Tag: Forex

4xCube is a forex broker with a core team with over 20 years of experience, their main values include integrity and transparency, superb customer service, cutting edge technology, tailormade trading tools, the client focuses and to have a custom partnership program to name a few. In this review, we will be looking at what 4xCube really offers to see if they live up to their own values.

Account Types

There are three accounts to choose from when signing up with 4xCube and each have their own requirements and features, let’s take a look at what is on offer.

Standard Account: The standard account is the entry-level account, it has a minimum deposit requirement of just $5 which makes it very accessible. It has spread starting from 0.7 pips and can have leverage up to 1:400. Its base currency can be in a choice of UDS, EUR, GBP or NGN and the account does not have any commissions added to its trades. The account is able to use hedging and scalping as a strategy and it gives you access to real-time online support and comprehensive IT support as well as being compatible with expert advisors.

Pro Account: The pro account increases the minimum deposit up to $1,000, this reduces the spreads down to 0.1 pip and due to having such low spreads there is a commission of $3 per round lot added to the account. The base currencies remain as USD, EUR, GBP, and NGN and all other features of the account remain the same including leverage and support channels.

VIP Account: The VIP account increases the minimum deposit requirement substantially, it now sits at $25,000. This increased deposit gives you a lowered spread which starts from 0.2 pips, wit this low spread there is no added commission. Base currency can also be USD, EUR, GBP or NGN, and all other features are the same as the pro account, there is one more added benefit, all deposits and withdrawals are now free when using this account.

Platforms

4xCube offer MetaTrader 4 as well as a proprietary trading platform. Clients can download and install the platform on any Windows-based PC, or download the app version to their iOS or Android devices. MT4 has long been the industry standard and the most popular Forex trading platform among traders. Its simple and easy user interface allows for both standard trading and automated trading via the use of Expert Advisors. Trade with over 80 underlying assets, all within the same platform.

In addition to MT4, the firm offers its own platform for Web and Android, CubeTrader. Not much information is provided regarding this platform, other than referring to it as a “simple, innovative and entertaining platform for all your financial markets” on the platform page of its website. Our advice would be to contact support to learn more about this platform or create a demo account that utilizes it and perform your own testing.

Leverage

Leverage on all accounts can go up to 1:400, this can be selected when opening up an account, once an account is open you can request for the leverage to be changed by getting in contact wi the customer service team, you need to ensure that there are no open trades at the time of the request.

Trade Sizes

The trade sizes with 4xCube start at 0.01 lots, they then go up in increments of 0.01 lots so the next trade would be 0.02 lots and then 0.03 lots. We could not locate information on the maximum trade size, however, no matter what it is we would not suggest trading over 50 lots in a single trade as it becomes increasingly harder for the markets and liquidity providers to execute trades quickly and without any slippage the bigger they get.

Trading Costs

The Standard and VIP accounts use a spread based system that we will look at later in this review. The Pro account has a commission of $3 per round turn lot traded which is half of what the standard commission we see in most places is ($6).

Swap charges are also a cost of trading, they can be both positive or negative and are charged for holding trades overnight, these can be viewed directly within the MT4 trading platform.

Assets

4xCube have broken down their tradable assets into 4 different categories, Forex is the standard currency pairs that you see at most brokers. They include forex majors, forex minors and forex exotic pairs. These include pairs such as EUR/USD, USD/PLN and GBP/CHF. The next category is metals, there is only the standard 2, Silver and Gold available with 4xCube. There is also a small selection of indices, the main bunch is available from the UK 100 Index, Hong Kong 50 Index and US Tech 100 Index. Finally, there is a section called “Other CFD’s” which contains Brent Crude Oil, WTI Crude Oil, and Bitcoin.

Spreads

The spreads that you receive depend on the account that you are trading on and also the instrument that you are trading. If we look at the EUR/USD which is the lowest spread currency pair, on the Standard account you have a starting spread of 0.7 pips, the Pro account has a starting spread of 0.2 pips and the VIP account has a starting spread of 0.5 pips. All spreads are variable which means that while they state 0.7 pips as an example, they will often be seen higher than this as it is simply the starting point, during times of high volatility the spreads will be much higher.

It is also worth noting that different instruments have different natural spreads, while on the Standard account EUR/USD may have a starting spread of 0.7 pips, AUD/NZD will have a starting spread of 1.5 pips.

Minimum Deposit

The minimum deposit amount is $5 which will allow you to open up the Standard account, if you want the Pro account you will need a deposit of $1,000 and for the VIP account $25,000. Once an account is open, the minimum top-up available for all accounts is $5.

Deposit Methods & Costs

There are plenty of deposit methods and each one comes with different options and fees, we have outlined them below, it is important to note that the VIP account does not have any of the fees that are mentioned below.

• Bank Transfer – EUR, USD, GBP, NGN – $20 fee per Swift transfer (min deposit $500)
• Visa / MasterCard – EUR, USD, GBP – 3% (currently unavailable)
• Abn Amro – EUR, USD, GBP – 1% (min deposit $1000)
• Neteller – EUR, USD – 3% (Non-EU clients only)
• Skrill – EUR, USD – 3% (Non-EU clients only)
• FasaPay – IDR, USD – 0.5%
• vLoad – EUR, USD – 3.5%
• Crypto – BTC, ETH, BCH, Dash – 1%
• WeChat Pay 00 HKD – 5%
• Perfect ‘Money – EUR, USD – 6%
• UnionPay – CNY – 3%
• AstroPay – EUR, BRL, TRY, RMB, CNY, USD | INR, JPY, THB, ARS, VND, MYR, UYU,
• IDR, TWD – 2%
• Help2pay – INR, THB, VND, MYR – 2.5%
• Remessa Online – USD – 1%

Withdrawal Methods & Costs

Not all of the methods used to deposit are also available to withdraw, we have set out a list below for each of understanding, just like the deposits, the VIP account does not have any of the added fees and is fee-free.

• Bank Transfer- EUR, USD, GBP, NGN – $5 per transfer – Swift = $49 per transfer
• Visa / MasterCard – EUR, USD, GBP – 0.15%
• Neteller – EUR, USD – 0.5%
• Skrill – EUR, USD – 0.5%
• Crypto – BTC, ETH, BCH, DASH – 1% (min $50)
• WeChat Pau – HKD – No fee
• Perfect Money 0 EUR, USD – No Fee
• Union Pay – CNY – No fee
• Astro Pay – EUR, BRL, TRY, RMB, CNY, USD | INR, JPY, THB, ARS, VND, MYR, UYU,
• IDR, TWD – No fee
• Help2pay – INR, THB, VND, MYR – 1%

Withdrawal Processing & Wait Time

4xCube aims to process all withdrawals within 1 business day, once the withdrawal has been processed dit will take up to 1 business day for all withdrawal methods apart from bank transfers which will take an additional 2 – 3 business days to fully process.

Bonuses & Promotions

We could not locate any information on the website in regards to any active promotions or bonuses, we could also not see anything about any past ones either. This does not mean that there won’t be any in the future so if you are interested in bonuses to be sure to check back regularly.

Educational & Trading Tools

It appears that 4xCube offers a few different trading too,s and also educational tools, however, it does look like a few of them would not really add any value. There are webinars, however, the website that the last one was on the 21 November 2019 so was quite a while before writing this review. There is a news and analysis section which has a number of different videos and articles regarding different pairs and offers some technical analysis on them to help you with your own analysis.

In terms of trading tools, there are a couple, one is called SwapHunter which is an indicator used within the MT4 platform to check for trades that will offer a positive swap charge, holding these trades can provide a positive swap over time. There is also an automated trading software called Stopuz AI Trading System, but we have not used it so can not comment on its profitability or stability.

Customer Service

You need to scroll all the way down to the bottom of the website to find any contact details. The support team is available 24 hours a day 5 days a week and closes at the same time as the markets do. There is an online submission form that you can fill in and will then receive an email as a response to your query. There is also an email address to send an email directly along with a phone number should you wish to speak to someone personally.

Demo Account

We didn’t see any information regarding demo accounts, when signing up for an account we did not see the option so it does not appear that they are available. This is never a good sign for us as many potential clients will use demo accounts to check what the trading conditions are like and current clients may want to test out new strategies without risking their own capital. So it would be beneficial for 4xCube to add in demo accounts.

Countries Accepted

The following statement is present at the bottom of the 4xCube website: “4xCube does not offer its services to residents of certain jurisdictions such as USA, North Korea, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Ethiopia, Iraq, Syria, Uganda, Vanuatu, and Yemen.” If you are unsure whether you are eligible for an account or not we always recommend getting in contact with the customer service team to find out.

Conclusion

4xCube has some very competitive trading conditions, in fact, it is great to see spreads so low on accounts that do not have any commissions added to them. The account with the added commission has a much lower commission than its competition, this along with decent leverage and plenty of forex pairs to trade (although it would be nice to have more commodities and crypto) make 4xCube quite an appealing prospect. Plenty of deposit methods however each one has both deposit and withdrawal fees which is a bit of a letdown, to avoid them you will need at least $25,000 which is more than most retail traders use to trade. The lack of a demo account is also a little concerning.

CFI Credit Financier Invest is an online FX and CFD broker that boasts about attractive trading conditions, reliable support, deep liquidity, and fast withdrawals as a few of their many advantages. The company can first be traced back to a private banking firm known as Credit Financier, which was established in 1998. In 2005, the company separated the credit business from the trading business and launched the first entity directly related to this section of the company.

The head branch of this strand of the company is located and registered in Cyprus, with a secondary location in London. In the time since they came into operation, the broker has grown to include a more established customer base and has won several awards for protecting client funds, being a top regulated broker, Best Forex Broker in Asia (2016), and more. If you’d like to find out more about CFI’s interesting account types and trading conditions, you’ll want to keep reading.

Account Types

CFI offers three account types, with options being the Standard, Elite, or Prime account. Funding methods would require a $100 deposit on the Standard account, while minimum requirements for the other account types spike much higher. Spreads are also the highest on the aforementioned Standard account, while the spreads start from 0.3 pips on the more expensive account types. Commissions depend on the chosen account type and are actually listed as negotiable on the Prime account, which is noteworthy.

This broker separates retail and professional clients and offers higher leverages and lower stop out levels to the clients that are categorized as professional. One can apply for professional status on the website. If you’re considered an average client, you’ll have access to the same leverage, regardless of which account you’re trading from. Accounts also share the same trading instruments and trading platform, MT5. A brief summary of these conditions can be viewed below.

Standard Account
Minimum Deposit: None
Leverage: Up to 400:1 (Professional Clients)
Spread: From 1.7 pips
Commission: None on FX & Bullions/15 USD per lot on others

Elite Account
Minimum Deposit: $25,000 (or trade 25 lots per month)
Leverage: Up to 1:200 (Professional Clients)
Spread: From 0.3 pips
Commission: 6 USD per lot

Prime Account
Minimum Deposit: $500,000 (or trade 500 lots per month)
Leverage: Up to 1:100 (Professional Clients)
Spread: From 0.3 pips
Commission: Negotiable

Platform

This broker features one of the best all-powerful trading platforms – MetaTrader 5. This platform is an improved version of MT4, which is probably one of the most well-known and commonly offered trading platforms offered today. MT5 has no issues with popularity itself and is preferred by millions of traders across the globe. In addition to offering everything a trader could possibly need, MT5 has added more pending order types, analytical tools, an economic calendar, user-friendly interface, Expert Advisors, and more to the mix. MT5 can be conveniently accessed through the WebTrader and mobile apps or downloaded on PC and MAC for the best experience.

Leverage

One of the largest contributors to the success of Forex trading would be leverage, so we are always looking for advantages in this section. With this broker, we do see a generous cap of up to 1:400 on FX options on the Standard account type, while the maximum cap drops to 1:200 on the Elite account and 1:100 on the Prime account.

Most likely, this broker sets lower limits on the accounts that require larger balances in order to limit the losses that will be incurred by those clients. It’s really a safety measure for the broker, although the caps on the more expensive accounts may be lower than some clients would like to see. It also seems that those advertised leverage caps are only for professional clients, while lower caps are offered for average clients. Those limitations are as follows: 1:30 on major currency pairs, 1:20 on non-major currency pairs, 1:20 on major Indices and Bullion, 1:10 on Commodities (other than Gold), 1:10 on non-major Equity Indices, and 1:2 on Cryptocurrencies.

As one may notice, these limitations could be too restricting for one that would prefer trading with high leverage. Many traders do prefer a leverage of around 1:100, so it would be vital to ask for a professional status if that’s something you’re looking for.

Trade Sizes

All accounts offer a minimum trade size of 0.01, or one micro lot on all assets, aside from Cryptocurrencies, which require a trade size of 0.1 lot. There is a maximum trade size of 20 lots when trading Cryptocurrencies and the website does not specify for the other instrument types. The margin call level is set at 50% on all trading accounts. The stop out level for professional clients is 20%, while the stop out for average clients is at 50%.

Trading Costs

This broker profits through commissions, spreads, and swaps. The Standard account offers spreads from 1.7 pips on FX options, with no commission charges on FX and Bullions and a charge of 15 USD per Standard Lot on other instruments. On the Elite account, we see spreads from 0.3 pips with a fixed commission charge of $6 USD round turn on all instrument types.

For the Prime account, spreads also start from 0.3 pips and commissions are listed as negotiable. Swaps may be adjusted daily based on market conditions and are applicable to all open positions. Swaps are in USD/day, on Wednesday’s overnight, positions will be charged for 3 days to cover Saturday’s and Sunday’s costs.

Assets

This broker advertises multiple FX and CFD options as being available; however, the broker has made the questionable choice to exclude offering a more detailed product page on their website. This leaves us with questions about just how many currency pairs are available and how wide of a range the variety of CFDs cover. Fortunately, we do see that the broker has recently added Cryptocurrency CFDs to their portfolio, with available options being Bitcoin, Litecoin, Ethereum, Bitnote, and Ripple (US dollars).

Spreads

All accounts offer variable spreads, starting from 0.3 pips on FX options on Elite and Prime accounts and from 1.7 pips on Standard accounts. Typically, we do like to compare options in order to see if the advertised spreads are not misleading, although it wasn’t possible to do so since this broker is missing a product specification page. Judging by the advertised numbers, one could certainly say that the spreads on the more expensive account types start from amounts that are much lower than average. As for the Standard account, one would want to consider the commission-free trading on FX and Bullions and how that would lower the trading costs altogether.

Minimum Deposit

This broker does not require any minimum funding amount in order to open their Standard account; however, each funding method requires a minimum funding amount of $100 USD. For the other two account types, traders can either maintain a certain balance or trade a specific number of Lots each month. On the Elite account, the choices are to maintain a balance of $25,000 USD or trade 25 lots per month. Some traders may have to stick with the Standard account type, due to these strict requirements. On the most expensive account type, the Prime account, traders can either maintain a balance of $500,000 USD or trade 500 lots per month.

Deposit Methods & Costs

Accounts can be funded through Wire Transfer in an unlimited amount, through Visa/MasterCard for up to $10,000 per week, through Neteller for up to $2,000 a week, or through Skrill for up to $10,000 a week. All methods require a minimum deposit amount of at least $100 USD per deposit. The broker does not apply any fees on Bank Wire Transfer; however, fees will be charged from the bank’s side. There is a 1% fee on Visa/MasterCard deposits, a 3% fee on Neteller deposits, and a 4% fee on Skrill deposits. When the client first opens an account with any of these payment providers, the first deposit will be fee-free, with the exception of Skrill, which offers a fee-free deposit for an amount up to $2,000. Note that fees would still be applicable to Bank Wire Transfers.

 

Withdrawal Methods & Costs

Any client of the company must make their first withdrawal request back to the originating payment method. A $25 fee in US dollars/Euros is charged on Wire Transfer withdrawals. For Visa/MasterCard withdrawals, a fee of 2.5% is applicable. Neteller charges a fee of 3% of the transaction value, while the other e-payment method, Skrill, only charges 1% of the transaction value. Sadly, fees will not be avoidable and it would be beneficial to determine which payment method would charge the least amount for any particular withdrawal.

Withdrawal Processing & Wait Time

As long as the request is submitted within business hours, withdrawals will be processed the same day between 08:00 and 16:00, Cyprus time. If a withdrawal request is received outside of working hours, or on the weekend, it will be processed the following business day. One should expect a wait time of 2-5 working days to receive Wire Transfers and 2-10 working days to receive Visa/MasterCard withdrawals. Neteller and Skrill withdrawals for amounts less than $1,000 will be received within a day, while withdrawals for larger amounts can take up to 10 days to be received.

Bonuses & Promotions

At this time, CFI is missing any sort of welcome bonus or promotional opportunity. This doesn’t mean that the broker won’t add something in the future, although we couldn’t find any indication that the company is currently considering adding a bonus program. It’s always nice to see something offered in this category and it can be fun to participate in contests with prizes, although the lack of options here shouldn’t warrant one switching to another broker on its own.

