Lowest Spreads at NPBFX: Test Drive the Broker

The spread size is one of the main factors that millions of traders around the world use to select a broker for further trading.

This is due to the fact that most financial market participants use short-term trading strategies (scalping, pipsing).

For such strategies, the spread size is crucial, as profits can often amount to just a few pips. High spreads can simply eat them away.

In practice, finding a high-quality and reliable broker isn't easy. Often, the spreads listed on companies' official websites differ significantly from actual trading spreads.

Moreover, during news releases, many brokers significantly widen spreads. Unfortunately, traders can only learn this through personal experience, potentially losing not only their profits but also part of their deposit.

Today, we'll introduce you to a broker that truly offers the lowest spreads in the brokerage market. It's our long-standing, reliable partner, the international STP/NDD broker NPBFX (NEFTEPROMBANKFX). We'll briefly introduce the company, its trading accounts, and the spreads applicable to them. The highlight will be our test drive on a live brokerage account, where we'll examine the broker's spreads not only in a calm market but also during significant economic news releases. We sincerely hope that our test will be useful to many readers.

NPBFX broker briefly

The broker can rightfully be called a "dinosaur" in the financial services market, as NPBFX began operations in 1996. At that time, client services were provided on behalf of the well-known Russian bank, JSC Nefteprombank. It's worth noting that the company was one of the first to offer its clients STP/NDD order processing technology. The broker operated in this format until 2016. When the existing trading conditions became difficult to operate in the market, and regulatory restrictions made it impossible to introduce new ones, restructuring became the optimal solution. A rebranding was carried out, and the bank's FX clients were transferred to NPBFX (NEFTEPROMBANKFX).

Since 2016, NPBFX has significantly expanded its services, significantly expanding its pool of trading instruments. Clients can trade not only currency pairs but also cryptocurrencies, stocks, global indices, precious metals, and commodities. In total, there are over 130 trading instruments. The range of trading accounts has also expanded significantly, adding cent, swap-free, and spread-free accounts. We'll discuss these in the next section of this article. The broker has launched several unique services for clients, including an Analytical Portal and the NPB Invest investment service. Clients also have a monthly demo account competition, "Battle of Traders." The prize pool is $2,500, and the grand prize is a top-of-the-line iPhone.

Clients highly rate the quality of the broker's services, as evidenced by hundreds of reviews posted on various online resources. It's also worth noting that, despite sanctions against the financial industry, the company serves clients from the Russian Federation, offering a full range of services. Depositing funds into your trading account and withdrawing profits are seamless. The broker offers nearly two dozen deposit and withdrawal methods.

Trading accounts at NPBFX

To understand the company's spreads, you need to familiarize yourself with the types of trading accounts offered by the broker. For convenience, we've divided the accounts into groups and outlined the main trading conditions.

• Training demo accounts – Demo Master, Demo Expert, Demo VIP, and Demo Standard Cent. Spreads from 0.4 pips. Leverage up to 1:1000. No lot commission. Trading on demo accounts is completely identical to trading on the same types of live accounts .
• Live trading accounts. These include classic NPBFX accounts—Master, Expert, and VIP—as well as the Master Chinese Yuan account. Spreads start from 0.4 pips, and leverage is up to 1:1000. There is also no turnover commission. Several cent live accounts are also available: Standard Cent and Zero Cent. The latter offers zero spreads but a commission of 0.08 USD/lot. The Zero live trading account deserves a special mention. Like its cent version, it offers zero spreads but does incur a commission. Leverage is 1:1000. Trading instruments include currencies, stock indices, precious metals, commodities, stocks and ETFs, and cryptocurrencies.
• NPB Invest Signal Account. Designed for investing in the NPB Invest investment platform of the same name. We won't discuss it in this article; information about it can be found on the official NPBFX website.

The broker's Analytical Portal provides professional assistance to clients of any trading account. The portal is a multi-market online resource, including a news feed, analytics, trading signals, a catalog of trading strategies, video courses, and market reference materials. Access to the portal is free and can be accessed from your Personal Account after registering on the NPBFX website.

