Easy Binary Option

Independent coverage of binary options since 2012 — legal status, licensing and what replaced the product.

Spotting technical setups in binary options trading

Permitted Regulator: FSCA ZAR
Permitted

Binary options are not prohibited in South Africa. They are treated as OTC derivatives, which means the counterparty needs an ODP licence — and no binary options provider currently holds one.

Archive notice: this page was written in 2013, before binary options were banned for retail clients across the EEA, the UK and Australia. It is kept for reference. For the current position, see Legal status by country.

Published 2013-04-21 Last reviewed 2026-08-02

Many traders who make the transition from trading stocks, forex or commodities to binary options are often concerned by the lack of quality charting software that brokers provide. After becoming used to highly advanced and customisable charts to the simple line charts that binary options brokers provide, some traders struggle initially to apply their trading systems to this form of technical trading. Since technical traders look for repetitive patterns and familiar setups on detailed price charts, and perhaps through additional indicators, the basic in-or-out of profit binary options chart is often difficult to use as a trading tool in itself.

Find a good third-party charting package


The solution to this used by many traders is to run a parallel charting software package, or that of another derivatives platform such as spread betting or the free MT4 platforms provided by many forex brokers. Although it january initially be frustrating to switch between two platforms in order to make the analysis and then place the trade, it is one of the best methods of making sure that your binary options trades follow a strategy that you have developed. Understandably, the charting side of binary options has initially put many traders off although the use of a third party charting package will allow traders to realise the large profits available through binary options trading.

Once a suitable charting package has been found, ideally following a price feed as close as possible to that of the binary options broker, technical analysis can be applied to your binary options trades. Choosing which technical analysis methods to use is essential to success as a binary options trader purely because traditional binary options rely on a ‘higher or lower’-only outcome. This means that those technical methods which look for price to move higher or lower in terms of numbers of pips are not necessarily going to be the best when applied to binary options. The key to using technical trading methods with binary options is timing and setting the correct expiry time to support the trade. Whilst many technical indicators/patterns january be profitable in terms of fast moves reaching a set profit target, binary options traders do not want to get caught out with their options expiring during a market correction in the opposite direction after a fast spike in price.

Looking for reversals


Looking for market reversals is a good way for binary options of all expiry timeframes due to the fact that they often result in a sustained period of movement in one direction. Searching for signs of current trend exhaustion is just one way to use technical trading in order to inform when a good opportunity to purchase options january be imminent. Some of the most effective ways to do this is to look for familiar, and reliable, candlestick patterns such as ‘shooting star’ or ‘outside bars’ at key areas of support and resistance on a price chart. Often, a strong pattern here will indicate that the area of support or resistance is being defended strongly and at least a short-term market correction is required in the opposite direction before any further attempts to break this level is made.

Divergence and binary options trading


Another popular way to spot potential reversals on an advanced price chart which can then be applied to a binary options trading platform is price divergence using indicators such as RSI and MACD. These indicators are highly effective in showing traders when the market momentum is beginning to wane and one of the strongest signals is divergence in the oversold areas of the indicator. If price moves higher but the indicator reflects a lower high then opportunities will exist to purchase binary options with the anticipation that the market will reverse; at least temporarily.

Funding and withdrawals in South Africa

Local rails here are instant EFT, card, and local bank transfer through Ozow or PayFast. Deposit method decides whether money can come back out: card payments carry a chargeback route with a time limit, transfers to an offshore entity generally do not. Confirm the withdrawal method, minimum, fee and stated processing time in writing before funding an account. Profits are generally taxable, with SARS the relevant authority.

Brokers accepting South African clients

Ranked by our published methodology, which weights licensing at 35% — on an unsupervised counterparty every other quality is contingent. Ratings are derived from the sub-scores, not assigned.

# Broker Rating Entity holding your funds Min. deposit Payout
1 Deriv 7.9 Deriv (BVI) Ltd / Deriv (V) Ltd $5 up to ~95% on synthetics Visit
2 IQ Option 5.1 IQ Option Ltd (international) — unregulated $10 up to ~95%
3 Pocket Option 4.7 Gembell Limited (Comoros) $5 up to ~92% Visit
4 Quotex 4.6 Awesomo Ltd — unregulated $10 up to ~98% Visit
Regulated alternative — does not offer binary options
Exness 8.8 FSCA (South Africa) — ODP · FSP 51024 $10 n/a — CFDs and FX only Visit

Advertiser disclosure: buttons marked ad are affiliate links and earn us a commission if you open an account. The others do not. The ranking is derived from the published sub-scores either way, which is why the highest-rated provider here is not the one that pays us.

Risk warning: binary options are high-risk speculative instruments and most retail accounts lose money. Nothing on this page is investment advice or a recommendation to trade.