Educational & Trading Tools

The broker also seems to be lacking in the educational category, which will force any beginners to look elsewhere for resources. We do see demo accounts available, although one would certainly need some prior knowledge in order to practice from a demo account successfully. If you’re hoping to find tools available on the website, you’ll be equally disappointed, since options are limited to VPS alone. On the bright side, traders will find a variety of tools built-into the MT5 platform.

Demo Account

Risk-free demo accounts are offered by the broker as a way for potential or existing clients to become more acquainted with their trading conditions, to test out the MT5 platform, and to gain more experience trading without risking any real funds. Demo accounts do expire after 30 days, likely as a way to push potential clients into opening real accounts. Fortunately, one could simply sign-up for another demo upon that expiration if they were not ready to make a real deposit. An account can be created quickly by filling in a few details – name, email, country, phone number, etc.

Customer Service

Support can be contacted through LiveChat, phone, email, Whatsapp, or by submitting a callback request. Support hours were not listed, although the website did inform us that support was online at a late hour. We took the opportunity to sign-into LiveChat; however, the experience was rather frustrating since the broker then informed us that an agent actually wasn’t online. On the bright side, the website will allow one to leave a message in this situation so that support can respond asap.

Contact information is provided for the head office in Cyprus, in addition to the secondary office in London, so one would want to be sure to email or phone the correct department. If you’d like to fill out a callback request, this can be done quickly from the contact page. The broker will ask what time the client would prefer to receive the call for convenience. On can also follow the broker on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, LinkedIn, and YouTube. All listed contact information has been detailed below.

Cyprus
Phone: +357 24 400270
Fax: +357 24 400271
Email: [email protected]/cy
Address: Grigori Afxentiou 10 ave, Livadhiotis Court 5, P.O. Box 6023

London
Phone: +44(0)2039 687 7706
Phone: +44(0)2039 687 7707
Email: [email protected]
Address: 70 Gracechurch St, London EC3V 0XL, London – UK

Countries Accepted

This broker didn’t list any specific restrictions on their website, so we headed straight to the account registration page to check for ourselves. We were happy to see the United States, North Korea, Iran, Japan, and many other commonly restricted countries on the list, so there’s no reason to worry if you’re located in any of those countries. Of course, there could be something we’re missing, so you’ll want to contact support if you don’t see your country on the registration list.

Conclusion

CFI is an online broker that offers leveraged trading of up to 1:400 for professional clients on FX and CFD instruments, including Cryptocurrencies, on the MetaTrader 5 platform. Those advertised leverage caps are set much lower for regular clients, with the highest cap offered to be a leverage of up to 1:30. One must deposit at least $100 to open a Standard account and traders can choose to maintain a certain trading volume or to maintain a certain account balance of a larger amount for the other account types. When it comes to trading costs, we see commission-free options on certain instruments, and commissions are negotiable in the case of the Prime account.

Spreads start from either 0.3 or 1.7 pips, depending on the chosen account type. When it comes to funding, we see fees applied on all deposits and withdrawals, although the broker has quick processing times. Sadly, there are no ongoing bonus opportunities or educational resources available on the website, aside from demo accounts. If one needs to contact an agent, it’s possible to reach out through several contact methods, although support hours are not listed.

This broker would be a good option for anyone that is commonly located in a restricted country since the company allows anyone old enough to sign-up for an account. Overall, we do see the broker upholding some of their advertised advantages, although one would need to weigh those against the disadvantages when deciding whether to open an account.

Level2Forex is an online broker that focuses solely on providing major, minor, and exotic currency pairs with ECN liquidity. Aside from describing their mission to offer premium trading conditions, institutional spreads, a transparent order book, and mentioning their desire to be the best ECN forex broker, the broker doesn’t really provide us with much information about their background. Further research doesn’t seem to reveal this information, so we are left with the disadvantage of not knowing what country the broker is located in, when they were founded, or whether they are under any regulatory oversight. Keep reading to find out everything we know about the broker’s conditions.

Account Types

Level2Forex doesn’t offer different account types, although the account’s balance would directly affect leverage and margin requirements. There is a $500 deposit requirement, and the broker begins to lower leverage options and raise margin requirements if clients deposit $10,000 or more. The broker claims that their NDD experience grants access to extremely tight spreads, but the website isn’t forthcoming with exact figures. We do see a clear explanation of commission fees associated with opening an account, which is $0.04 per side, or $0.08 round turn. Traders will also want to keep in mind that the broker is currently focused on providing currency pairs for trading, so there won’t be a variety of other asset classes to choose from. We’ve provided a quick outline of the only available account below.

Standard Account
Minimum Deposit: $500 USD
Leverage: Up to 1:10, 1:50, or 1:100
Spread: NA
Commission: $0.08 per 1000 round turn

Platform

Those that choose to open an account through this broker will be trading from the eFX Cloud X Station Pro trading platform, which is available on the web, or downloadable on desktop and mobile devices. Within the platform, traders will have access to lightning-fast one-click trading, the ability to trade from charts by right-clicking on any forex chart, an economic calendar, and a built-in trading calculator. The broker claims to have chosen this platform because of its feature-rich, scalper-friendly, next-generation design. One advantage this platform has over the more popular MetaTrader platforms would be the ability to run on a Mac with no download issues; however, we still feel a little disappointed that MT4 or MT5 isn’t available.

Leverage

The broker sets three different leverage caps that are dependent upon the amount of funds within the client’s account. Those with less than $10,000 will have access to the broker’s maximum cap of up to 1:100. Note that this amount is fairly restrictive when compared to other options on the market. Still, considering the risks involved with trading with higher leverages, many traders do prefer to trade with smaller leverage. The cap is set at 1:50 for accounts with a balance between $10,000 and $500,000. Those with more than $500,000 in their account will only be able to use a leverage of 1:10.

Trade Sizes

Accounts support the trading of micro-lots (1000 units of the base currency). There is no mention of maximum trade sizes anywhere on the website. A margin call occurs at 50% of the account’s margin requirement, while stop out occurs at 30% of the account’s margin requirement, which is based on the account’s total balance. Margin requirements have been listed below.

• Below $10,000: 1%
• $10,000 – $500,000: 2%
• More than $500,000: 10%

Trading Costs

The broker profits through spreads, commission fees, and swaps. Commissions are charged at $0.04 USD per 1000 (micro lot) per side. The round-turn cost would be $0.08. Swaps are charged on positions that are held open overnight, and the only way to view the long and short charges would be through the trading terminal. Sadly, we don’t get any information on the website related to spreads, so this does leave one wondering if the options are competitive. There are no extra costs, like inactivity fees, platform fees, or other unnecessary charges.

Assets

This broker is primarily focused on providing currency pairs and claims that different asset categories may be added in the future. In total, we counted 48 available pairs, which are divided into majors, minors, and exotics, with 17 of the options being exotic. Traders that are looking to trade CFDs, like commodities or oil, gas, etc. will likely do better choosing a different broker, since many forex brokers do offer at least a few more categories. Otherwise, we would hope that Level2Forex would expand these options in the near future.

Spreads

Level2Forex is a Non-Dealing Desk broker, which essentially allows them to bring traders extremely tight market quotes. Prices are quoted at 5 decimals on non-JPY pairs and 3 decimals on JPY pairs. However, the broker’s clear avoidance of providing exact figures on spreads leaves us wondering if the spreads are as tight as advertised. Also, traders will want to remember that times of market volatility could make spreads fluctuate more widely.

Minimum Deposit

The minimum deposit requirement to open an account with this broker would be $500 USD. Some traders may feel that the minimum is rather high, especially considering that many others offer accounts for $250, $100, or less. Accounts don’t have a maximum balance, making it possible for traders to deposit $500,000 or more if they would prefer to. Depositing a larger amount ($10,000 or more) wouldn’t really result in any clear benefits, so there’s no pressure for traders to make a significant deposit to gain access to better conditions.

Deposit Methods & Costs

At the bottom of their website, Level2Forex advertises Visa, MasterCard, and Maestro cards as available deposit methods and we would assume bank wire is also offered for depositing. We hoped to find more information somewhere on the website but found the broker to be extremely vague when it comes to funding accounts. We would usually suggest making a small test deposit in this case, but the broker’s $500 deposit requirement makes it impossible to do so. If you’re depositing via bank wire, you should be able to check with your bank to see if they will place any charges from their side.

Withdrawal Methods & Costs

Withdrawals are most likely available through cards and bank wire, with a requirement for withdrawals to be processed back to the original deposit method. The broker fails to give us any information about potential fees that will be charged on outgoing withdrawals. This is concerning since these fees can vary so widely. Some brokers offer completely fee-free withdrawals, but more often than not we see some type of fee charged, especially in the case of bank wires.

Withdrawal Processing & Wait Time

Once again, we can’t provide an accurate timeline of long it could take for clients to receive funds. The lack of information is likely a sign that processing times could be lengthy. Hopefully, the broker would manage to process those withdrawals within a couple of business days, but the lack of instant customer support options and direct phone numbers suggests that the broker may be working with a smaller financial team. This could mean extended withdrawal processing times.

Bonuses & Promotions

We weren’t surprised to find that the broker wasn’t offering any extra options as far as bonuses or promotions. More often than not, smaller brokers don’t have the resources to make these options available to their clients. Traders should never choose a broker based on these options alone, but being granted a deposit bonus, welcome bonus, or other bonus does seem like a nice incentive for signing up for an account.

Educational & Trading Tools

Level2Forex fails to provide any type of educational resources or trading tools on their website. Beginners will always be able to look elsewhere on the web for those resources, but it does seem so much more convenient when brokers offer those things directly. Others typically offer articles and some even provide free video tutorials, ebooks, webinars, seminars, etc. The broker does offer free demo accounts, but this won’t be enough for those that don’t understand key terms and other important factors that must be considered when trading.

Demo Account

Anyone that wishes to can open a free demo account from the broker’s homepage with no need to sign up for a live account. Opening a demo is a risk-free opportunity that allows traders of different skill levels to practice or test out the broker’s live account conditions. Level2Forex does allow clients to select a leverage option from 1:1 up to 1:100 for their demo account and it isn’t clear how much virtual currency will be applied to those accounts.

Customer Service

Traders that want to get in touch with a member of the broker’s customer service team may be frustrated to find that the only way to reach out is by filling out a contact form on the website. The form doesn’t ask for a phone number, so it is unclear if the broker is willing to offer callbacks. There is also no listing of business hours, although we would assume that support would only be available on weekdays from certain hours. Traders should expect to see a wait time of at least a day or two before support would respond to any contact request.

Countries Accepted

Level2Forex reserves to right to restrict service to any client based on their country of residence. At the bottom of their website, the broker does mention that the website isn’t intended for residents of the USA. The wording left it unclear as to whether these residents would be able to sign up for an account. We did confirm that the United States and United States Minor Outlying Islands are missing from the registration list, making it impossible for those clients to open an account.

Conclusion

Level2Forex is an online broker that focuses solely on the trading of currency pairs from the eFX Cloud X Station Pro platform. It costs at least $500 USD to open an account with this broker and there are no incentives for depositing larger amounts. Leverage caps are set at 1:10, 1:50, and 1:100, depending on the account’s balance. The broker doesn’t offer any information about their spreads, which could be a red flag.

Traders should also keep in mind that aside from the fact that cards are accepted, the website fails to offer any information related to funding. This may indicate high fees and unfavorable processing times. Getting in touch with a support agent could be frustrating, as the broker doesn’t even provide a direct email address.

Clients won’t find any ongoing promotions or bonuses offered through the broker and the website is also missing trading tools, although demo accounts are available. Traders located in the United States will not be able to sign up for an account through this broker, but others seem to be welcomed.

Starfinex is a China-based ECN forex and a spread-betting broker. There are a few areas that they have decided to focus on which are offering personalized customer service, reliability, the safety of funds, competitive spreads and commission, technology & tools, speed of execution and alignment of interests with the clients. Starfinex was founded by traders so they are bringing that experience and desire to the broker world. Throughout this review, we will outline the services being offered to try and help you decide if they are the right broker for you.

Account Types

Should you decide to sign up with Starfinex, the first thing you will need to do is decide which of the 5 accounts you want to use, we will briefly outline them so you can see what they offer.

Micro Account: This account requires a minimum deposit of just $5, it can use MetaTrader 4 or MetaTrader 5 as its trading platforms. The account has variable spreads starting from 3 pips and can be leveraged up to 1:500. Trade sizes start at 0.01 lots and go up in increments of 0.01 lots up to a maximum of 20 lots. The margin call level is set at 200% and stop out level at 30%.

Standard Account: The standard account requires a minimum deposit of $50, it has variable spreads starting from around 2 pips, it can use MetaTrader 4 or MetaTrader 5 and trade sizes start at 0.01 lots with a maximum trade size of 80 lots. Leverage on the account can go up to 1:400, the account is able to trade forex, CFDs, indices, metals, and energies and it has a margin call level set at 150% and stop out at 30%.

Premium Account: The minimum deposit for this account increases up to $100, the account must be in USD as a base currency. MetaTrader 4 and MetaTrader 5 are both available to use and the account has a variable spread starting at 1.6 pips. There are forex pairs, indices, metals and, energies available to trade with leverage up to 1:300. The accounts trading stats at 0.01 lots and go up in increments of 0.01 all the way up to 200 lots as a maximum. The account has a margin call level set at 1090% and stops out at 30%.

ECN Pro Account: The ECN Pro account requires a deposit of $100, it is available on MetaTrader 4 and 5 and can trade forex, CFDs, metals and, energies. As it is an ECN account the spreads start as low as 0 pips (variable) and due to this, there is an added commission of $6 per lot on the account. Maximum leverage of 1:200 is available and trading starts from 0.01 lots and goes up in increments of 0.01 up to 200 lots. The margin call is set at 100% and stop out 30%, the account must be in USD as a base currency.

Star VIP: This is the top-tier account and so requires a larger minimum deposit of $10,000. It can be used with both MetaTrader 4 and MetaTrader 5 and comes with a variable spread starting at 0 pips, due to this there is an added commission of $16 per mission traded. Trade sizes start at 0.01 lots and go up in increments of 0.01 lots, there is no maximum trade size. The account can be leveraged up to 1:200 and has a margin call level at 100% and a stop out level at 50%. The account also comes with a personal account manager and personalized services.

Platforms

As seen in the accounts overview, there are two different platforms available to trade with. These include both MetaTrader 4 and MetaTrader 5. There are no 3rd party bridges nor any automated account syncs when trading with Starfinex. They offer a wide variety of features to help upgrade your MetaTrader 4 trading experience. The platform is offered for desktop, Android, and iOS. Metatrader 4 is very easy to customize and includes charting tools, scripts and Expert Advisors, market indicators, risk management, real-time market analysis and more.

Leverage

The maximum leverage that you get depends on the account you are using, we have outlined them below.

• Micro: 1:500
• Standard: 1:400
• Premium Account: 1:300
• ECN Pro: 1:200
• Star VIP: 1:200

You can select which leverage you want when opening up an account, once an account is open, should you wish to change the leverage on it you will need to send your request to the customer service team.

Trade Sizes

Trade sizes on all accounts start from 0.01 lots which are also known as a micro lot, the trades then go up in increments of 0.01 lots so the next trade would be 0.02 lots and the en 0.03 lots. The maximum trade size available depends on the account that you use. We have outlined the maximum single trade and overall open trades below.

• Micro: Single trade is 20 lots, overall open trades is 150 lots
• Standard: Single trade is 80 lots, overall open trades is 200 lots
• Premium: Single trade is 200 lots, overall open trades are 250 lots
• ECN Pro: No limit to a single trade or overall open positions
• Star VIP: No limit to a single trade or overall open positions

While some of the lot sizes go quite high, we would not recommend trading over 50 lots in a single trade due to difficulties executing the trade quickly and without any slippage.

Trading Costs

The ECN Pro and Star VIP account both come with commissions due to their low spreads, the ECN Pro account has a commission of $6 per lot traded which is in line with the industry standard of $6 per lot. The Star VIP account has a commission of $16 per million traded which is around $1.6 per lot traded, well below the industry standard. The other accounts use a spread based system that we will look at later in this review.

There are also swap charges, these are interests that are either positive or negative and are paid for holding trades overnight, they can be viewed within the trading platform of choice. Islamic account sare available and if using one, there are no swap charges added to the account.

Assets

There aren’t actually that many assets to trade, they have all be lumped into a single list so we have separated them out into different categories for you to easily see what is available.

Forex: EURUSD, GBPUSD, USDJPY, USDCHF, AUDUSD, NZDUSD, USDCAD, EURGBP, EURJPY, EURCHF, EURAUD, EURNZD, EURCAD, GBPJPY, GBPCHF, GBPAUD, GBPNZD, GBPCAD, CHFJPY, AUDJPY, AUDCHF, AUDNZD, AUDCAD, NZDJPY, NZDCHF, NZDCAD, CADJPY, CADCHF.

