Worked example
Practising on STARTRADER's numbers
This is an exercise sheet, not a review. We are going to take three things that STARTRADER 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
STARTRADER 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. STARTRADER 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.
- StandardThe entry rung. Whatever the published spread applies to, it is almost always this one — so this is the rung your arithmetic above describes.
- ECNA 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, ECN. Platforms listed: MT4, MT5.
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 STARTRADER's lines, each with a plain reading.
| Regulator | Entity on the register | Number | What that means for a beginner |
|---|---|---|---|
| FSA Seychelles · Seychelles | STARTRADER Limited (reg. 8427362-1) | SD049 | an offshore registration: a company exists and pays a fee, but expect little practical recourse from that entity |
| FSCA · South Africa | STARTRADER International Pty Ltd | FSP 52464 | a mid-tier regulator: real supervision and a register, usually with a smaller or capped compensation scheme |
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
- STARTRADER Limited is a Securities Dealer regulated by the FSA of Seychelles under licence SD049, registration number 8427362-1, per the company's own regulation page.
- STARTRADER International Pty Ltd is a South African Financial Services Provider regulated by the FSCA under FSP number 52464.
- STARTRADER's website displays reverse-solicitation notices to visitors in Spain and Italy stating it is not licensed by the CNMV or CONSOB and that those regulators' protections do not apply.
- The company states it operates a network of licensed entities and has announced additional licences, including an SCA licence; the full current entity list was not confirmed for this record.
- The STARTRADER site is behind bot protection, so parts of the regulation page could not be read directly and were sourced from the page's indexed text.
What we could not verify
The following are unconfirmed and are deliberately left blank rather than estimated: founded; hq; minDeposit; maxLeverage; spreadEurusd; segregatedFunds; negativeBalanceProtection; publiclyListed; accountTypes; additional entities (ASIC, SCA, Saint Vincent) — not confirmed from a primary source; full regulation page could not be retrieved directly; headquarters; negative balance protection. Confidence in this file overall: low. 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.