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The question I typed was what the minimum deposit is. It is the most common question about any broker and I now think it is close to useless.

The number that decides whether an account is still alive after three months is not the smallest amount that will be accepted. It is the amount that lets me trade at a position size small enough to be wrong several times in a row without the account ending. Those are different numbers, and only one of them appears on a comparison page.

I also stopped looking for a single published figure, because there is not one. It varies by account type and by payment method, and the applicable figure is shown next to each method inside the account itself. Any blog quoting one number is quoting one combination and not saying which.

So the practical order is backwards from how I did it. Decide the position size I want to be able to trade, work back to the balance that supports it comfortably, then check what the chosen funding method actually asks for. The minimum stops being the starting point and becomes a detail near the end.

Written up properly here: The first deposit, and the number that actually matters

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At the end of each month I sit down with two things that should agree and often do not on the first pass: my own handwritten ledger, and the statement I export from the account.

The statement knows everything that happened inside the account and nothing about what happened outside it. My ledger is the opposite: it knows what left my wallet and what came back, but nothing about the individual positions. Neither is complete on its own, which is exactly why comparing them is useful.

The differences fall into three kinds. Timing, where a transfer sits on one side of the month end and the other side of the other. Charges, where a figure appears on the statement that I never wrote down because I never saw it happen. And my own mistakes, which are usually a digit in the wrong place.

What the exercise gives me is not tidiness. It is that by the time a question comes up, whether from a bank or from myself six months later, the answer already exists in writing instead of having to be reconstructed.

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I had been treating the way money goes in and the way it comes out as one decision. They are two, and the second one is mostly decided by the first.

Money generally returns along the path it arrived on, at least up to the amount that came in that way. So if I fund from one place because it is convenient today, I have also chosen where the money will land when I take it out, possibly months later.

The charges are not symmetrical either. One route was free going in and not free coming out. I only found that by putting both directions in the same table instead of looking at each as it happened.

What I record for every movement: direction, route, amount sent, amount received, and the date each end registered it. The two dates differ more often than I expected, and knowing by how much has stopped me chasing transfers that were never late.

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I read "swap-free" as "cheaper" and did not go further than the label. Going further turned out to be worth two minutes.

First, what swap is. When you hold a position past the daily rollover, you are effectively borrowing one currency to hold another, and the interest rate difference between them is credited or debited to your account. Wednesday rollover is commonly charged at triple to cover the weekend.

Swap-free removes that overnight financing component. It does not remove spread, and it does not remove commission. So the saving only exists on positions I actually hold overnight. If I close everything before the rollover, swap has never touched my account and the label is worth nothing to me.

Here is the part I had not seen anywhere. Some arrangements replace swap with a fixed administration or holding fee after a number of days. For small positions that fixed fee can exceed the swap it replaced. So the thing marketed as a removal can, at small size, be an increase.

There are three forms to tell apart: an Islamic account, which is applied for; regional swap-free, which is applied automatically; and time-limited swap-free. They are not the same arrangement and they do not expire the same way. Coverage is also per instrument, not account-wide — which is the assumption I would have made.

So the useful question is not whether my account says swap-free. It is which form it is, which instruments it covers, and whether a holding fee starts after some number of days.

On the local angle: Ghana has no licensing regime in force for online retail forex and CFD brokers, so this is a term to verify in the account itself rather than something a local rulebook standardises.

How to check your own status, and the three forms in full, is on my site.

Swap-free accounts in Ghana: what it removes and what it quietly adds back

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I used to compare brokers on the advertised spread and nothing else, then wonder where the balance had gone. Writing the costs out in the order they actually hit me made the leak obvious.

The first charge lands before any trade exists. If I fund in cedi and the account is denominated in another currency, a conversion happens, and the margin on that conversion is invisible. It is charged on the way in, while I am still deciding what to buy.

Then the spread, which is the one everybody quotes. Then commission where the account type carries one. Then swap, charged per night held, which is the cost that grows while I am not doing anything. And a conversion again on the way out, if the withdrawal currency differs.

The formula I now use for a single trade is the spread, plus the round-trip commission, plus the swap multiplied by the nights held. The only trick is converting everything into one unit, either pips or cedi, before comparing anything. For a standard lot on a major pair, one pip is roughly ten units of the quote currency, and it scales down proportionally for smaller positions.

One more habit changed: I read the spread during the hours I actually trade rather than taking the advertised minimum. A spread quoted at the London open is not the spread at ten at night in Accra.

The uncomfortable part is what this says about frequency. Ten trades a day at half a pip is five pips a day, which is a large share of what most approaches earn. Trading less often saved me more than changing broker would have, and it was free to do.

I wrote the five charges out properly on my own site.

Exness trading costs in Ghana: the five charges behind the advertised spread

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The first question I asked, and the first question everyone asks, is what the minimum deposit is. I have stopped thinking it is a useful question, and it took me a while to work out why.

The minimum the broker will accept and the minimum that lets you actually trade are two different numbers, and only the second one decides anything. What matters is having enough that a position size can be small enough to be wrong several times in a row without the account ending. A deposit that clears the broker threshold but forces every trade to be large relative to the balance is not a small start. It is a short one.

The other thing I learned is that there is no single figure to look up. It depends on the account type and on the payment method, and the applicable number is shown under each method inside the personal area. Any table on a review site is a snapshot of something that varies by both, which is why I stopped copying figures out of them.

So the sequence I would use now: decide the position size I want to be able to take, work backwards to the balance that supports it, and only then look at whether the broker minimum is below that. The broker number is a floor to clear, not a target to aim at.

I wrote the longer version, including where the figure is displayed, on my own site.

Exness minimum deposit in Ghana: the figure to check and the one that matters

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Notes from Accra. I keep this log because the details that matter — a fee, a processing time, which document was accepted — stop being true faster than people expect.

Verification took two attempts. The first upload of my Ghana Card came back rejected inside the hour because one corner was outside the frame. Flat on a dark surface, all four corners visible, no glare across the card number. The second one went through the same afternoon.

The part I did not expect: the full list of payment methods only appeared after verification finished. Judging a broker on the list you can see before verifying means judging on incomplete information.

One rule I would give anyone starting: fund from a wallet in your own name that you intend to keep. Money comes back the way it went in, up to the amount deposited, so the account you fund from is the account you will withdraw to.

Longer write-up with the document checklist: passing verification first time