Crypto: BTCUSD (Bitcoin), ETHUSD (Ethereum), LTCUSD ()Litecoin).

Metals: XAGUSD (Silver), XAUUSD (Gold.

Indices: Australia 200, German 30, Nasdaq 100 and, Dow Jones 30.

Spreads

Just like most things, this depends on the account you are using, we have outlined the minimums below.

• Micro: Variable spread from 3 pips
• Standard: Variable spread from 2 pips
• Premium: Variable spread from 1.6 pips
• ECN Pro: Variable spread from 0 pips
• Star VIP: Variable spread from 0 pips

The spreads are variable which means that they are constantly changing and during times of high volatility they can be seen a lot higher than the stated number. It should also be noted that different currency pairs will have different spreads, as an example EURGBP currently has a spread of 2.4 pips while EURNZD has a spread of 5.7 pips.

Minimum Deposit

The minimum requirement to open an account is $5 which will get you the Micro account, once any of the accounts are open, the minimum amount to top up is set at $5. Different payment methods have different minimum deposits though. The minimum deposits are as follows:

• Bitcoin: 0.00040 BTC
• Visa / MasterCard: 5 USD
• Local Banks: 500 INR
• Neteller: 50 USD
• Skrill: 50 USD

Deposit Methods & Costs

There are a few ways to get your funds into Starfinex, you can use Bitcoin, Visa and MasterCard Credit / Debit, Local Banks, Neteller and Skrill. There are no added fees when using any of the deposits, but when using Credit / Debit Cards or Bank Transfer be sure to check with the bank or card processor to see if they have any added transfer fees of their own.

Withdrawal Methods & Costs

You are able to withdraw using Bitcoin, Local Banks, Neteller and Skrill, you are not able to withdraw using Credit or Debit card. The minimum withdrawal amount is $5 for all the methods and there is no added commission or fees from Starfinex, as usual, check with your bank or processor to see if they will charge any incoming transfer fees.

Withdrawal Processing & Wait Time

We did not locate any information relating to withdrawal or processing times, however, depending on the method you are using you can expect withdrawals to take between 1 to 5 business days to fully process.

Bonuses & Promotions

When looking through the accounts pages, it is clear that there are no bonuses or promotions related to these accounts as they all state that there are no flexible bonuses available to the accounts, there are however a few different promotions going on, we will only briefly touch on them as they are not 100% relevant to the accounts we are looking at.

There are two demo contests, however, the pages for them are not loading so we are not able to comment on the conditions or prizes. There is a 20% bonus for people investing in a MAM account, we won’t go into this as we are not focusing on this type of investment in this review.

Educational & Trading Tools

There is an education and also a tools section of the site, the education section ahs some basic information however at the moment the pages don’t seem to be loading properly and are just coming up blank, so we are not able to comment on the quality of the educational material.

In terms of tools, there are some basic ones available, there is an economic calendar to show upcoming news as well as what markets they may affect, there is also a news section and then some calculators such as profit and trading calculators. Free FX trading signals are also provided, which is excellent (provided that they are highly accurate).

Customer Service

If you feel the need to contact Stargfinex, you can do so in a number of different ways, the opening times of the support are not specified however we would expect them to be closed over the weekends and bank holidays just as the markets are. You can use the online submission to fill in your query and you should then get a reply via email, there is also a postal address along with a number of emails.

Address: 9th floor, Kham Thien Building,195 Kham Thien, Dong Da, HaNoi
Emails:
[email protected]
[email protected]
[email protected]

Demo Account

Demo accounts are available, you can sign up for one using a simple sign up form. When opening an account you can choose a few different options, the base currency of EUR, USD or GBP, although the main account sonly have USD available, you can then select leverage up to 1:1000, again the main accounts only go as high as 1:400. You can then select a balance between 100 and 5,000 units. We do not know which of the accounts the trading conditions mimic and we also do not know if there is an expiration on the demo account.

Demo accounts are great as they usually allow new traders to test the markets and conditions while allowing existing traders to test new strategies without risking their own capital.

Countries Accepted

The following statement is present on the Starfinex website: “Forex Trading is not allowed in some countries, before investing your money, make sure whether your country is allowing this or not.” This isn’t the most helpful of information so if you are interested in signing up we would recommend getting in contact with the customer service team to see if you are eligible for an account before signing up.

Conclusion

Starfinex offers a wide range of accounts each with varying trading conditions, the conditions in the first couple accounts are a little expensive with spreads starting from 3 pips, however, as the accounts go up in tiers their costs come down to an acceptable ECN and VIP account. There is a slight lack in tradable assets, it would be good to see some additional ones added, in terms of deposits and withdrawals there are enough methods to allow most traders to participate and there are no added fees for depositing or withdrawing which is good. The main concern is the fact that some pages of the site are not loading properly, apart from that they seem like a competent broker.

Prime Markets is a forex and CFD broker based in Saint invent and the Grenadines, they are a firm offering free capital to those that want to trade, as well as offering more traditional broker services. They pride themselves on their competitive pricing in regards to spreads and commissions, in this review we will be looking into the services being offered so you can decide if they are the right broker for you.

Account Types

Three different accounts each with differing requirements to open and different trading conditions to offer, here is what we know about each one.

Standard Account: The standard account requires a minimum deposit of at least $2,000, it can be in a base currency of USD, EUR, GBP, CHF or JPY. It has MetaTrader 4 as its trading platform and has a minimum trade size of 0.1 lots for forex or 1 lot for CFDs. It allows for advanced charting, trailing stops and the use of expert advisors, the accounts leverage can be selected up to 1:100. There is no added commission on this account.

ECN Account: The ECN account requires a minimum deposit of $50,000 which will price out a lot of newer traders. The account can be in USD, EUR, GBP, CHF or JPY and it has spreads starting as low as 0.2 pips. Leverage can be up to 1:100 and the minimum trade size is 0.1 lots for forex and 1 lot for CFDs. It allows for advanced charting, trailing stops and the use of expert advisors and, there is no dealing desk execution.

No Cash Deposit Account: This account does not need a cash deposit as Prime MArkets will give you capital to trade with, however, they do not indicate how much it is. It can have a base currency of USD, EUR, GBP, CHF or JPY. It has MetaTrader 4 as its trading platform and has a minimum trade size of 0.1 lots for forex or 1 lot for CFDs. It allows for advanced charting, trailing stops and the use of expert advisors, the accounts leverage can be selected up to 1:100. There is no added commission on this account.

Platforms

Just the one platform on offer, the good news is that it is the popular MetaTrader 4 platform, so let’s look at what this offers.

MetaTrader 4 (MT4): Prime Markets MT4 Client Terminal is designed to optimize trading performance by delivering a user-friendly and feature-loaded trading environment that can be customized to meet your personal strategy & trading requirements. The MT4 Client Terminal is the optimal trading platform for both novice and advanced traders looking to gain a competitive edge. Advanced charting technology combined with modern order-management tools helps traders to monitor and control their positions easily and quickly.

Key Features:

• Market Watch Window
• Navigator Window
• Multiple Order Types
• 85 Pre-Installed Indicators
• Variety of Analysis Tools
• Multiple Chart Setups
• Automated Trading
• Order Execution Capabilities

Leverage

Leverage on all accounts can be up to 1:100, it is flexible so you can select how much you want when opening up an account, you can also change it when you want if you are not sure how you can get in contact with the customer service team to perform the change for you.

Trade Sizes

Trade sizes for Forex pairs start at 0.1 lots (known as a mini lot) and go up in increments of 0.1 lots so the next trade would be 0.2 lots and then 0.3 lots. If trading CFDs then the trade sizes start at 1 lot.

There is a little discrepancy though as the product specification PDF states that the minimum trade size is 0.01 lots (micro lot) so we are not sure which one is the real number. We are also not sure what the maximum trade size is, whatever it maybe we would recommend not trading in sizes larger than 50 lots, as the bigger a trade becomes the harder it is for the markets or liquidity provider to execute the trade quickly and without any slippage.

Trading Costs

Prime Markets mention low commissions on their marketing, however looking through the site we can not see anything to do with commissions at all, considering there is an ECN account we are fairly sure that commissions will be on that account, but we just don’t know how much, it can be a bit suspicious that it isn’t advertised, because if a broker was proud of their low commissions, you would advertise what they are. The other accounts use a spread based system and so there are no added commissions on those accounts.

There are also swap charges which are for holding trades overnight, they can be both positive or negative and can be viewed within the MetaTraddre4 trading platform.

Assets

Prime MArkets have broken down their assets into 4 different categories, the first being Forex currency pairs, there are major pairs, minor pairs and a small selection of exotic pairs, some of them include the likes of EURUSD, AUDJPY, GBPPLN and, USDRUB. Next up are Indices, there are quite a few available including FTSE 100, SPX 500, DOW 30 and, IBEX 35. There are 5 different commodities Gold and Silver are available, tradable against both USD and EUR, then there is also US WTI Oil. Finally, there are shares, a selection of US Shares, German shares, and French Shares. Some of them include Apple, Facebook, Siemens, and Vivendi.

Spreads

Spreads seem to be starting at around 1.4 pips which is reasonable, the spreads are variable which means they move with the markets when there is a lot of volatility then they are often seen bigger. Different instruments also have different starting spreads so while EURUSD may have a starting spread of 1.4 pips, other instruments like EURAUD have a starting spread of 3.8 pips.

Minimum Deposit

You are able to open an account without a deposit however we are still unsure of the exact terms of how that works. In order to open a funded account, you will need a deposit of at least $2,000 for the standard account or $50,000 for the ECN account both of which are quite high starting amounts and could price out a number of newer traders.

Deposit Methods & Costs

Unfortunately, there does not appear to be any information around deposit methods or the fees that come with them. The terms of use also do not mention them which is a real shame, as a forex broker deals with our money, knowing how they will deal with it and also any costs related to it is vital for us to know, so not having that information available can really put off potential clients.

Withdrawal Methods & Costs

The same goes for withdrawal methods and fees. There is no information available so it is not something that we are able to comment on at the moment.

Withdrawal Processing & Wait Time

Just like the previous 2 sections, there is no information so we are not able to make a comment or judgment on this part of the review, apart from the fact that this information should have been available and easily accessible.

Bonuses & Promotions

We could not locate any information surrounding bonuses or promotions so at the time of writing this review it does not appear that there are any running. If you are looking for bonuses you could always get in contact with the customer service team to see if they have any upcoming bonuses or promotions planned. There is a bonus PDF at the bottom of the page relating to a deposit bonus, however, we would no tell if this was an active bonus or just an out of date document.

Educational & Trading Tools

There are a few basic articles surrounding Forex and CFD trading, but not much else in the way of educational tools. Trading tools are limited to those that are built into the trading platform. The addition of a bit more in this area would be nice to see.

Customer Service

Prime Markets have made it easy to get in touch with them, you can do it in a number of different ways. There is a phone number and email address for various different departments such as Sales, Support, and Partnerships so you can get in touch directly with the department you need. There is also a physical address available and if you are on social media, you could tweet at them on Twitter.

Demo Account

Demo accounts are available and have the following features: $100,000 to start up your virtual account or adjust the amount to your preference, get firsthand experience of the sophisticated MT4 Platform, simulated market conditions with live spreads & prices, accessible for new traders to develop their trading knowledge, great for experienced traders to practice trading strategies and risk-free with only virtual funds used – real funds are not needed in demo. There is no mention of how long the accounts last though which would be nice to know as some brokers are putting time limits that cause the demo accounts to expire.

Countries Accepted

We could not locate the information surround who can and cannot sign up, so if you are interested we would recommend getting in contact with the customer service team to check if you are eligible for an account or not.

Conclusion

Prime markets started out well offering decent trading conditions and options, however, that quickly fell apart when we started looking at the deposit and withdrawal methods, there is no information available at all which is one of the biggest letdowns a broker that provides, for that matter alone we can not recommend Prime Markets as a broker to use at this point in time.

OMC Markets is a trading platform based in Sofia, they aim to build trust and relationships with their clients and partners, continuously develop and improve their software and organizational processes, and to constantly strive to improve. In this review, we will be looking into the services being offered to see if they achieve this and so you can decide if they are the right broker for you.

Account Types

There are 6 different accounts on offer, each with slightly different features, however, the features offered are not related to trading conditions, however, let us see what they are.

Basic Account: A minimum deposit of $250, a 30% welcome bonus, 24/7 support, access to the education center, daily market review, PRO webinars and, price alerts.

Bronze Account: A minimum deposit of $10,000, a 40% welcome bonus, 24/7 support, access to the education center, daily market review, PRO webinars, price alerts and, access to a junior account manager.

Silver Account: A minimum deposit of $25,000, a 60% welcome bonus, 24/7 support, access to the education center, daily market review, PRO webinars, price alerts and, access to a senior account manager.

Gold Account: A minimum deposit if $50,000, an 80% welcome bonus, 24/7 support, access to the education center, daily market review, PRO webinars, price alerts, access to a VIP account manager and a personalized trading strategy.

Platinum Account: A minimum deposit of $100,000, a 100% welcome bonus, 24/7 support Education center Daily market review PRO webinars Price alerts, access to a VIP account manager and a personalized trading strategy.

VIP Account: This account is for exclusive clients only, in order to access it you will need to contact your account manager.

Platforms

OMC Markets use their own trading platform, they do not provide much information about it, what we do know is that it is an online WebTrader, apart from that we do not know much about it.

Leverage

Available leverage is not mentioned on the site so unfortunately, we cannot comment on this section of the review.

Trade Sizes

We do not know what the minimum trade size it, but we do know that the maximum trade size is between 250 currency and 1,500 currency depending on the method used and instrument traded.

Trading Costs

It is unknown what the trading costs are as they are not mentioned on the site, and without a demo, account to test the software we can not find out that way either.

Assets

There isn’t a full breakdown of assets, instead, the asset overview page simply states that there are over 1,000 different financial assets available to trade. This includes forex currency pairs, indices, commodities, and stocks. We would give some examples but there isn’t much mentioned on the site, it seems like there was meant to be a full breakdown of assets but the page is not loading correctly due to an error in the coding of the page.

Spreads

As we do not have the information around the assets, we unfortunately also do not have the information about spreads, we suspect they were meant o load with the assets but due to the error, they are also not loading.

Minimum Deposit

The minimum deposit available is 250 EUR, USD or GBP. This is the minimum for all deposits including account opening and top-ups.

Deposit Methods & Costs

OMC Markets only has two methods for depositing,m these are Bank Wire Transfer and Credit / Debit Card. There isn’t any mention of any fees so it is unknown if this is present for deposits, be sure to check with your own bank or card issuer to see if they add any fees of their own.

It is strange as at the bottom of the page there is a lot of images of various finance processors, but no mention of them elsewhere on the site, so we are not sure if they are usable or not.

 

Withdrawal Methods & Costs

The same two methods are available for withdrawal, these are Bank Wire Transfer and Credit / Debit Card. There are no added fees for withdrawing with OMC Markets, however, be sure to check with your own bank or card issuer to see if they add any fees of their own.

Withdrawal Processing & Wait Time

OMC Markets will process withdrawal requests within 2 working days, the amount of time it takes for you to receive your funds will depend on the method used. Credit card withdrawals can take between 5 – 10 working days. Bank Wire Transfers can take between 5 to 9 working days.

Bonuses & Promotions

There is a deposit bonus available with all account types, the amount you get varies depending on the account and deposit amount. You can receive up to 100% deposit bonus, in order to convert the bonus funds into real funds you must trade a certain volume, you receive Volume x 0.0025 as points each time you trade, you must make 12.5% of the bonus funds in points in order to convert them into withdrawable funds, an example: When a bonus of €100 is granted 12.5 points must be collected hence a trading volume of €5000 must be reached before any withdrawals from your account can be made. The calculation is as follows: €5000 X 0.0025 = 12.5 Points. This is extremely expensive and difficult to achieve.

Educational & Trading Tools

The education center is full of information, the first section is around videos, which unfortunately is empty and there are no videos there at this point in time. The Ebook section has a number of different books covering various subjects such as How Bitcoin Works, Mining and other crypto-related things. The news section has recent news events, it looks like it is taken from another site but we cannot be sure. Next up are some charts where you can see up to daye forex charts and finally there is a list of current currency prices.

Customer Service

The contact us page offers a number of different ways to get in touch, you can use the online submission for to fill in your query and then get a reply via email, you can also use a number of different telephone number,s but we do not know what the difference between the three numbers are. There are also 4 different email addresses for Support, Compliance, Compliance Main, and Information. The support department is open Money to Friday 8:00 GMT to 2:00 GMT.

Demo Account

There doesn’t seem to be a demo account on offer, or at least we could not find any information about one. This is a shame as demo accounts allow potential new clients to test out the trading conditions and servers while it allows current clients to test out new strategies without risking any of their capital. This is an area that should be invested in and demo accounts should be made available.

