Justin Grossbard is the co-founder and head of research at CompareForexBrokers. He leads UK broker testing routed through London LD4, has traded forex since 1998, and owns the eight-criteria rating model behind every score on this site.
About me
Forex came first, the site came later. I started trading currencies in 1998 and kept at it through the platforms and account types that came and went over the next decade and a half. By the time we built Compare Forex Brokers in 2014, I had opened, funded and closed enough broker accounts to know where the costs hide and where the marketing oversells. That experience is what the rating model is built to capture.
Why we started CompareForexBrokers
Broker comparison in 2014 was mostly rewritten affiliate listicles, ranked by whoever paid most. Noam and I wanted the opposite: a scored model, real testing, and an honest line about what sat behind each rating. The point was never to publish more reviews than anyone else. It was to publish ones you could actually trust to be the output of a method rather than a deal.
What I do day to day
I direct the testing and I sign off the ratings. When a junior or guest draft comes in, I re-test the figures and rewrite it before my name goes near it, which works out to roughly 600 hours of broker testing a year. The output of that work is the site’s broker reviews and the ranked list of the best forex brokers in the UK. The final score on any review is mine to defend, so I treat it that way.
The rating model itself is the part I guard most closely. It weights eight criteria, with trading cost carrying the heaviest share, because cost is what a trader pays on every position and a small edge there compounds. I set those weights, I decide what evidence a claim needs, and I decide which testing tier a review is allowed to use. When a broker changes its fees, its platform or its FCA permissions, the affected reviews come back across my desk before they re-publish.
Background and qualifications
I hold a Bachelor of Commerce with Honours from Monash University, completed in 2003, with majors in Finance and Marketing, and a Master of Marketing from Monash, completed in 2007. Those are genuine academic qualifications, not a financial-services credential, and I will not dress them up as one. The authority behind my work is the trading record and the testing, not a set of letters after my name.
There is a gap worth stating plainly, too. No one on the team holds a UK financial-services credential such as the CISI or CFA, and I would rather say so than imply something we do not have. What backs the reviews instead is primary-source citation, the FCA register entry on every broker, a testing process we document in the open, and more than two decades of my own trading.
Media and press
My commentary on forex and broker costs has been published in Forbes, Kiplinger and Finance Magnates. Those are the titles worth pointing a UK reader to, because the analysis travels regardless of market.
How I trade
I trade the majors more than the exotics, I size positions against the account rather than the leverage on offer, and I treat the spread as the cost that matters most because it is the one I pay every time. None of that is advice for anyone else. It is how I keep my own testing grounded in real trading rather than theory.
The habit that has saved me most money is boring: I decide where I am wrong before I open a position, not after. Leverage makes that discipline matter more, because the same 30:1 that makes a small account interesting is the same 30:1 that empties it on a move you did not plan for. Testing brokers all day has not made me a better forecaster. It has made me a more careful one, and that carries into how I judge the tools a broker gives a trader to manage risk.
Where to find me
You can verify who I am through these profiles:
- Forbes Business Council
- Kiplinger author page
- Finance Magnates author page
- Muckrack
- X (Twitter)
Fact-checked by David Levy, head of content at CompareForexBrokers. Read our editorial standards.