Worked example
Practising on Rakuten Securities Australia's numbers
This is an exercise sheet, not a review. We are going to take three things that Rakuten Securities Australia 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
Rakuten Securities Australia 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. Rakuten Securities Australia 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 Rakuten Securities Australia's lines, each with a plain reading.
| Regulator | Entity on the register | Number | What that means for a beginner |
|---|---|---|---|
| ASIC · Australia | Rakuten Securities Australia Pty Ltd (ABN 99 153 803 804), renamed AT Global Markets (Australia) Pty Ltd on 17 January 2024 | not verified | a top-tier regulator: compensation scheme, capital rules and a public register you can search yourself |
1 of these line is top-tier — held by Rakuten Securities Australia Pty Ltd (ABN 99 153 803 804), renamed AT Global Markets (Australia) Pty Ltd on 17 January 2024. 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. We could not confirm a licence number on 1 line, which is exactly the kind of gap you should close yourself on the regulator's own register before depositing.
The record behind these numbers
- The Australian Business Register records that ABN 99 153 803 804 traded as FXASIA PTY LTD from 2011, as RAKUTEN SECURITIES AUSTRALIA PTY LTD from 13 October 2016, and as AT GLOBAL MARKETS (AUSTRALIA) PTY LTD from 17 January 2024.
- ATFX acquired Rakuten Securities Australia and announced the change of the entity's name to AT Global Markets (Australia) Pty Ltd (https://www.atfx.com/en-au/about-us/company-news/atfx-announced-the-change-of-name-of-rakuten-securities-australia).
- The Rakuten Securities Australia brand is no longer used for retail clients; the business now trades as ATFX in Australia.
- ASIC product intervention rules cap retail CFD leverage in Australia at 1:30 for major currency pairs and require negative balance protection.
What we could not verify
The following are unconfirmed and are deliberately left blank rather than estimated: AFSL number of the entity (not confirmed on an ASIC register page); founding year; minimum deposit; EUR/USD spread; account types; segregated funds. 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.