Countries Accepted

The information about which countries are accepted and which are not is not present on the website, so if you are interested in joining, be sure to get in contact with the customer service team to check if you are eligible for an account or not.

Conclusion

There is a lot of information not available to us which is a little concerning, there are also some discrepancies in the information provided, such as the case with the deposit and withdrawal methods, with there being multiple processors shown at the bottom of the site, but only 2 mentioned anywhere in the information provided. Trading costs are also not available, but that may be due to the way the OMC Markets platform works if you are looking for a more traditional trading experience you may need to look elsewhere.

24option is a well-known broker that used to deal with Binary Options and now as CFD retail broker. Currently, the broker is regulated by the International Financial Services Commission (IFSC) of Belize, a regulation with mild authorization and requirements many offshore brokers utilize. 24Option uses the CySEC regulator under another domain -24option.com/eu, operated by Rodeler Ltd for clients in the EU. The company behind the 24Option international is Richfield Capital Limited registered as an investment firm in Belize. Wonderbridge Services Limited is the company that facilitates financial transactions and brokers usually do this kind of circumventions once their chargeback percentages go high enough to become blacklisted.

It is no wonder this is the case, 24Option has one of the worst user ratings on reputable specialized benchmark sites, and is also one of the biggest companies in the industry. With dominant black and gold color, the website design is not complicated with just 5 sections, one being the web trader. Other domains owned by this group are GrandOption.com, ZoneOptions.com, quickoption.com, 24fx.com, binaryoption-affiliate.com, rodeler.com, richfield-trading.com, and 24OptionsOnline.com.

The homepage has carefully crafted marketing mix to target the male audience that is not risk-averse. The slider will showcase the Juventus football club partnership, marijuana companies stocks trading, 50% bonus and the leverage for the cryptocurrency. All of these are hot buzz words for CFD trading, and 24Option is very good at using this fact. Transparency could be an issue as there are no products listing with the swaps or other trading conditions info.

The web trader is accessible with a simple click without the need of registration where it does show key additional information aside from the bid/ask price, by clicking the “i”. It is noticeable that the broker has many fee structures and also documents like the “Complaints Procedure for Clients”, “Max Trade Size”, “Trading Alerts” etc, all visually hard to read using awkward letters spacing.

This 24Option review will reveal what traders can use out of this broker given all the negative reports.

Account Types

24option has 4 account types scaled by the minimum deposit requirements, spreads values and some other additional values. They are named Basic, Gold, Platinum, and VIP. The Basic account has the smallest minimum deposit requirement but also the widest spreads offered. Moreover, the account has only one free withdrawal, one basic lesson, no webinars, and two Daily Trading Central SMS Alerts. To many, these additional services would not be necessary but when it comes to spreads, they are one of the most important conditions for scalpers or other high-frequency traders.

Gold Account has a further reduction in the spreads, but steep higher deposit requirement with additional benefits like 1 Monthly Free Withdrawal, 2 Daily Trading Central SMS Alerts, 2 basic lessons, etc.

Platinum Account requires a double deposit for the Gold account, the spreads are not 2 times tighter though. Additional benefits are increased to 3 advanced lessons, two monthly webinars, 4 Daily Trading Central SMS Alerts and 3 Monthly Free Withdrawals.
The final, VIP account has no fees for withdrawals, 7 Daily Trading Central SMS Alerts, 5 Monthly Webinars, 5 Advanced Lessons, the lowest spreads and a minimum deposit requirement few traders can afford. As for what the “lessons” are about, their quality or topics cannot be evaluated as nothing is described on the website.

The leverage level is the same for all types, also there is a notification that the minimum deposit is subject to change. If you select a country in the EU, you will be notified to be redirected to the EU 24option domain under CySEC. The account currency is determined based on the country you select during the registration.

Platforms

24Option offers the MetaTrader 4 platform from MetaQuotes and their own easily accessible Web trader platform also called the Scipio Trading Platform. The MT4 is the world’s most used platform for retail CFD trading with purchased licenses by many brokers, although new licenses for the MT4 have been discontinued in favor of the newer MT5. It is available for Windows, Mac and smart devices running on iOS or Android.

24Option will not allow you to download the MT4 client without registering for an account first. Once the registration is complete the MT4 will show two servers, RichFieldCatital demo and RichFieldCapital Live, the demo has a ping rate of 89ms and live 51ms, which is very good. The default template will show 4 major forex pairs charts set on the H4 timeframe suggesting the MT4 is by default settings. About window shows Richfield Capital Limited company registered in Belize and the lasts version of the MT4 client.

The symbols list shows only Forex related instruments grouped into Forex majors, Forex1, Forex2, and EUR/USD. As we are informed by 24Options, more assets are available in MT4 then in the Web trader platform. The instrument specification window does not show all the information needed. What is missing are trade sizes, swaps, order types, and other trading info. The execution time is around 100ms without deviations.

The Scipio Trading Platform for 24Opition is an easy to use platform with simplicity in mind for beginner traders. Simplicity does not always mean a lack of features, this platform does not support automated trading or custom made indicators but is satisfactory for most that do not have complicated strategies in mind. The platform sections are not resizeable or modular, but the chart window can be opened in full-screen mode. Chart types available are Heaikin Ashi, Bars, classic Candlestick, Line, Area which is basically Line chart with a down shadow, and Dots style. Timeframes are similar as with the MT4 – 1M, 5M, 15M, 30M, H1, Daily, Weekly, and Monthly, only H4 is missing. Zoom in and panning is supported and the range of the indicators available to add is as with the MT4 defaults.

There are over 50 indicators and they are grouped into Trends, Oscillators, Customized, and Bill Williams (3 total) categories. The Customized category does not mean you can insert custom indicators, just some options where you can customize some chart elements appearance, such as the price historic levels. The indicators have settings where you can adjust them to your trading setup although it is limited as with the MT4 default indicators. The sentiment indicator is placed right next to the chart window in a colored bar-style resembling a thermometer. The “i” button will show the exact percentages of buyers and sellers at the current price of an asset. The ordering section contains simple Buy and Sell buttons with options to execute pending orders, described as “Open trade when rate reach” for easier understanding.

Stop Loss and Take Profit orders are also offered and calculated in two ways, in pips or rate. The instrument specification can be seen by clicking the “i” button next to the asset name. Here, traders will see trading sizes, leverage, contract size, swaps, trading time and also margin requirements in the asset currency and the account currency. Stops Level is not presented but according to our testing, it is under normal levels, like 10 points for Forex majors. Asset Watchlist is on the far left featuring Ask/Bid prices, percentage change, and High/Low range. The spread is shown between the Buy/Sell buttons. The asset search box does not exist but a filter is available that can help navigate through the instrument categories.

Selecting an instrument as a favorite will also enable traders to have their instruments list from the Favorites category in the filter. Positions and stats window will show Open Trades with columns showing the swaps, Profit, lots and so on. Trading History tab is also available. Economic Calendar is integrated with very good filtering options and design. Traders can choose the country, event impact, timeframe, and local timezone. Clicking on the event will open the description with previous, forecast and actual figures, but without a historic values chart. The most interesting section is the Daily Market Update featuring Trading Central analysis on many assets. It is updated daily, the content is listed in a single page without any options to filter, so traders interested in the Gold analysis, for example, will have to scroll, which may be inconvenient, especially because the window is rather small and not resizable.

The analysis charts from Trading Central are also too small, although they are not very detailed. Note that the analysis is very basic, stating the Pivot, short advice, alternative scenario, short comment and investment time horizon. Indicators used are mostly RSI and Moving Averages, with support and resistance lines. Margin levels, Balance, Equity, etc, are all presented like in the MT4.

Leverage

Depending on the client country, 24Option will redirect you to the International domain or the EU domain. Therefore, the leverage can be 1:30 for Retail clients and 1:400 for professional clients if under the CySEC, EU regulation adhering to ESMA directives. For clients out of the EU region, they are redirected to the international 24Option domain under the regulation by IFSC of Belize, where the leverage is 1:400 for all account types. Of course, the leverage will vary depending on the asset.

For the major Forex currency pairs, the leverage is maintained at 1:400 level but for exotics, it is 1:100. Cryptocurrencies have 1:10 leverage as shown in the Web trader platform. Precious metals have mixed levels, Gold and Silver are at 1:200 while Platinum and Palladium have 1:100 leverage. Crude and Brent Oil assets are set to 1:200 while other commodities have 1:100. For Indexes, the leverage can be from 1:30, 1:50 to 1:200 depending on the tier.

Trade Sizes

24Option offers micro lot sizes or 0.01 lots for all offered assets. The maximum trade size for major forex assets is 30 lots, while for exotics is 10 lots. Volume steps are also 0.01 lots allowing precise addition of trades known as Scaling In and Out. Cryptocurrencies’ trade size is uniform and is 0.01 lots minimum and 20 lots max.

Note that cryptos also have a mini lot of contract variants but they are not standard as the contract size is 1 unit, which is normally regarded as default in the industry. Non-mini cryptocurrency assets have 100 units for one contract (lot). We are unsure of the purpose of this kind of deviation from the standard and traders need to pay attention not to open an extremely large position.

Mini crypto assets have an “m” before the currency designation. Precious metals have mixed trade sizes, Gold and Silver have 100 lots maximum while Palladium and Platinum have 20 lots. Most of the Index range has 50 lots maximum trade size.

As for the Margin requirements, all account types have a 100% Margin Call level as stated on the 24Option’s website. The broker also states in their Margin legal document that the Margin Call is 125% and the Stop Out Is between 20 to 100% level according to the table. On some other lines, the Margin Call is 100%. 24Option is not obliged to notify the trader if their margin level breaches a 100% threshold. It is advised to keep this ration above 100% at all times.

Trading Costs

24option does not charge commissions for trading. As for swaps, they are calculated in currencies applicable for the asset traded. Forex currency pairs have swaps presented in the web Trader platform. To give some insight, EUR/USD has -9.49 EUR on long and -2.74 EUR on a short position, USD/JPY -3.01 for long and -9.86 USD for short position per lot, AUD/CHF -0.68 AUD for long and -10.27 short, and NZD/CAD -4.79 NZD short and -0.68 NZD short. None of the currency pairs have a positive swap, which means the broker has integrated additional costs for traders that hold positions overnight.

For the exotic pairs, the swap is higher as expected, for example, USD/TRY has -58.90 USD long position swap charge and -36.99 USD for short, EUR/PLN -15.07 long and -6.85 EUR for short, USD/INR -19.59 USD long and -2.33 USD short, USD/MXN -26.71 USD long and -4.79 USD short, and the biggest swap is for the USD/TRY with -58.90 USD for long and -36.99 USD for short. These swaps rates may not be favorable for mid and long term traders. As for cryptocurrencies, the swaps are more extreme.

For example, “BTC.mEUR” (note the “m” signifying the 24Option mini CFD as only they have 1 unit contract size) has -7.23 USD on both sides, Litecoin.mUSD -0.07 USD on both and ETH.mUSD -0.24 USD. Precious metals also have all negative swaps, Gold is set to -15.89 USD for long and -3.18 USD for short, Palladium -21.16 USD for long and -3.02 USD for short and Platinum -12.38 USD on the long and -1.77 USD on the short position. All swaps are tripled on Wednesdays.

The inactivity fee 24Option charges is among the highest we have seen in the industry, and one of the most aggressive. The scheme is published in the General Fees document available on the website. The whole document is unprofessionally hard to read, probably deliberately to turn the readers away. The fee will increase after each month according to the following: 1 to 2months -80 EUR or equivalent, .2 – 6 months -120EUR, 6 – 12 months – 500 EUR. Over 12 months the account is dormant. Dormancy fees are 1,000 EUR or equivalent amount per month. Moreover, if the client wishes to reactivate his account, a fee of 2,000 EUR is charged.

Assets

24Option has a very good range of available assets, spreading across 7 categories, Forex, Commodities, Indexes, Stocks, ETFs, Precious metals, and Cryptocurrencies. Forex range is very good consisting of 46 currency pairs, all majors and crosses included. The broker extends this range with the following exotics: EUR/HUF, EUR/SEK, USD/SEK, EUR/NOK, USD/HUF, EUR/DKK, USD/HKD, USD/NOK, EUR/TRY, USD/TRY, USD/DKK, USD/ZAR, EUR/PLN, USD/PLN, USD/SGD, USD/INR, USD/MXN, and USD/RUB.

Precious metals and general metals are at maximum possible range. All precious are listed, Gold, Silver, Platinum, and Palladium with the addition of commodity class Aluminium, Zinc, Nickel, Copper all denominated in the USD. For all metal traders, this is the ultimate offer.

Commodities are also numerous. A total of 15 are listed excluding the metals mentioned above. Notable are Rice, Livestock, Cotton, Coffee, Cocoa, Orange Juice, Milk, Gasoline, and Sugar. Specialty traders will like this range.

The indices range is mixed with the futures CFDs making a total of 22 instruments placed in this category. The symbols representing each index can be different than what is standard. Uncommon Indexes are TA-35 Index (Tel Aviv index), FTSE MIB, IBEX 35, US Dollar Index Futures, MSCI Tadawul 30 Index, Jamaica Stock Exchange Index, OMX Stockholm 30, and some other ETF indexes.

Stocks range is filled with rarities and popular stocks like the cannabis pharmaceutical companies. These are Weed and Aurora listed on the Web Trader platform. Other big companies’ names are present from all economic sectors. The range is very diversified.

ETFs category is unfortunately completely shutoff since mid-2019. The only ETFs available for trading are inside the Index category. There are 5 in total that we have found actual.
The Cryptocurrency range is good enough with multiple currency quotations, GBP, USD, and EUR. The major 4 are listed with the addition of Dash, Litecoin, BTC Gold, Ethereum Classic, Ripple, Monero, and Stellar. The list is longer than the actual coins range as they are also offered in “mini” contracts featuring 1 unit per contract, which is, actually, the standard in the industry. Cryptocurrencies are available for trading during the weekends.

Spreads

The spreads are a floating type and their levels depend on the selected account type. According to the broker account types table, the spread for EUR/USD starts from 2.5 pips for the Basic Account to 1.1 pips for the VIP. GBP/USD starts from 2.8 pips to 1.4 pips for the VIP and USD/JPY from 2.8 pips to 1.4.

What we have encountered in the Web Trader platform is 4.4 pips for the EUR/USD, 5.9 pips for USD/JPY and 21.4 pips for the GBP/USD. Cryptocurrencies spreads are better than with other assets, for the BTC/USD it is around $36 or 3624 points, ETH/USD is at 121 points or $1.21, Ripple is at 33 points and Litecoin at 138 points. Note that the spreads will rarely be as presented on the website according to our readings and expect 1 to 2 pips higher for each account type.

Minimum Deposit

The minimum deposit for the Basic is $250, Gold Account requirement jumps to $5,000, Platinum 10,000 and the VIP account requires at least $50,000. We have noticed that there is great flexibility to these amounts as, for example, traders registered from Russia will have local currency accounts or in Russian Ruble. The minimum is then 10,000 rubles or roughly $160 for the Basic account. These packages are not offered when making a deposit and they could be just a part of unreal marketing. Therefore, other countries will have different minimum deposit requirements.

Deposit Methods & Costs

24Option offers more than an average number of deposit channels. Some of them may not be available in all countries. What we have noticed are Credit/debit cards, Wire Transfers, Neteller, Skrill, and Qiwi, and PerfectMoney. The broker does not charge any fees for deposits.

Withdrawal Methods & Costs

24Options is harsh when it comes to fees, it is the same case for withdrawals. As stated in the General fees document, the broker reserves the right to charge a withdrawal fee at an amount equal to 80 EUR or equivalent. The fees for withdrawals vary depending on the channel used and are 3.5% for Debit/Credit cards, 30 CHF, 30 USD, 30EUR, 1800 RUB, 30 GBP, 3000 JPY or 183 CNY for Wire transfers depending on the country, 3.5% for Netteler, 2% for PerfectMoeny and Skrill, 3.5% for Qiwi, and Webmoney fee is $0.9. For VIP account holders every withdrawal is free, and for other account types, there is a monthly quota already mentioned in the Account Types section.

Withdrawal Processing & Wait Time

The processing is done only during the broker business hours which are Monday-Friday, 9:00 am-6:00 pm GMT+2. The exact timeframe for any of the withdrawal channels is not disclosed. 24Options remain vague with statements like “aim to process all withdrawal requests as quickly as possible and without undue delays” and that it depends on the AML procedures.

Bonuses & Promotions

24Option currently offers the 50% bonus scheme to live account traders. Up to 50% of the Deposit amount or up to $5,000, whichever is the lowest. The broker has a special legal document about the bonus conditions. Clients can cancel the bonus at any time. The required trading volume formula is Bonus in USD*10,000, time-limited to 90 days. For example, a trader who deposited $5000 will receive a $2500 bonus and for the bonus to be released, a trader needs to trade 500 currency pair lots (100,000) in 90 days.

