3 Completely legal IQ Option tricks to disrupt your trading. And 1 simple solution

Are there IQ Option tricks that the broker uses to deprive you of your money? What is legal and what is not legal in the actions of options brokers? Relax: below we separate what is normal in how an options broker earns money from what would be a warning sign.

By Bart Bregman · Updated October 5, 2026 · How we research and update articles

But in earlier years, some options brokers used to manipulate price charts – to their benefit. Then financial authorities came along and clamped down on these activities. So brokers found new ways to take money from traders. Well, online platforms are built to make money from traders. But besides legal ways such as spreads, they have a bag of tricks that’s meant to take more money from you and deposit it into their pockets.

Here are three common tricks they use.

How do IQ options make money?

Brokers like IQ Option do not have to resort to prohibited activities to make money. Most of the company’s revenues and profits are certainly trading activities. Imagine if 200 people logged on to the platform. Each person opened a 1-minute binary option with a stake of $10. The payout rate was 90%. Half of the traders opened a position for an increase and the other half for a decrease in the EURUSD price. Within a minute the market went up. 100 people made a total of $900 and the other 100 lost $1000. The broker’s clean profit was $100 ($1000-$900). And that’s just one minute.

A broker can earn from this structure alone, without manipulating anything. That describes how the business works, not a guarantee about one company: check which company your account is with (IQ Option’s licences page names a CySEC licence only for its EU company, and regulators in Brazil, Malaysia and Singapore have published warnings) and test a small withdrawal. See our “Is IQ Option legit?” article.

So-called “IQ Option tricks” to make money from you

I used the phrase so-called for a reason. This article is about the normal elements of how a broker earns money, not about manipulation of quotes or disappearing funds. We cannot prove or disprove those from the outside; our “Is IQ Option legit?” article lists what we could verify. But there are elements of the broker’s operation that actually contribute to the fact that we earn less. Let’s see what IQ Option tricks are involved.

Short trading time frames

This trick is founded on human emotions. Primarily greed. This is probably the most capital-threatening of the IQ Option tricks.

Many options traders hit the markets wanting to make money fast. The solution is the 60 second (or even 30 second) trade.

Brokers know that it’s difficult to know where exactly the markets will head within a 60 minute time span. With price fluctuations occurring every millisecond, a 1-second fluctuation can make a trade go against you. Every 1 minute losing trade means more money for your chosen online broker and a dent in your account balance.

Trading commissions

Whether you agree or not, every trade you make attracts a small commission. Consider an option with a 75% return. Where does the remaining 25% go? This is a “hidden” commission the broker charges to facilitate the trade. Now consider the fact that many traders opt for short term 1-minute trades. This means that if 100000 winning trades are entered within a single minute, the 25% commission is multiplied exponentially.

Commissions cannot be avoided, but you can make sure that you pay less in commissions by simply trading less.

Possibility to sell options before expiry

Many online options brokers will give traders the opportunity to exit a trade before it expires. Of course, you will not get all your initial investment back if the trade was losing. On the other hand, early trade exit on a winning trade will earn you a fraction of the profits you could have made.

The remaining amount will definitely go to your broker.

Exiting a trade is only recommended if the trade is going against you and you believe that the markets won’t turn around. This way, you will forfeit just a portion of your initial investment. Otherwise, wait until the trade expires to earn all your profits.

How do you protect yourself from these 3 IQ Option tricks?

In a single word: Patience

Trading to a large extent is a game of patience. You should patiently test a trading strategy on the IQ Option practice account to verify its effectiveness before implementing it with real money.

I usually recommend trading longer time frames that last at least 5 minutes. This implies that you must patiently analyze the charts until the right market conditions present themselves. Most successful traders will spend hours analyzing the price charts waiting for the right conditions to present themselves. It can be difficult at first to wait for a whole 5 minutes to see how your trade turns out. But if you’ve done proper analysis and use a good strategy, you should find that most of your trades turn out winners.

Commissions cannot be avoided. However, you can ensure that you pay fewer commissions by trading fewer times. This coupled with making more winning trades means that you’ll get to keep most of your profits to yourself.

Finally, avoid exiting trades early. If you enter trades that last 5 minutes or more, chances are that you won’t have to worry too much about the markets going against you. This in turn means you won’t have to exit active trades often.

Good luck!