As you can see, the broker offers its clients a wide range of trading accounts, which can be used for training, testing trading strategies, and even for real-money trading. You can find a trading account suitable for absolutely any strategy, including scalping or long-term trading.

Test drive a real trading account

Let's move on to the most interesting part – testing spreads on a real NPBFX account. For this purpose, we decided to open what is probably the most popular classic real account among traders, the Master account. The trading conditions are as follows:

- Spread from 0.8 pips (average 1.2). Example for the EURUSD pair.

- There is no commission on trading turnover.

- Minimum deposit from 10 US dollars or euros, from 500 Russian rubles.

- Maximum leverage 1:1000.

In our test drive, we'll test spreads on the EURUSD, GBPUSD, and USDJPY currency pairs. We believe testing these major pairs will be sufficient for scalpers, for example, to draw the necessary conclusions. We'll test spreads in a calm market, as well as during important economic news releases, when spreads are likely to widen. Such news is typically marked with the highest importance on economic calendars. So, let's get started.

1. Release of Federal Reserve Board meeting minutes. February 21, 2024.

Half an hour before the news release, EURUSD spreads were 1.6 pips . Now let's look at how spreads changed during the economic data release.

As soon as the minutes were published, the EURUSD spread dropped to 0.9 pips . It will be interesting to see how spreads will behave with other important news releases.

2. Publication of the EU Consumer Price Index (CPI) (YoY) (January). 22 February 2024.

In a calm market before the news, EURUSD spreads were 1.6 pips . The CPI has always been considered one of the most important economic indicators, as it is an inflation indicator. Let's look at what spreads were like when the news was released.

As the chart shows, the price movement was quite rapid. The single currency began to lose value sharply. Meanwhile, spreads on the EURUSD pair were 1.6 pips . It appears the news had no impact on them.

3. Initial jobless claims released in the United States on February 22, 2024.

Please note that the GBPUSD currency pair is being tested. Before the news release, spreads were 1.9 pips .

News about the US labor market always leads to significant market volatility. This is evident in the pound/dollar spread, which has widened to 3.5 pips .

4. The US Manufacturing and Services Business Activity Index will be released on February 22, 2024.

Our last test took place during the release of two major US news items. The pair tested was USDJPY. Before the news, the spread was 1.8 pips . We'll see if it widened after the release, as it did for GBPUSD.

This news also led to significant market activity. The US dollar began to sharply lose ground against the Japanese yen. The spread on the USDJPY pair at the time of the release was 3.6 pips .

Conclusions

First of all, we'd like to emphasize that NPBFX is an STP/NDD broker. This means traders won't have to pay additional commissions on their trading volume. All of the broker's profit is included in the spread. Therefore, don't expect spreads of 0.2 or 0.4 pips, as you might see with ECN brokers. The latter, in addition to the spread, charge traders between $14 and $20 per trade of 1 standard lot. If you add up all the trader's expenses per round trip (opening and closing a trade), the total may be higher than the STP broker's spread fee.

To make trading with the company even more profitable for clients, NPBFX has introduced the "Cashback – Up to 60% on Every Trade!" promotion. This allows traders to receive up to $7 per lot traded on Master accounts. As a result, traders enjoy even lower trading costs.

In summary, it's safe to say that using short-term trading strategies (scalping, pipsing, HFT) at NPBFX is profitable. Traders can easily gain 3-5 pips from the market, both during calm times and during news releases. Note that even strong news events, such as those we used for our test drive, didn't widen the spread by tens of pips. Yes, spreads widened, but only by a maximum of two times, and on one news release, they even decreased from 1.6 to 0.9 pips. What does this mean? It means that NPBFX works with highly reputable liquidity providers. These include leading global Tier 1 banks and large electronic ECN systems, which provide the broker with a high-quality liquidity stream.

You can become an NPBFX client in just a few minutes. Simply register on the broker's official website and open a trading account.