Educational & Trading Tools

Aside from the mentioned tools integrated into the 24Optoin web platform, there is a dedicated Educational section and an Assets calculator. The Educational section contains the Daily Market report, Trading Central, Daily Market Analysis, FAQs, Asset Index, Technical Analysis, Fundamental Analysis, Economic Calendar, Advanced Interactive Ebook, VOD and Webinars. One of the most useful sections is the Daily Market Report which contains a nice overview of global markets across categories, with short descriptive content but without any backstories.

Daily Market Analysis is the same feedback from the Trading Central service as within the Web trader platform. Other sections are not worth mentioning except for the Ebook. The Ebook contains 34 pages with elementary trading topics like Trading Psychology, Capital Management, Technical Analysis and similar. Most of the content is not deep enough for anyone serious about studying the market. The Ebook is free and contains some exercises after each chapter.

The backbone of 24Option tools/information values comes from the Trading Central. This service is well known for its technical analysis available for 24Opitn clients, even on the demo account.

Customer Service

24Option does not have a phone line for contact. The clients can still request a callback by email or chat. The chat service is not 24/7, their work time is Monday-Friday – 8 AM – midnight; Sunday – 10 AM – 5 PM Cyprus time. The staff is reachable after a minute or two waiting, the response is not full enough, in our opinion, and it seems they will push for direct phone contact by their sales agents on the first opportunity.

Demo Account

The demo account is easy to open for the Web trader, for the MT4 platform it is hidden. MT4 requires login details, the account ID and password. These are not presented once you register with a 24opition demo account, just your credentials for the website portal, and they are not the same for the MT4. The portal is not providing you with any information for the MT4, just to deposit and verify your account by uploading the required documents. Your account ID is not related to the MT4.

It is not possible to open the demo within the MT4 platform. To circumvent this issue that prevents you to try MT4 demo, you need to open a real account from the MT4 selection menu and type in the fields required. Once done you will be provided with MT4 account credentials. The account will not have any funds and therefore it is almost useless. This procedure is not standard by any mean nor it is logical. The reason behind this is probably to turn traders away from opening the demo accounts and push the real.

As we have approached 24Option support about this issue, we are informed that the MT4 demo is available only if you register for a live account, or in other words, you cannot try their service for free, the only free demo is available on the Web Trader platform. The demo account will reflect the trading conditions of a Platinum account type.

Countries Accepted

The broker does not disclose the list of blocked countries. What we have been able to obtain from their support are these countries: Canada, Israel, Iraq, Belgium, Bosnia And Herzegovina, Australia, U.S.A, Virgin Island, Puerto Rico, America Samoa, Algeria, Ecuador, Iran, Serbia, Myanmar, North Korea, China, Panama, Uganda, Ukraine, New Zealand, and Japan.

Conclusion

This section of the 24Option review will disclose other important information for visitors that seek to open an account. 81.27% of retail investor accounts lose money when trading CFDs with this provider under the EU domain. This percentage is higher than the industry average of 77% and is among the top tier. 24options and the brand parent companies are fined several times.

On January 27, 2016, CySEC fined Rodeler Ltd. €156,000 for multiple violations, some of them are for “Failure to adhere to the interests of clients when providing bonus promotions”, “Failure to assess the eligibility of its clients to engage in investment activities” and lack of compliance controls. The Belgian Financial Services and Markets Authority (FSMA) fined 24options €140,000 for marketing breaches. In August 2016, the French AMF has banned 24Options from doing business in France. Among the reasons was not acting honestly or fairly in the interest of its clients.

This list of unethical behavior is definitely cause for concern. On the other side, 24Option provides better than average information to traders by utilizing the Trading Central service for free.

TopTrade is a world-leading online trading provider, giving you access to opportunities across thousands of financial markets through our intuitive platforms. That is what they say on the website, this review is intending to look at the services on offer to see if they really do provide world-class service and to make it easier for you to decide if this is the right broker for you.

Account Types

There are three accounts available from TopTrade, each having their own features, trading conditions arent really mentioned around the account page so we will be looking into them throughout this review, so let’s see what the accounts are.

Silver Account: This account comes with daily market briefings, access to web, tablet and mobile platform,s video tutorials, excluding Ebooks, 24-hour trading assistance, expert run webinars and seminars, a personal a dedicated account manager, value-added risk management tools, rapid, reliable withdrawals and payments, trading courses with your account executive, real-time remote assistance and leverage up to 1:500.

Gold Account: The gold account comes with daily market briefings, access to web, tablet and mobile platform,s video tutorials, excluding Ebooks, 24-hour trading assistance, expert run webinars and seminars, a personal a dedicated account manager, value-added risk management tools, rapid, reliable withdrawals and payments, trading courses with your account executive, real-time remote assistance and leverage up to 1:500, SMS news and signals, premium daily research and analysis, fixed spreads, live coverage on market watch, direct access to the trading room and their research and access to a panel of experts.

Platinum Account: The platinum account comes with daily market briefings, access to web, tablet and mobile platform,s video tutorials, excluding Ebooks, 24-hour trading assistance, expert run webinars and seminars, a personal a dedicated account manager, value-added risk management tools, rapid, reliable withdrawals and payments, trading courses with your account executive, real-time remote assistance and leverage up to 1:500, SMS news and signals, premium daily research and analysis, fixed spreads, live coverage on market watch, direct access to the trading room and their research, access to a panel of experts, premium customer care and 1 on 1 market strategy sessions.

Platforms

TopTrade market their trading platforms as their own, however on opening we can find that it is simply MetaTrader 4, so what does this platform offer? The multi-interface platform is well-known for its functionality, limited requotes, low latency and optimal pricing. The platform offers professional style, interactive charts, modern technical indicators and live streaming quotes via its easy-to-navigate interface. Traders can tailor their trading actions to suit specific preferences by customizing the screen. It can display any chosen Expert Advisors, along with preferred assets and any preferred candlestick, bar, or line chart display options.

Leverage

Leverage can go as high 1:500 on all account types., Leverage can be selected when opening up an account and should you wish to change it on an already open account, you can do so by getting in contact with the customer service team with your request.

Trade Sizes

It is not specifically stated on the site but it seems that the minimum trade size available is 0.01 lots and goes up in increments of 0.01 lots so the next trade would be 0.02 lots and then 0.03 lots. There is no mention of a maximum trade size so whatever it is, we would recommend not trading in sizes larger than 50 lots, as the bigger a trade becomes the harder it is for the markets or liquidity provider to execute the trade quickly and without any slippage. There is also no mention of the maximum number of trades allowed open at any one time.

Trading Costs

TopTrade does not add any commissions to their trades, instead they make all their profits through the spreads, an aspect that we will look into later in this review. There are swap charges though, these are interest charges that are incurred for holding trades overnight, they can be both negative or positive and can usually be viewed from within the trading platform of choice.

Assets

Sadly there doesn’t seem to be a full product specification available from TopTrade so there is just a little information available for each asset type. There are Forex pairs, no mention of how many there are or which ones there are though, the forex majors such as EURUSD will surely be available though. There are also commodities that include items such as Coffee, Corn, and energy products like oil and natural gas.

No specifics were given though. CFDs are also there, not any specifics but examples were given in the form of crude oil, gold, and wheat. The last category is the indices, again there is not a full breakdown instead there are just a few different ones mentioned such as the American Dow Jones, the Hong Kong Hang Seng, the German DAX, the British FTSE, the Japanese NIKKEI and many more.

Spreads

Unfortunately, there is no mention of the spreads on the website, there are various statements of tight spreads or low spreads but nowhere does it actually display them, you would have thought that they would include their spreads on their site as a marketing method if they really were low and tight.

Minimum Deposit

The minimum amount that can be deposited to pen up an account is 200 EUR, USD or GBP. There isn’t any mention as to whether subsequent top-up deposits are reduced though, which is the usual case when minimum deposits are more than a couple hundred unite.

Deposit Methods & Costs

The TopTrade FAQ explains how to make a deposit, however, it does not mention the methods available, instead just saying to log in, this is a little disappointing as it is important to potential new clients to know how they can deposit their funds into the broker they are using. There is a mention of banks, separate to the deposit section which indicates to us that bank wire transfer will be one of the available methods for depositing.

The FAQ on the website states that there are no added fees by TopTrade, however, you should always check with your card issuer or bank to see if they add any transfer fees of their own.

Withdrawal Methods & Costs

Just like with the deposits there is no mention of which methods are actually available apart from the note about banks elsewhere on the site, while it is bad not to know how you can deposit, it is worse to not know how you can get your money back out, failing to disclose this information can really put off potential clients.

The FAQ on the website states that there are no added fees by TopTrade, however, you should always check with your card issuer or bank to see if they add any transfer fees of their own.

Withdrawal Processing & Wait Time

Withdrawal requests should be processed within 3 business days, however, this is subject to TopTrade being satisfied with your financial paperwork and ID documentation. It will then take between 1 to 5 working days for your money to be available to you dependant on your processor or bank processing times.

Bonuses & Promotions

We could not locate any information on the website in regards to bonuses or promotions so it does not appear that there are any active ones at the time of writing this review. If you are interested in bonuses then be sure to check back regularly or get in contact with the customer service team to see if there are any upcoming bonuses or promotions.

Educational & Trading Tools

The education section of the site is pretty basic, it is comprised of 4 individual videos, one telling you what ‘CFDs are, one what Commodities are, one what Indices are and finally one simply telling you what the most traded stocks are in the world. Not anything that will make you an expert, if you are looking to learn, you will need to go elsewhere.

In terms of tools, there is a pip calculator which helps you understand what a pip in different instruments is worth, there is also the usual economic calendar which tells you of upcoming news events along with the markets they may affect. Finally, there is something called a Forex Market Review which gives a report on what happened over the markets which can give you ideas of potential future moves.

Customer Service

You can get in touch with TopTrade in a number of ways and their email support is available 24/5 (closed over the weekends), their phone and chat support is available Monday to Friday between 8:00 am GMT +2 and 17:00 PM GMT+2.

You can get in touch using an online submissions form to fill in your query and you should then get a reply back via email. You can also email them directly wither using their support email or their partner email depending on your query. There is then also a phone number should you wish to speak with someone directly over the phone.

Demo Account

We could not locate any information surrounding demo account so it currently does not look like they are being offered, this is a little disappointing as demo accounts can help new traders to test the markets and trading conditions and allows existing clients to test out new strategies without risking their own capital. If demo accounts are in fact not available, this is something TopTrade should look at getting.

Countries Accepted

There is a notice on the website stating: “Products and services may not be available in certain jurisdictions” This isn’t the most helpful so if you are looking to open an account, you should get in contact with the customer service team first to check if you are eligible for an account or not.

Conclusion

TopTrade make a point of saying how they are a world-class broker, however, what we have seen doesn’t give us the same impression, there is a lot of information missing from the website, we have no idea what the spreads are for the account, nor do we know if there are any added commissions. Worse than that is that we do not know how we can even deposit funds into the broker or get them back out if we wanted to, this information is vital and not having it makes it hard to put any trust into the broker, to begin with. Until this information is readily available we can not recommend TopTrade as a broker to sue at this point in time.

We hope you like this Top Trade review. If you did, please be sure to check out some of the other reviews here at Forex Academy to help find the broker that is right for you.

Fort Trades is a Forex broker, stock indices and precious metals created in 2017. This broker offers its customers various types of accounts and leverage as high as 1:500. Accounts can be opened in a variety of currencies, USD, EUR, CAD, AUD, GBP, CHF, NZD, and JPY, and as a novelty, offers accounts denominated in Bitcoin. As a trading platform, it uses MT4, however its Demo version seems to be unavailable. Another issue that surprises us is the high initial deposit requirements they ask to open an account.

Looking at the Fort Trades website, the broker claims that it is a global company based in China, but the address we see is from Hong Kong, specifically this: 1902 Bonham Trade Center, 50 Bonham Strand, Central, Hong Kong. On the other hand, their license comes from Belize, from the International Financial Services Commission (IFSC), so we’re talking about an offshore broker.

Fort Trades also reports that it is regulated by the China Securities Commission (CSRC) and the China Asset Management Association [AMAC, but there is no license number in any case.

ACCOUNT TYPES

Fort Trade surprises us because it offers its customers up to 9 different account types.
All accounts (the broker calls them “investment plans”) are accompanied by monthly earnings percentages ranging from 45% to 85%. We consider that these promises made by the broker are neither realistic nor serious. Let’s not forget that in Forex, the percentage of losing operations ranges between 65-85%, realistically.

Here is a summary of each account:

Fort Micro Account
Minimum Account Funding: $ 10,000
Spreads from 1.5 pips
Minimum Trade: 0.01 (Micro lots)
Leverage: Up to 1:500

Fort Standard Account
Minimum Account Funding: $ 20,000
Spreads from 0 pips
Minimum Trade: 0.01 (Micro lots)
Leverage: Up to 1:500
Standard Commission: $5 per 1,000 USD

Fort Pro Account
Minimum Account Funding: $ 30,000
Spreads: From 1.5 pips (core spreads)
Minimum Trade: 0.10 lot
Leverage: Up to 1:500
Pro Commission: $5 per 5,000 USD

Fort VIP Account
Minimum Account Funding: $ 50,000
Spreads: From 0 pips (core spreads)
Minimum Trade: 0.10 lot
Leverage: Up to 1:200
Commission: $3.5 per 10,000 USD traded

Fort Premium Account
Minimum Account Funding: $ 100,000
Spreads: From 1.5 pips (core spreads)
Minimum Trade: 0.10 lot
Leverage: Up to 1:200
Commission: 10% commission instead of 25%

Fort Gold Account
Minimum Account Funding: $ 250,000
Spreads: From 1.5pips (core spreads)
Minimum Trade: 0.10 lot
Leverage: Up to 1:500
Commission: 10% commission instead of 25%

Fort Mega Account
Minimum Account Funding: $500,000 – 1,000,000
Spreads: From 2.5pips (core spreads)
Minimum Trade: 0.10 lot
Leverage: Up to 1:500
Commission: 10% commission instead of 25%

Fort BTC 1 Account
Minimum Account Funding: 1BTC
Spreads From 0.01 (core spreads)
Minimum Trade: 0.25 lot
Leverage: Up to 1:200
Not reported on the commissions

Fort BTC 2 Account
Minimum Account Funding: 2BTC
Spreads: From 0.01 (core spreads)
Minimum Trade: 0.25 lot
Leverage: Up to 1:200
Not reported on the commissions

PLATFORMS

The broker’s website reports that the platform they use is MT4, but we have not located any download links throughout the web. Fort Trades does not seem to offer free demo accounts, this really leaves a bad impression. All decent brokers offer their potential customers a free demo.

LEVERAGE

Leverage ranges from 1:200 to 1:500 depending on the type of account.

TRADE SIZES

The trade sizes range from 0.01 lots to 0.10 lots if it is an account denominated in currencies. If the account is called in Bitcoins the trade size is 0.25 lots. Margin Call is set to 100% and 50% for All trading plans, Standard accounts. Standard and VIP accounts have a margin call at 100% and 80% stop out.

TRADING COSTS

Depending on the type of account, the trading costs can be up to 5 USD per 1000 USD operated. (See the section “Account Types”).

ASSETS

The Broker reports that the customer can invest in Forex, stock index, and precious metals. Fort Trades does not report the currency pairs available, nor how many stock indices or metals can be traded.

SPREADS

Depending on the type of account, spreads can vary between 0 and 2.5 pips. Spreads do vary by account type, so please refer to the account information to see the starting spread for each.

MINIMUM DEPOSIT

The minimum deposit varies depending on the account type, but the account that requires the least amount is 5,000 USD. We do not understand this kind of high demand.
To know the minimum deposit you require on each of the accounts that Fort Trades offers, see the “Account Types”.

DEPOSIT METHODS & COSTS

The deposit methods available at this broker are Bank transfer, Money Gram, Western Union, Perfect Money, and Bitcoin. Fort Trades does not report the costs inherent in the deposits.

WITHDRAWAL METHODS & COSTS

The terms and conditions inform that withdrawals must be processed by the same system that was used to make the deposit. The broker reports a commission that, we consider abusive, says: Fort Trades will charge you a 20% fee for withdrawals. This is something very unusual in a broker.

WITHDRAWAL PROCESSING & WAIT TIME

The time the bróker takes to process a withdrawal varies between 2 and 5 business days. Once the withdrawal is processed the estimated times are usually instantaneous through ePayments, and may take several days in the case of bank transfers.

BONUSES & PROMOTIONS

All accounts have an economic bonus with the processing of the first deposit. Bonuses currently available in each account are:

• Fort Micro Account: Bonus 55%
• Fort Standard Account: Bonus Up to 10% Insurance
• Fort Pro Account: Bonus $3000 add-on
• Fort VIP Account: Bonus $5,000 add-on
• Fort Premium Account: Bonus $10,000 USD
• Fort Gold Account: Bonus $15,000 USD
• Fort Mega Account: Bonus $20,000 USD

There are no promotions for accounts denominated in Bitcoin.
We have not found any information on how the bonus reported here are materialized.

