Worked example

Practising on FBS's numbers

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

0.7Published EUR/USD spread, pips

$5Minimum to open, USD

2009Trading since

Belize City, BelizeHead office

up to 1:3000 (Belize entity); 1:30 retail under CySECRetail leverage cap

2Licence 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. FBS publishes 0.7 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 FBS, and it holds wherever you trade.

2Multiply the spread by the pip value0.7 pips × $10 a pip = $7.00. 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 $0.07. Small enough to practise with, large enough to be real.

4Ask what the cost buys youA $500 float would be entirely consumed by 71 standard-lot round turns at this spread and nothing else. That is the number that should change how often you click.

Compare this broker's 0.7 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. FBS 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.

StandardThe entry rung. Whatever the published spread applies to, it is almost always this one — so this is the rung your arithmetic above describes.
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.
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.
CryptoA 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, Cent, Pro, Crypto. Platforms listed: MT4, MT5, FBS Trader app.

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 FBS's lines, each with a plain reading.

Regulator	Entity on the register	Number	What that means for a beginner
CySEC · Cyprus	Tradestone Ltd	331/17	a mid-tier regulator: real supervision and a register, usually with a smaller or capped compensation scheme
FSC Belize · Belize	FBS Markets Inc.	4077102	an offshore registration: a company exists and pays a fee, but expect little practical recourse from that entity

How to use that table

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

EEA clients are onboarded through Tradestone Ltd (CySEC 331/17); most other clients trade with FBS Markets Inc. in Belize.
FBS.eu discloses that 66.43% of retail investor accounts lose money trading CFDs with the CySEC entity.
FBS Markets Inc. is registered with the Belize FSC under the Securities Industry Act 2021, licence number 4077102.
The advertised minimum deposit on the Standard account is $5.

What we could not verify

The following are unconfirmed and are deliberately left blank rather than estimated: whether an ASIC-regulated FBS entity is currently active; negative balance protection outside the CySEC entity; typical EUR/USD spread on the Pro account. 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.

All worked examples Size a trade with these figures

Run the same exercise on another firm

Admirals (Admiral Markets)0.5 pips published, $5.00 per standard lot.Practise →ADSSSpread not verified — used here for its account ladder.Practise →AlpariSpread not verified — used here for its account ladder.Practise →AMarketsSpread not verified — used here for its account ladder.Practise →Axi0.7 pips published, $7.00 per standard lot.Practise →AxiorySpread not verified — used here for its account ladder.Practise →

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.