the register	Number	What that means for a beginner
ASIC · Australia	Decode Capital Pty Ltd	AFSL 246796	a top-tier regulator: compensation scheme, capital rules and a public register you can search yourself
VFSC · Vanuatu	Decode Global Limited	700415	an offshore registration: a company exists and pays a fee, but expect little practical recourse from that entity
FSC Mauritius · Mauritius	Decode Global (Mauritius)	GB25204877	an offshore registration: a company exists and pays a fee, but expect little practical recourse from that entity

How to use that table

1 of these line is top-tier — held by Decode Capital 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. 2 lines are offshore registrations; treat those as a company address rather than as supervision.

The record behind these numbers

The DecodeFX website lists ASIC licence 246796, FSC Mauritius licence GB25204877 and VFSC Vanuatu licence 700415.
Decode Global Limited is an international company incorporated in Vanuatu under company number 700415 and states it holds Class A and Class B Principal's Licences as a securities dealer.
The ASIC licence number 246796 is held by Decode Capital Pty Ltd (ABN 68 066 066 911), a separate Australian entity from the Vanuatu company that serves international clients.
The Monetary Authority of Singapore lists 'Decode Global; Decode Global Capital Pte Ltd' on its Investor Alert List of persons who may be wrongly perceived as licensed by MAS.
DecodeFX's FAQ states the broker was established in 2004 and gives the registered address of Decode Global Limited (company number 700415) as Govant Building, P.O. Box 1276, 1st Floor, Kumul Highway, Port Vila, Vanuatu (https://decodefx.com/en/faq/).
DecodeFX's account page lists STD, PRO and CENT account types with minimum deposits of USD 100, USD 100 and USD 1 respectively, leverage up to 1:2000, and stated typical spreads of 0.9 pips (STD) and 1.7 pips (CENT) (https://decodefx.com/en/accounts/trading-accounts/).
DecodeFX's Terms and Conditions (clause 3.4) state that client money is held in segregated accounts with a deposit institution and on trust for the client entitled to it (https://static.blocoss.com/decodefx/Terms-and-Conditions.pdf).

What we could not verify

The following are unconfirmed and are deliberately left blank rather than estimated: founding year; headquarters; minimum deposit; maximum leverage; EUR/USD spread; account type names; segregated funds; negative balance protection; negativeBalanceProtection — DecodeFX's own pages conflict: the trading-accounts FAQ answers 'Yes' to negative balance protection, while the help-centre FAQ states it 'is not automatically provided on MT4 accounts and is considered on a case-by-case basis'; the Terms and Conditions contain no negative-balance-protection clause (only set-off rights). Left null.; founded (conflict note, value still filled as 2004) — the ABN register shows the Australian entity Decode Capital Pty Ltd (ABN 68 066 066 911) ABN-active from 01 Nov 1999, while DecodeFX's own FAQ states the broker was established in 2004; 2004 was used per the broker's own statement.; spreadEurusd — 0.9 pips is the broker's stated typical figure on the STD account card; the page does not explicitly label the pair as EURUSD, and the PRO card only advertises 'from 0.0 pips'.; legalEntities sourceUrl https://decodecapital.com.au/ returns HTTP 403 (Cloudflare bot protection) to automated checks; the site loads for human visitors, so it is not listed as a dead URL.. 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.

Back to the lesson →All worked examples Size a trade with these figures

Run the same exercise on another firm

ActivTrades0.5 pips published, $5.00 per standard lot.Practise →ATFX0.8 pips published, $8.00 per standard lot.Practise →Capital.com0.6 pips published, $6.00 per standard lot.Practise →CMC Markets0.5 pips published, $5.00 per standard lot.Practise →Eightcap0.1 pips published, $1.00 per standard lot.Practise →Equiti1.4 pips published, $14.00 per standard lot.Practise →

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.