EDUCATIONAL & TRADING TOOLS

Fort Trades does not have an educational area or trading tools. We think that a broker should have at least an economic news section and an economic calendar on his website. Having said that, they do offer both automated trading and managed account options for those who are interested in a more hands-free approach. Professional traders are also invited to create their own PAMM accounts and invite followers to those accounts. For more information on managed trading, please visit the Fort Trades website.

CUSTOMER SERVICE

There are several ways to access customer service: telephone, email, fax, and a contact form.

Phone: +860-2151-021972
Fax: +860-2151-021972
Email: [email protected] ; [email protected]

DEMO ACCOUNT

Fort Trades does not offer any demo account. We consider this a mistake, as it is very important for the novice trader to be able to practice with the platform to learn how to handle it and gain experience with the trading of the different assets.

COUNTRIES ACCEPTED

Apparently, Fort Trades accepts citizens of any country to open an account with them. We have not found any exceptions in the legal documents.

CONCLUSION

If you’re not accustomed to trading with Forex, it’s important to say that business with offshore brokers can be dangerous. Note the document “Customer Agreement”, as in point 1.2 it says: The Company has the right to file the Customer’s business account with a balance of less than 1 (one) USD $10,000 (ten thousand dollars) if the Customer has no activity in this account during the last three months. We consider this to be a very abusive and ill-considered clause.

The initial investment required seems excessive. The most basic account types that Fort Trades offers require an initial deposit of $5,000 USD. Most brokers, including reliable and regulated brokers, often require a minimum deposit of $100 USD or less to start trading. Without any guarantees in place, $5,000 simply seems too high.

This broker is in fact regulated, so that is certainly a plus. As always, the choice is up to you, but in the case of Fort Trades, we highly recommend that you do your homework and read through any legit online reviews that you can find before signing up.

BDSwiss is a forex broker based in Zurich, Switzerland, however, it is now located in Mauritius and was founded in 2012. Claiming to have over 1 million registered accounts, 30+ billion forex volume per month and 10.2+ million yearly transactions BDSwiss aims to provide competitive trading environments and top quality support. In this review, we will be diving into what BDSwiss really offers so you can decide if they are the right broker for you.

Account Types

There are three main account types on offer from BDSwiss and each offer different features and have different entry requirements, we will take a little look at them below.

Basic Account: The basic account is the entry-level account from BDSwiss, it has spread starting from 1.5 pips and has no commission on CFDs, there is also no subscription plan for this account. There are over 250 different instruments to trade and lot sizes start from 0.01 lots and go up to 50 lots, leverage on the account can be as high as 1:500. The account can use all trading platforms (we will look at these in the next section of the review) and has access to some basic education and trading tools. There are 150+ payment options and no deposit fees, withdrawals are also instant with this account. Finally, there is 24/5 support in over 20 native languages.

Raw Spread Account: The raw spread account has a few different variations due to a subscription model, we will go over the basics and then look at that, the account has raw spreads so they begin at 0 pips, there is also no commission on CFDs. The account can trade on forex and gold pairs and has a starting lot size of 0.01 lots and a maximum of 10 lots, leverage can be as high as 1:500. The account can use all trading platforms except for MetaTrader 5 and has access to some basic education and trading tools. The account has no deposit fees and instant withdrawals and has access to a 24/5 support team in 20+ native languages.

When using a raw spread account there are three different subscription models which are based on your monthly transaction fees, between $0 – $50,000 there is an estimated $1/m fee (Raw Trial), between $50,001 – $1,000,000 there is an estimated 29/mo fee (Raw Grow) and between $1,000,001 – $3,000,000 an estimated $79/mo fee (Raw Pro). All accounts come with zero commission and zero funding fees, the Raw Pro, however, comes with a free VPS and historical tick data. The Raw Trial account has access to only major forex pairs, the Raw Grow and Raw Pro accounts have access to forex majors, forex minors, and Gold.

Black (VIP) Account: The Black account goes back to a more traditional style of account, it has a starting spread of 1.1 pips and does not have any commissions or subscription plan. It has access to over 250 assets and trades start at 0.1 lots with a maximum of 50 lots. Leverage remains the same as 1:500 as a maximum, the account can use all available trading platforms to trade with. This account comes with a vast amount of analysis, trading too,s and educational tools, it also has no fees for deposits and instant withdrawals. The account comes with 24/5 support as well as a dedicated account manager.

Platforms

There are a few different options available when it comes to trading platforms, let’s have a little look at what they are.

MT4: MetaTrader 4 continues to rank as the #1 platform in the world. In addition to the benefits mentioned below, the platform offers many other features such as a variety of trade execution features, trade alerts, email notifications, and more.

• An easy to use interface
• Regularly updated news feeds directly on the platform
• Free preprogrammed analytical tools
• The ability to overlay analytical studies
• Multiple charting and analysis options
• Multi-language features
• Daily account statements
• Real-time client account summary
• Including account equity, floating profit and loss, etc.
• Being compatible with BDSwiss Web Trader and mobile apps

MT5: While MT4 might be the top-rated Forex platform, for the time being, MetaTrader 5 is currently the world’s most advanced FX platform. The BDSwiss version of MT5 is the latest and most advanced of the MetaTrader platform family. It offers all the most important features of MT4, but adds even more advanced trading tools and indicators to enable traders who wish to maintain more control over their trades while making more informed trade decisions using cutting-edge market analysis.

BDSwiss Mobile App: The BDSwiss Mobile App is a multi-awarded Mobile App that features a user-friendly trading interface that allows you to place and manage your trades on the go while using the same tools and features as those available on our desktop platform.

BDSwiss WebTrader: The BDSwiss WebTrader Platform was exclusively developed in house, to better cater to the needs of our growing client base. Focusing on simplicity, reliability, and speed, the new BDSwiss WebTrader delivers an unparalleled trading experience accessible from all browsers and operating systems.

Leverage

Leverage on all accounts can go as high as 1:500, the leverage can be selected when opening up ana account from a selection of different amounts, once an account is open, if you wish to change the leverage on the account then be sure to get in contact with the customer service team who should be able to assist you.

Trade Sizes

Trade sizes vary from account to account, if using the basic account then the trade sizes start at 0.01 lots (also known as a micro lot) and go up in increments of 0.01 lots so the next trade would be 0.02 lots and then 0.03 lots. There is a maximum trade size of 50 lots which is a good amount and not too high to make it harder for liquidity providers to execute the trades quickly and without any slippage.

When using the Raw Spread account then the trades also start at 0.01 lots and go up in increments of 0.01 lots however the maximum trade size is now 10 lots. The Black account has a minimal trade size of 0.1 lots (also known as a mini lot) and goes up in increments of 0.1 lots so the next trade would be 0.2 lots and then 0.3 lots. This account has maximum trade size of 50 lots.

Trading Costs

The basic and black accounts do not have any additional trading costs on top of the spreads which we will look at later in this review. The Raw Spread account has a different payment structure and is based on a subscription model. The amount that you pay will depend on the account type you have and also the trading volume, only estimates are given and are as follows:

Raw Trial: Transaction volume between $0 – $50,000 will have an estimated fee of $1 per month.

Raw Grow: Transaction volume between $50,001 – $1,000,000 will have an estimated fee of $29 per month.

Raw Pro: Transaction volume between $1,000,001 – $3,000,000 will have an estimated cost of $79 per month.

Swap fees are also present and are a few that can be either negative or positive and are charged for holding trades overnight, these fees can be viewed wither on the BDSwiss website or within your selected trading platform. It should also be noted that if no trading activity occurs for over 90 days, we charge a monthly fee of 10% which will be deducted from your account balance.

Assets

Plenty on offer when it comes to assets and instruments, they have been broken down into 5 different categories which we will take a look at a few different examples of them.

Forex Pairs: 50+ pairs in total which include major pairs, minor pairs and a selection of exotics, some examples are GBP/USD, EUR/JPY., EUR/USD and EUR/CHF.

Indices: Major stocks from Wall Street to the Netherlands are available, the site states 10+ are available, some examples are Ger 30, US 30, NAS 100 and GBR 100.

Commodities: A wide range of commodities is what the site states, but it also states 5+ which is not a wide range, some examples are Gold, Silver, US Oil, and Coffee.

Equities: Hundreds of shares from some of the best-performing companies such as Amazon, Apple, Google and Microsoft, the site states that there are 140+ equities on offer.

Cryptocurrencies: The site states that there are over 20 cryptocurrency pairs to trade including BTCUSD, ETHUSD, XRPUSD, and LTCUSD, it is great to see cryptocurrencies making an appearance as they are quickly becoming a popular trading asset due to the high volatility and profit opportunities.

Spreads

Spread swill depends on a few different aspects, the first being the account type that you are using. The Basic account has spreads starting from 1.5 pips, the Black has spreads starting from 1.1 pips and the Raw Spread account has spreads starting from as low as 0 pips.

Different assets and instruments also have different starting spreads, so while the spread for an asset like GBP/JPY maybe 1.4 pips, for a pair like AUD/NZD it maybe 1.9 pips, so be sure to check the asset that you are trading for their individual spreads. The spreads are also variable (also known as floating) which means they move with the markets when there is a lot of volatility in the markets they will be seen higher as they widen with movement, so while the minimum may be stated as 1.5 pips, in reality, they will often be seen higher.

Minimum Deposit

The minimum amount to deposit ios $100, this is for both opening accounts and for any subsequent top-up deposits.

Deposit Methods & Costs

There are a few different deposit methods available including Credit / Debit Cards, Trustly Online Banking, Skrill, Neteller, Wire Transfer, Credit Card, Bitcash, Ethereum, and Bitcoin. BDSwiss does not charge any fees for depositing, but be sure to check out the processor that you are using to ensure that they do not add any fees of their own. It is great to see a couple of cryptocurrencies being available as many newer traders are using digital currencies as their preferred method of deposit and withdrawal.

Withdrawal Methods & Costs

The same methods are available to withdraw as they were to deposit, for clarification, these are Credit / Debit Cards, Trustly Online Banking, Skrill, Neteller, Wire Transfer, Credit Card, Bitcash, Ethereum, and Bitcoin. There are also no fees for withdrawing which is great to see, however, be sure to check with your bank or processor to ensure that they do not add any fees of their own.

Withdrawal Processing & Wait Time

BDSwiss aim to process all withdrawals within 24 hours of receiving the request, the amount of time after that depends on the method used, for cryptocurrencies it will take as long as it does for there to be enough confirmations on the network, for e-wallets it is normally around 30 minutes after processing and for Credit / Debit cards as well as Bank Transfers it can take up to 1 – 5 additional working days for the money to become available to you.

Bonuses & Promotions

We could not see any mention of bonuses or promotions on the BDSwiss website so it does not appear that there is any action at this point in time, this does not mean that there won’t be in the future so if you are looking for bonuses, be sure to check back regularly or get in contact with the support team to see if there are any upcoming promotions.

Educational & Trading Tools

There is quite a lot on offer in regards to education and tools which is great to see, we will try to give a very brief overview of what is there.

Education: There is a trading academy which is broken down into further categories, there are basic, intermediate and advanced courses. These courses look at different aspects of trading such as what forex is, different types of analysis and how to use different trading platforms and tools. It seems to be quite in-depth so if you are just starting out it could potentially be quite helpful. There are also educational events which are just another name for webinars and seminars. These webinars are daily so you should be able to catch them quite regularly, they are also recorded so you can view the past webinars on the site also.

Analysis: The analysis is also broken down into a few different sections, there are daily trading alerts that are done via telegram and these can give you ideas of which trades to take. There is then an economic calendar that tells you of any upcoming news events and which markets they may effect along with a news section which tells you what actually happened in the news. Autochartist which is a user-friendly and intuitive interface that monitors markets 24 hours a day and automatically alerts traders whenever new trading opportunities are identified!

There is also a free VPS available to those on a Black account.

Customer Service

BDSwiss has made it very easy to get in contact with them offering a number of different ways. You can use Whatsapp, Telegram or Live Chat in order to speak to someone digitally in a chat setting. You can also use email to send an email directly to the support team, finally, you can request a callback.

There are a number of different languages available including English, German, Italian, Spanish, French, Greek, Swiss-German, Swiss-French, Swiss Italian and Portuguese, each having their own phone number to ring.

There is also an online form to fill in and you will then get a reply via email, or you can email the support team or marketing team directly.

Demo Account

When signing up for an account you are automatically given a demo account, the account has a balance of 10,000 (base currency). The demo account is only available with MetaTrader 4 and for some reason, we were not able to change the leverage from 1:1000 which is higher than any account BDSwiss allow, so it is strange to be stuck on that amount. The accounts seem to last indefinitely and should remain active as long as you need them to.

Countries Accepted

The website does not state which counties are allowed and which are not, so we would be recommending that you get in contact with the customer service team to find out if you are eligible for an account or not.

Conclusion

BDSwiss offers some very competitive if not confusing (looking at you raw spread subscription) trading conditions, their spreads are reasonable and there is no added commission. There is a lot of transparency when it comes to the services being offered, however the only information about deposits and withdrawals was available once you had already signed up, the options available though are great and offer a lot of diversity along with no deposit or withdrawal fees. Asset wise you should be able to find something to trade and it is great to see the crypto world coming to BDSwiss too. All of this along with plenty of ways to get in contact with the customer service team can make BDSwiss an appealing place to trade.

RW Markets is a forex broker based in the Marshall Islands claiming to offer a five-star web trader platform, benefits from a personal trading coach, a selection of the best accounts to chose from and keeping your money always secure. This review is intended to look at the services to see if they live up to the expectations and so you can decide if they are the best broker for you to use.

Account Types

When signing up with RW Markets you are given a choice of 4 different account types, each one has its own requirements and trading conditions, let’s take a brief look at what they are.

Mini Account: A minimum deposit of $100 is required to open this account, it has a minimum trading volume of $250 and the account gets you to access to daily market reviews, a video library, daily recommendations, and 24-hour live support.

Standard Account: The standard account increases the minimum deposit up to $1,000, the account has a minimum trade volume of $10,000 which is 0.1 lots. The account comes with daily market reviews, access to a video library, daily recommendations, 24-hour live support, a personal trading coach, VIP trading support and exclusive updates.

Gold Account: The minimum deposit is further increased up to $5,000 and the account has a minimum trading volume of $50,000 which is 0.5 lots. The account comes with daily market reviews, access to a video library, daily recommendations, 24-hour live support, a personal trading coach, VIP trading support and exclusive updates and further access to SMS trading alerts and the MetaTrader 5 trading platform.

Islamic Account: The Islamic account is intended for those not able to accept or pay interest charges (swap charges) for holding trades overnight. The account has a minimum deposit of $1,000 and a trading volume of $10,000 (0.1 lots). The account gives you access to daily market reviews, a video library, daily recommendations, 24-hour support, and a personal trading coach.

Platforms

RW Markets offer their own proprietary version of WebTrader, as well as access to MetaTrader 4 for certain account types, let’s see what these platforms offer. RWMarkets apps are also available for Android and iOS powered devices.

MetaTrader 4 (MT4): MetaTrader4, or MT4 for short, offers a variety of functionalities including advanced charting, automated trading, in-depth technical analysis and a wide variety of additional trading tools. MT4 is only made available to Premium account holders.

ParagonEx Web Trader: This award-winning, custom-designed trading platform is designed to render the FX trading experience as easy as possible. ParagonEx Web Trader works in conjunction with any internet browser, on any type of computer operating system.

Leverage

Leverage can be up to a maximum of 1:400, this is a relatively good amount and around the industry standard. The leverage can be selected when opening up an account and should you wish to change it you will need to get in contact with the customer service team, however, WR Markets seem a little inflexible so they may not be willing to change it.

Trade Sizes

The minimum trade size depends on the account you are using, the Mini account has a minimum volume of $250, the Standard account has a minimum trade size of $1,000 which is 0.1 lots or a mini lot. The Gold account has a minimum volume of $50,000 (half lot) and the Islamic account has a minimum trade volume of $10,000 (0.1 lots). There is no mention of the maximum trade size, however, we would recommend not trading in sizes larger than 50 lots, as the bigger a trade becomes the harder it is for the markets or liquidity provider to execute the trade quickly and without any slippage.

Trading Costs

There doesn’t appear to be any added commissions on the accounts as they all sue a spread based system that we will look at later in this review. Swap charges are present, these are interest charges that are incurred for holding trades overnight, they can be both negative or positive and can usually be viewed from within the trading platform of choice.

Assets

RW Markets have broken down their assets into a number of different categories.

Currencies: There is a full breakdown of currencies on the website, it includes Majors and Minors and a few examples of them are AUD/CHF, EUR/CAD, GBP/AUD, and EUR/USD. When going through the list we also noticed that Bitcoin was noted in the currencies rather than in its own section.

