Worked example
Practising on あい証券's numbers
This is an exercise sheet, not a review. We are going to take three things that あい証券 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. あい証券 publishes 5 (as advertised by あい証券, 2026-10 · source) pips on EUR/USD. On its own that number means nothing. Here is how it becomes money.
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. あい証券 offers 2 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.
- Internet Trading CourseThe entry rung. Whatever the published spread applies to, it is almost always this one — so this is the rung your arithmetic above describes.
- Premier Course (telephone trading)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.
Account names as published: Internet Trading Course, Premier Course (telephone trading). Platforms listed: not verified.
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 あい証券's lines, each with a plain reading.
| Regulator | Entity on the register | Number | What that means for a beginner |
|---|---|---|---|
| Financial Services Agency (Japan) · JP | entity not examined | 関東財務局長(金商)第236号 | a top-tier regulator: compensation scheme, capital rules and a public register you can search yourself |
How to use that table
1 of these lines is top-tier, held by entity not examined. 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.
The record behind these numbers
- あい証券: spread as advertised by the firm, 2026-10 (https://www.isec.jp/en/fx/product)
- あい証券: leverage as advertised by the firm, 2026-10 (https://www.isec.jp/en/fx/internet)
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.