Background
Alex Rivera is a CFA charterholder and former proprietary trader with 12+ years of hands-on experience testing trading platforms. Since 2020, Alex has personally opened funded accounts and traded actively on more than 50 platforms, documenting every aspect of the experience — from KYC friction at signup, through live spread and slippage behavior, to the third-withdrawal experience that most reviews never bother to test.
Before joining Broker Tested Reviews, Alex spent eight years as a proprietary trader at a Chicago-based firm trading equities and FX, with a focus on liquidity microstructure and execution quality. That background is the reason this site's broker reviews are unusually heavy on execution data: it is the area where Alex has the deepest first-hand experience and the least patience for marketing claims.
Credentials
- Chartered Financial Analyst (CFA) — CFA Institute.
- 12+ years hands-on trading platform testing (2014-2026).
- Former proprietary trader — equities and FX markets.
- 50+ platforms tested with live funded accounts (2020-2026).
- Familiar with FCA, ASIC, CySEC, SEC, FINRA, BaFin, and MAS public registers and primary documents.
Testing approach
Alex leads our independent live-testing program. Each platform under review is taken through the same 6-month protocol — 200+ trades minimum, multi-asset execution analysis, peak and off-peak spread sampling, and a full withdrawal cycle. Where a platform offers an AI bot or algorithmic product, Alex logs every algorithm decision against the bot's stated strategy and flags deviations in the review's "Where the algorithm surprised us" section.
If you want the full protocol, the Testing Methodology page documents every step, including the 8-criteria scoring rubric and the data sources we rely on.
Editorial role
As lead analyst, Alex is the named accountable human for every review on this site:
- Reviews every article before publication (auto-published or human-reviewed).
- Verifies regulatory claims against the official registers, not against the broker's claim about its own status.
- Ensures data tables in articles reflect actual test results, not advertised numbers.
- Signs off on quality scores above the 75/100 publication threshold and personally re-reviews any score in the 55-74 range before it goes live.
- Responds to factual-error reports under the corrections policy.
Areas of focus
Alex's strongest topical coverage areas are:
- AI trading bots and algorithmic platforms — live decision logging, strategy drift, drawdown behavior.
- FX broker execution — effective spreads, slippage distribution, peak-hour widening.
- CFD and multi-asset broker comparison — fee transparency, leverage rules, regulatory tier.
- Withdrawal experience and account closure — the section most reviews skip.
- Regulatory due diligence — license verification, segregated-funds policy, compensation scheme eligibility.
Alex does not personally cover U.S. options market microstructure, futures contract specifications beyond a basic level, or non-English jurisdiction filings. Where those topics come up in a review, contributors are credited inline and their qualifications are documented. We do not publish content in an area where our team does not have direct experience.
Conflicts of interest
Alex does not currently hold equity or compensation arrangements with any platform reviewed on this site, beyond the firm-level affiliate partnerships disclosed in our Editorial Policy. Alex does maintain live funded accounts at the platforms under review — that is the testing methodology itself, not a conflict. Funds in those accounts are firm capital allocated for testing, not personal investment positions.
How to contact Alex
For factual corrections, story tips, or methodology questions, email contact@brokertestedreviews.com. We do not publish Alex's personal contact channels — this is intentional and consistent with how most independent finance publications operate.