Commodities: Gold, Natural Gas, Oil, Platinum, and Silver are all available to trade.

ETFs: EFTs are also present in the form of FEZ, GDX, QQQ, SMOG, SPY, UNG, USO, XLE, XLF, XLK and, XLV.

Indices: Indices are next up and the following are available for trading: DAX 30, Dow Jones, Nasdaq, Nikkei and, S&P 500

Stocks: Lastly are stocks and there are loads to chose from, a small selection includes Apply, Facebook, Tesla, and Amazon.

Spreads

Spreads seem to be starting quite high around 3 for EURUSD, The spreads are variable (also known as floating) so this means that when the markets are being volatile, the spreads will often be seen higher. It is also important to note that different instruments and assets have different starting spreads, so while EURUSD may start at 3 pips, other assets like GBPJPY may start slightly higher, in this case, 9 pips. It is unknown if different accounts have different spreads as this information is not stated on the website.

Minimum Deposit

The minimum amount required to open an account is set at $100 which is needed to open up the Mini account, it is unknown whether subsequent top-up deposits have a lower minimum requirement, as this information is not clear, we will stick with $100 as the minimum for all deposits. Some confusion lies in the FAQ which states that the minimum deposit is $500, so it is unclear what the minimum actually is.

Deposit Methods & Costs

You can use three different methods to deposit with, these are MasterCard Debit and Credit cards, Visa Debit and Credit cards and Bank Wire Transfers. The FAQ on the website states that there are no added fees on any of their transfers, however, you should be sure to check with your own bank or card processor to see if they add any fees of their won.

Withdrawal Methods & Costs

The same three methods are available to withdraw with, for clarification these are MasterCard Debit and Credit cards, Visa Debit and Credit cards and Bank Wire Transfers. Just like with deposits there are no added fees by RW Markets, however, you should be sure to check with your own bank or card processor to see if they add any fees of their won.

Withdrawal Processing & Wait Time

RW Markets try to process withdrawals within 24 to 48 hours. Once it has been processed it can take between 3 to 5 business days for the money to clear into your bank account.

Bonuses & Promotions

We could not locate any information on the website in regards to bonuses or promotions so it does not appear that there are any active ones at the time of writing this review. If you are interested in bonuses then be sure to check back regularly or get in contact with the customer service team to see if there are any upcoming bonuses or promotions.

Educational & Trading Tools

There isn’t any educational material on the website, but depending on the account that you use there is some coaching by a personal coach. “Your Personal Trading Coach will be there for you to consult for as long as you remain an RWMarkets trader. Come to us with any and all of your questions about trading and we’ll be there every step of the way to help you develop the best trading strategy to meet your needs and drive you to success.” That is the marketing of the coaches from RW Markets.

Customer Service

RW Markets have kept things simple when looking to get in touch with them, they have a department for General Inquiries and for Feedback and Complaints, each one has their own email address and phone number (although the phone number is the same for both). Both departments are open 24 hours a day from Monday to Friday and are closed over the weekend and on bank holidays when the markets are also closed.

Demo Account

Demo accounts are available by simply clicking the demo account button and filling in a short form. There is no information present about the demo account such as which account type it is mimicking and so trading conditions are unknown, it is also unknown how long they last as some brokers put a time limit such as 30 days on the demo account it would be nice to know if RW Markets do too.

Countries Accepted

The information about which countries are accepted and which are not is not present on the website, so if you are interested in joining, be sure to get in contact with the customer service team to check if you are eligible for an account or not.

Conclusion

RW Markets offer a good selection of account types and assets to trade, there isn’t too much info on the differences of trading conditions between the different accounts but there is plenty of information about the conditions in general scattered around the website. Spreads are very high, even for accounts with no added commissions, they are double what you would expect and triple in some places making it very expensive to trade at RW Markets. Slight limitations to the ways you can deposit or withdraw but the no added fees are a big plus.

BlackStone Futures is a regulated CFD South African forex broker that has been around since 2009. The brand is operated by BlackStone Futures (Pty) Ltd. A company that holds a license to provide brokerage and investment services by the Financial Services Board (FSB). A positive point about having a broker licensed by the FSB is that the broker must keep all client’s funds in recognized South African Banks, meaning that the broker won’t mix the client’s money with the company’s money, which usually leads to major concerns for clients in the long run. Although the regulation in South Africa is not the strictest in the world, this should still provide a certain level of reliability and peace of mind when trading with this broker.

This broker offers two types of accounts with basically the same conditions, depending on the platform being used by the client, and both accounts are fee-free and with fixed spreads. At the moment, this company can only do business with clients who have a South African Bank account, but it should become more accessible for clients outside of South Africa in the coming months.

Account Types

Information about the actual accounts being offered isn’t very clearly outlined on their website so we decided to contact the broker via Live Chat for more information. They informed us that they offer 2 types of accounts, USD or ZAR. Both accounts basically have the same conditions and only the base currency is different.

To open up an account with BlackStone Futures clients must invest a minimum of R5 000 which is a bit more than $350, which is slightly high as a minimum deposit when comparing it to other brokers, but still relatively affordable. Both accounts have fixed spreads and no commission fees are applied as this broker makes its profit from the difference between the Bid and Ask price. The maximum leverage offered for both accounts is quite low at 1:100. This might seem too low for certain experienced traders, but for those just starting out, low leverage such as this broker offers minimizes the risks involved.

Platforms

BlackStone Futures uses the world-renown MT4 platform as well as its in-house CloudTrade platform. MT4 is one of the most popular and most reliable platforms available. It comes with a ton of indicators, Expert Advisors, updated news feed and the great advantage of being completely automated, allowing clients to fully automate their trading.

The other platform offered, CloudTrade is a cloud-based trading platform that seems to be quite user-friendly, relatively fast and reliable. Clients can also download Apps for this platform on both their Android and Apple devices. Unfortunately, this platform does not have EA’s, so some clients might still prefer using the MT4 platform rather than the broker’s own.

Leverage

The leverage is set quite low with this broker, namely 1:100. Taking into consideration the fact that some brokers offer leverage up to 1:500, this broker might seem to be holding back, but in reality, this leverage minimizes the risks involved with high leverage ratios. Still, seasoned traders might see this is a major disadvantage.

Trade Sizes

The minimum trade size for all Forex pairs, Indices and Commodities is R5 when using CloudTrade and 10c on the MT4 platform. The maximum trade sizes for all the above-mentioned assets vary depending upon market conditions. Clients can speak to the broker directly for more information regarding the maximum trade sizes available.

Trading Costs

As we’ve mentioned before, both accounts offered by this broker are fee-free, so clients should only expect to pay the spread. We will speak about any fees clients may encounter when depositing or withdrawing their funds later on in the review.

Assets

BlackStone Futures have quite a large number of assets available for trading, and you can find a full list on their Market Information Sheets. If you want to trade Indices, you can choose between the 19 available ones including; Euro Stocks 50, France 40, Germany 30 and US Tech 100 (Daily Rolling Cash) just to mention a few.

Clients wanting to trade Forex can choose from over 30 pairs available, including Major pairs such as USD/CAD, EUR/USD and USD/JPY, and Minor pairs including EUR/AUD, GBP/ZAR and EUR/NZD.

This broker also has 10 Commodities available including both precious metals as well as oil including Gold, Silver, US Crude Rolling Spot and US CRUDE Future including others.
This broker does not seem to have any cryptocurrencies available for trading at the moment.

Spreads

This broker claims to offer seriously low spreads, and it seems like this is the case, especially when using the MT4 platform. From their Market Information Sheets, which should match the current market conditions, we saw that the popular EUR/USD pair had a spread starting from 0.6 pips which is quite good. Other Forex pairs had higher spreads, for example, the EUR/NZD has a spread of 2.5 Pips and GPB/CHF has a spread of 2.8 Pips. You can find the full list of assets and their corresponding spreads on the Market Information Sheets found in the footer of this broker’s website.

Minimum Deposit

BlackStone Futures recommends a minimum deposit of around R5,000 or more even though their minimum deposit amount is R1, 000 which is equivalent to $100. This is quite average and affordable for a number of beginner traders. The broker also mentions that a very low deposit might make clients disheartened once they encounter their first losses, causing added pressure resulting in a negative trading experience. This is why they recommend a slightly higher minimum deposit.

Deposit Methods & Costs

Clients can use 3 methods to deposit their funds into their accounts, i-Pay Instant EFT via Client Portal, Credit/Debit/Cheque Card via Client Portal or by Regular EFT via the client’s online banking. As we mentioned before, this broker can only accept funds from clients who have a South African bank account. There are no fees applied when depositing with this broker.

Withdrawal Methods & Costs

All withdrawals are sent to the client’s nominated bank account, irrelevant of what method the client used to initially deposit his/her funds. Like all deposit methods, this broker does not charge any withdrawal fees.

Withdrawal Processing & Wait Time

All withdrawals by BlackStone Futures are made via EFT (electronic funds transfer) and these can be transferred to all banks in South Africa as well as bordering countries with the same banks.

All withdrawals requested before 15:00 GMT+2 on business days are processed and sent out on the same day. Once the money leaves the bank account it is not up to the broker to deliver them on time. Depending on the bank and location, clients may have to wait 42-74 hours to see their funds deposited into their bank account.
Obviously accurate and clear banking documentation is needed for deposits and withdrawals to be completed quickly and simply.

Bonuses & Promotions

At the moment, this broker has a 30% booster promotion on offer. New clients are eligible for a 30% credit on their initial deposit. The maximum deposit credit is 30% with a maximum of R5, 000 and it is subject to a number of conditions.

Accounts must be FICA approved to be eligible for the Bonus and the bonus funds cannot be withdrawn. The promotion is only available for residents of South Africa, Swaziland, Namibia, and Lesotho. Clients can find more information about this in the FAQ page under Blackstone Futures Booster Promotion Terms and Conditions.

Educational & Trading Tools

BlackStone Futures have an extensive education segment on their website. They have a Knowledge Base section which includes a number of articles and videos that should allow beginner traders to get a good basic understanding of the MT4 as well as their own Cloud Trade platform to make educated decisions when trading. Another number of articles and videos are dedicated to helping clients garner a broader understanding of how the market works and how they can implement indicators alongside price action.

Apart from this, clients can also find a number of videos and articles that will help motivate them and identify good strategies that they can use. The amount of educational material provided by this broker is actually quite engaging and should be extremely beneficial to those just starting out. Apart from those mentioned above, clients will also have weekly webinars that discuss the current market conditions.

When it comes to trading tools, this broker has a number of them offered namely; Market Sentiment which basically shows clients how many traders are buying and selling and their overall feeling about certain currency pairs and an Economic Calendar. Clients can also view a weekly Dividend adjustment which is helpful for those trading Shares and Indices.

Customer Service

Clients wanting to get in touch with this broker can do so either via live chat, telephone or email. We spoke to the broker via Live Chat and we were given feedback within seconds on a number of different occasions. Their customer support agents are extremely helpful and seen to be very aware of all the company’s conditions. You can find the company’s contact info down below:

Address: The Mall Offices, 5th Floor,
11 Cradock Avenue
Rosebank 2196, South Africa
Telephone: + 27 08600 111 563
Email: [email protected]
You can reach this broker from Monday to Friday 08:00 – 18:00

Demo Account

This broker offers a demo account to potential clients who wish to practice their trading strategies, as well as test out tips offered in their educational section. The Demo account comes equipped with Demo funds that clients can use to simulate the real market. The broker suggests clients should practice with amounts similar to what they will use when going live, in order to garner a real-life experience and eliminate any disappointment once they switch to a real account.

Countries Accepted

As we’ve mentioned before, this broker is quite limited as it can only open accounts for clients residing in South Africa or neighboring countries which have the same banks like Swaziland, Namibia, and Lesotho. Their Live Chat agent informed us that they are currently working on this and that they should be accepting clients from other countries within a few months.

Conclusion

BlackStone Futures is a regulated South African broker that offers trading on 2 platforms, their own Trade Cloud or the popular MT4. This broker does not charge any commission and they offer medium to low spreads on most of their Forex pairs. A major drawback is obviously the restriction that it can only trade with South African clients or those from neighboring countries which makes them extremely limited. They’re also quite limited when it comes to depositing and withdrawing methods, offering only 3 deposit methods and only 1 withdrawing method.

Clients who are used to having a multitude of options such as Skrill, Neteller e-Wallets, etc. might find this broker to be too limited. They have an extensive education segment on their site, which has a very large number of articles and videos that should help beginner traders get the hang of the market. Apart from this they also have weekly webinars as well as a number of trading tools that clients can make use of.

At the moment they have a 30% bonus on all new clients’ initial deposits and they’re customer support response (through live chat) is fast and informative, which makes up for the fact that simple account information is a bit hard to find on their website. They also offer a demo account for potential clients to test out, so if you’re interested in this broker, create a demo and see how you like the conditions Blackstone Futures has to offer.

SMARTBTCFX offers several account types, with decent leverage and a wide range of tradable assets available. Having been created in 2013, this company, which in fact is run by the offshore company Game Capital Ads Limited, has been blacklisted by the CONSOB (Italian Commissione Nazionale per le Societa e la Borsa) for luring in Italian customers without the authentic licensing and registration needed.

Apart from this major setback, this broker claims to offer 5 specific components namely; outstanding customer support, a multi-product bouquet, advanced trading platforms, tight spreads, and an experienced founding team. On their website footer, they also have 5 medals on show including one stating that this broker won top broker in 2013 and another claiming that SmartBtcFx is an SSL trusted website. The bad quality of the images, and the fact that they’re way down at the bottom, makes us think that these aren’t legitimate and are put there to impress clients rather than to state facts.

Join us as we go through SmartBtcFx’s website and determine whether they could be a good broker for you.

Account Types

This broker has 4 accounts available namely; the Standard Account, the Classic, the Premium and finally the Gold Account. These accounts vary in their minimum deposit amount and spreads whereas the leverage for the Standard, Classic and Premium is set at 1:200 whereas the Gold account has adjustable leverage.

All accounts receive 24/7 support, all can trade forex pairs and all come with an account manager. The Gold account is the only one that enables clients to trade all available instruments that SmartBtcFx has to offer, whereas the Premium can trade all currencies, indices, and shares, the classic can trade Base currencies, Gold, Silver and Oil, and the standard account can only trade base currencies, which makes it quite limited.

As we’ve mentioned before, the minimum deposit is different for every account and the price ranges from $250 for the Standard account to $50,000 for the Gold account. On their terms and conditions page, the broker explains that after receiving an application to open an account, they may run checks, including credit and or checks they find suitable and they may also get references from the client’s bank, credit agencies and previous employers where applicable. Because of this, we assume that clients may have to wait a while before getting the go-ahead to start trading.

Platforms

When trading with this broker, clients can choose between 3 platforms. By far the most popular platform clients can use is the MT4 which offers some of the most powerful trading in the world. The MetaTrader 4 offers 30 built-in technical indicators, over 2000 free custom indicators and a further 700 that are only available on payment. Another great plus of the MT4 is that it is fully customizable and ideal for traders of every level. Its user-friendly interface and Expert Advisors, which are basically specially programmed software that completely automates trading, make it a great platform to trade on, even if you’re just starting out.

Clients of SmartBtcFx also have access to Game Capital Ads Limiteds xStation, which according to the broker, is a hybrid internet-based trading platform that merges encryption, real-time analytics, and trade sophistication. The broker does not offer any more information regarding this platform so we cannot comment any further.
For those clients that would like something that would enable them to trade on the go, SmartBtcFx offers the xMobile and Tablet Trader Platforms. These platforms give their customers access to their trading accounts from any location and at any time.

Leverage

The Standard, Classic and Premium account all offer leverage of 1:200 which is quite standard. Their Gold account, however, has adjustable leverage. We could not find any more information regarding this, so we tried to contact the broker via email since they do not offer live chat, but so far, we haven’t received an answer. We assume that the leverage offered for the Gold account depends on the funds of the clients and the particular asset being traded.

Trade Sizes

The broker doesn’t have any information regarding the minimum and maximum trade sizes available for trading so we cannot comment any further on this.

Trading Costs

This broker does not make it very clear whether they have any fees associated with their accounts. Although there is no mention of any commission on their account page, on their terms and conditions document, we did find mention of fees. The broker only states that clients wanting to close down their accounts may have the fees of the previous month refunded to them, but nowhere did they mention what these fees actually are. This is quite common with unregulated brokers and this is, unfortunately, something clients encounter a lot when dealing with this type of broker, namely not knowing what fees are applied.

Assets

From what we could see on their website, this broker offers a variety of assets available for trading, namely; forex currency pairs, Indices, and Shares. We could not locate a full list of what these assets are as there doesn’t seem to be one on their website. SmartBtcFx does explain that the different accounts have different assets available for trading, with only the Gold account having access to all tradable assets. The Premium account has all currencies, indices, and shares available for trading, the Classic has the base currencies, Gold, Silver, and Oil whereas the Standard account has only base currencies available for trading.

Spreads

The Standard account is the only one that comes with fixed spreads, which seems to be quite high. On their accounts table, this broker offers a typical forex spread value, and for this account, one of the most popular currency pairs EUR/USD has a spread of 2.4 which is more than double what other brokers offer. They also give an example for AUD/USD which has a spread of 3.3 Pips and USD/JPY which has a spread of 2.8.

All other accounts come with a choice of having either fixed or floating spreads. The lowest spreads we saw were on the Gold Account, where EUR/USD has a spread of 0.6 Pips, which is quite good, AUD/USD 1.3 Pips and USD/JPY 0.6 Pips. Obviously, for clients that do not have $50,000 to deposit, these spreads are not available, as they are only available through the Gold account.

The values provided here are only the typical forex spread offered by the broker, so clients should not depend on these figures as these are bound to fluctuate.

Minimum Deposit

All accounts have a different minimum deposit requirement as follows; Standard Account $250, Classic Account $2500, Premium Account $20,000 and the Gold account has a $50,000 requirement. We would advise potential clients to do their own background research before depositing any money into any SmartBtcFx account as we found numerous online complaints regarding the withdrawal of funds, apart from the fact that is broker is blacklisted.

Deposit Methods & Costs

Like with many other things, information regarding depositing funds is nowhere to be found on the website apart from a brief section in their terms and conditions. Here the broker states that there is a $10,000 maximum deposit per credit card transaction, and a $250 deposit per credit card transaction.

The logos of Maestro, Mastercard, and Visa at the bottom of their website, lead us to believe that this broker offers these methods for depositing funds. Interestingly, this broker does not offer Skrill, most probably because of recent regulations that forbid any unlicensed brokers to offer their (Skrill) services to their clients.

Withdrawal Methods & Costs

There is no information regarding withdrawal methods and costs with this broker so we cannot comment any further about this, but they do however have a complicated bonus system, which we will discuss further on in the review, that might affect clients’ withdrawals. This is because, if a client accepts a $300 bonus, s/he will not be able to withdraw any of her/his funds until they reach a trading volume of at least $10,000000, which is challenging, to say the least. We do not know if there are any hidden fees when withdrawing with this broker, and our questions regarding this were not answered.

Withdrawal Processing & Wait Time

Like we’ve mentioned before, we do not have the information to comment on this.

Bonuses & Promotions

SmartBtcFx does have quite a complicated system of bonuses available. This is what is explained on their Terms and Conditions page; Traders must buy or sell at least 3.3 lots (in real money mode) for each unit $10 bonus which is granted by the broker before submitting any withdrawal requests. Each lot accounts for 100,000 currency units. For example, if a client receives a bonus of $30, their trading requirement is 10 lots, which equals 1,000,000 currency units. The broker does not explain how or to whom bonuses are offered, and this is rather strange as these bonuses have a major effect on the client’s withdrawals, which is definitely a major issue. We asked the broker how clients can decline these bonuses, but like all our other questions, this was left unanswered.

If you’d like more information about these bonuses, you can find more information about it on the broker’s Terms and Conditions page.

Educational & Trading Tools

At the moment, this broker does not offer any educational content on their website. The same goes for the trading tools, as it seems this broker relies on the tools offered by the popular MT4 platform, or their own web-based platform.

Customer Service

Clients wanting to contact SmartBtcFx can do so either via email, telephone or by filling in an online form. From our own experience, this broker does not offer impressive customer service as our emails were left unanswered. The emails were sent on 2 different occasions, on weekdays during office hours. There is no live chat option, which is unfortunate as it is the most popular method of contacting brokers as it is fast and efficient. If you’d like to contact this broker yourself, here are their contact details:

Company Address: Bujorilor St.
No. 44 Bucarest
Romania
Email- [email protected]
[email protected]
Telephone: +44 2030 6082 593
+97316195023

Demo Account

For those wanting to test out what conditions SmartBtcFx has to offer, they can only do so by investing their money and opening up a live account. This is because, at the moment, this broker does not offer any type of Demo account, which is inconvenient for those wanting to experience this broker without actually spending any money.

Countries Accepted

Although we did not find any mention of banned countries on SmartBtcFx, we did find that the USA is not listed as an available country for trading on their online account form. If you are having trouble finding your own Country of Residence to open up an account, we suggest trying to contact the broker for further information.

Conclusion

From what we could see, SmartBtcFx’s website is extremely similar to all the other brands associated with the mother company Game Capital Ads Limited. The broker is registered in Romania, meaning it is not regulated and it has also been blacklisted by the Consob. Apart from this, we suspect that the broker is making false claims, namely that they won awards including the best broker of 2013, which is highly unlikely considering everything we’ve discovered about them.

Spreads and initial deposits are quite high, especially for some of their accounts but on the other hand, they seem to have a wide variety of assets available. SmartBtcFx also offers a bonus, but again this is not very clearly outlined on their site.

Their website is quite bland when comparing it to others on the market, and we did find a big lack of info on certain subjects which are essential for potential clients to make a decision whether to trade with a broker or not. Overall, we do not feel like this broker would be a good one to do business with, because the risks seem a little too big. If you’d still like to get to know more this broker, head on to their website and discover more about them.

Finmax FX is an FX and CFD broker that offers more than 500 tradable instruments from five separate account types. The broker is primarily located in St. Vincent & the Grenadines, although their direct contact number is based out of London. Since being launched in 2015, Finmax has claimed to strive towards helping their traders realize their full potential. As a whole, the company does have some advantages, but there are also disadvantages that potential clients will want to consider closely. Stay with us to find out everything you’ll need to know about this broker.

Account Types

Finmax offers five separate live accounts; Micro, Mini, Standard, Premium, and VIP. It is also possible to apply for an Islamic version of any of these accounts. The broker mentions that choosing one of the accounts with the larger deposit requirement would reward traders with a larger number of tradable instruments. This doesn’t seem to be true, as accounts share the same leverages and tradable instruments. Differences mostly revolve around each account’s price, while most of the accounts actually share the same spreads. VIP account holders will be provided with a 24/7 manager and personal analyst, and these account holders will be the only ones that are offered a lower spread.

Take a look at the conditions for each account below.

Micro Account
Minimum Deposit: $250
Leverage: Up to 1:200
Spread: As low as 3 pips
Commission: NA

Mini Account
Minimum Deposit: $1,000
Leverage: Up to 1:200
Spread: As low as 3 pips
Commission: NA

Standard Account
Minimum Deposit: $5,000
Leverage: Up to 1:200
Spread: As low as 3 pips
Commission: NA

Premium Account
Minimum Deposit: $25,000
Leverage: Up to 1:200
Spread: As low as 3 pips
Commission: NA

VIP Account
Minimum Deposit: $100,000
Leverage: Up to 1:200
Spread: As low as 1-2 pips
Commission: NA

Platforms

Any trader that opens an account through this broker will be trading from the ever-popular MetaTrader 5 platform, available on PC, Mac, mobile devices, or through the web-based application. MT5 is the best choice for the modern trader, as it was designed to be powerful and multi-functional by providing multiple analysis tools and pending order types, while supporting Expert Advisors, one-click orders, multiple languages, etc. All of these features, combined with the program’s navigable interface, make MT5 an ideal trading platform for any type of trader.

Leverage

Leverage options range from 1:10 up to 1:200, regardless of which account has been chosen. The leverage cap is set at a different level on separate instruments. For example, most currency pairs allow the maximum cap, while some of the exotic options have a limit of 1:25 or 1:50. Leverage on cryptocurrencies goes up to 1:2 and options on stocks is set at 1:10. On commodities, the leverage cap is 1:100, except on Rice. Options vary more widely on indexes and metals. The leverage on all bonds goes as high as 1:100. Overall, we must say that the maximum cap offered by the broker is somewhat restrictive when compared to other options.

Trade Sizes

The company reserves the right to limit the number of open positions that any client can have at any time, but the website doesn’t mention an exact limit. There is no mention of minimum or maximum trade sizes on the website, although we assume that the Micro account would support micro-lots and the Mini account would support mini lots. Traders will be notified in advance when the account is approaching a 100% margin and it is possible to make a deposit in order to avoid reaching stop out. Once the margin level falls below 50%, the broker will begin to liquidate open trades.

Trading Costs

Finmax profits from traditional spreads and swaps, in addition to extra fees, including inactivity fees, additional fees on bank wire withdrawals, and account cancellation fees. The website doesn’t mention commissions, but the high spreads are enough to make one assume that commissions are nonexistent. Swaps are charged on positions that are held open past market closing time.

The company charges a ridiculously high inactivity fee of $80 USD once an account reaches 2 months of no trading activity. If the account reaches 3 months with no activity, the broker will charge a $120 inactivity fee and $200 USD will be charged after 6 consecutive months with no activity.

Those that deposit via bank wire who fail to reach the turnover amount equal to the amount of the deposit will be charged a $25 fee on top of the standard $25 withdrawal fee. Accounts with a balance of less than $5 will have the amount reduced to zero after a one-month period of inactivity. Traders that request a deposit with no trading activity will be charged a 5% fee on top of the already high withdrawal fees.

Assets

The broker offers investment opportunities in currency pairs, stocks, commodities, indexes, cryptocurrencies, metals, energies, and bonds. In total, there are 59 available currency pairs, which are made up of majors, minors, and exotics. There are 370+ stocks available in many well-known American companies like Google and Apple. Commodities include Corn, Wheat, Coffee, Sugar, Soybean, Cotton, Rice, and Cocoa.

There are more than 25 indexes and we see popular options like Bitcoin, Litecoin, Monero, Ripple, etc. under the cryptocurrency category, with 40 options altogether. Metals include the most popular options Gold and Silver, in addition to Copper, Platinum, Pallidum, Aluminum, and Zinc. Energies include Gas, Crude Oil, and Brent Oil. There are also 5 bonds available for investment. The large number and variety of available assets are one of the broker’s most advantageous features.

Spreads

Spreads on the Micro, Mini, Standard, and Premium account types start from 3 pips on majors. It’s almost shocking to see that all of these accounts are offering spreads that are much higher than the industry’s average 1.5 pips, especially considering that it costs $25k to open a Premium account. On minors, we even see spreads as high as 6 pips or more. The only way to access average spreads through this broker would be to make the $100k deposit to open a VIP account and even then, spreads start from 1-2 pips.

Minimum Deposit

The Micro and Mini accounts are the broker’s more affordable options, although many won’t find the Micro accounts $250 deposit requirement and the Mini account’s $1,000 requirement very affordable. Others do offer much lower starting amounts, especially for these account types. Opening a Standard account is also expensive, as it costs $5,000 to open one of these basic accounts. The broker does offer some special perks to Standard account holders as a possible incentive for making the larger deposit. On the higher end of things, the broker requires a $25,000 deposit to open a Premium account and a $100,000 deposit for a VIP account.

Deposit Methods & Costs

Accounts can be funded through credit card, bank wire, Yandex, QiWi, ePayments, WebMoney, Skrill, and Neteller. All deposits are fee-free and credited instantly, with the exception of a bank wire. The broker doesn’t charge fees on incoming bank wires from their side, but many banks may charge on their behalf. It can also take up to 3 business days for funds to be credited if sent through wire transfer.

Withdrawal Methods & Costs

All of the available funding methods are available for withdrawals with a $10 withdrawal minimum on most methods and a $50 USD minimum when withdrawing cryptocurrencies. There is also a condition stating that withdrawals must be processed back to the original deposit method. Withdrawal fees will vary based on the account type that has been chosen. Micro and Mini account holders will always pay withdrawal fees, while Standard account holders will be allowed one commission-free withdrawal per month. Premium and VIP account holders will benefit from unlimited fee-free withdrawals.

Those that deposited via bank wire and failed to reach the turnover amount will be charged a $25 fee on the withdrawal day. Those that request a withdrawal with no trading activity will be charged a 5% fee on top of the standard withdrawal fee. We’ve listed the standard withdrawal fees for each method below.

• WebMoney: 0.9%
• Perfect Money, Skrill: 2%
• Credit Card, Yandex, Neteller, OkPay, Qiwi: 3.5%
• Bank Wire: 25 USD/EUR (+$25 if trading turnover isn’t reached)
• Bitcoin: 7%

Withdrawal Processing & Wait Time

It takes up to 48 hours for the broker to finish processing withdrawals for most account holders, while special 5-hour processing time is offered to VIP members. Although the broker’s terms do mention that it can take some time for funds to be credited once sent, they do not give an exact timeframe. The website’s wording makes it sound as though clients would be waiting for the longest to receive funds via bank wire, which is typical.

Bonuses & Promotions

The broker has implemented a bonus policy where clients can earn a deposit bonus between 30% and 100% on initial deposits. Conditions state that the trading account’s balance must maintain at least $100 and the client can only trade with the bonus after trading with their deposit. Withdrawals of the full bonus amount are nearly impossible, as the client would need to trade a volume of $10,000 per $1 of the bonus and the withdrawal must be made within a 60-day period. The exact amount that can be earned back on the first deposit is listed below, as the broker sets the limit by account type. The second deposit bonus is either 10% or 15%, depending on circumstances.

• Micro & Mini Account: Up to 30%
• Standard Account: Up to 50%
• Premium Account: Up to 80%
• VIP Account: Up to 100%

Educational & Trading Tools

Finmax brings its clients a number of educational resources in the form of e-books, video lessons, webinars, and a forex glossary. It is necessary to register for an account to unlock some of these resources, but we can see that there are several lessons and categories under each section. For example, there are 16 forex trading lessons, 11 market analysis lessons, 10 trading strategy lessons, and so on. In addition, the broker has provided multiple tools on its website, all of which help to provide a convenient experience. We’ve listed some of those highlights below.

• Forex, Cryptocurrency, Pivot Point, and Margin Calculator
• Economic Calendar
• Currency Converter
• Live Quotes
• Financial News
• Technical Analysis & Market Reviews
• Trader Advice
• Investment Strategies

Demo Account

Surprisingly, Finmax does not offer free demo accounts to their traders. We would expect to see these accounts available, considering that the broker has so many other educational resources. Traders will be able to learn a lot from the website, but we do feel that trading from a real demo account provides more of a realistic experience that can’t be made up for with video lessons or Ebooks.

Customer Service

At the bottom of the broker’s website, traders will find a button that connects one to instant LiveChat support, in addition to a button that allows one to instantly request a phone call at a certain time of the day. On the Contact page, the broker also provides a direct phone number and email address. Traders would also be able to fill in a quick contact form for an email response on that page.

The sheer number of contact methods makes it extremely convenient to get in touch with a member of support. The only downside would be the fact that support hours are from 08:00 – 20:00 (GMT+3), where many other brokers offer 24-hour support on weekdays. All contact information has been listed below.

Phone: +44(208) 089-25-75 (London)
Email: [email protected]

Countries Accepted

On their website, Finmax lists Australia, Belgium, Canada, Crimea, Iraq, Iran, Israel, Japan, North Korea, Puerto Rico, Sevastopol region, Singapore, Syrian Arab Republic, Sudan, the United States, Virgin Islands, and Turkey as being restricted countries. Once we opened the account registration page, a bar appeared at the top of the page informing us that registration from our country (US-based offices) was not allowed. The US is available as a selectable country, but filling out the account details and clicking register will only bring clients back to the same page. Unfortunately, it seems that these restrictions are upheld.

Conclusion

Finmax FX is an FX and CFD broker that offers leveraged trading of up to 1:200. One of the broker’s main draws would be their impressive asset portfolio, which consists of 520+ instruments, including 40 cryptocurrencies. Opening an account is expensive, as it costs $250 to open a Micro account and $1,000 to open a Mini account. Spreads start from an above-average 3 pips on most of the account types and the only way to access average options would be to meet the VIP account’s $100k deposit requirement.

Finmax also tacks on extra fees for inactivity, account cancellation, etc. Several funding methods are available, including bank wire, cards, and some e-wallets. Those that have accounts below the Standard level will find themselves paying high withdrawal fees. Getting in touch with a member of support is extremely convenient, so long as it is within business hours. Clients can earn deposit bonuses between 30% and 100% and there are a huge number of educational resources and trading tools available on the website, including video lessons, webinars, Ebooks, and more. Several countries are restricted from opening accounts.

This broker goes out of their way to reward those that can afford the $25k and $100k Premium and VIP accounts, by offering those clients fee-free and expedited withdrawals, larger bonuses, and other rewards. All of these fancy details seem to be meant as distractions from the broker’s high spreads and extra fees.

Proper Trade is a broker owned by B-Market Limited. It is registered in the Marshall Islands (registration number 100141) and regulated under the Marshall Islands Commercial Corporation Act. Company address: Ajeltake Road, Ajeltake Island, Majuro, Marshall Islands MH960.

Proper Trade is registered and headquartered in the Marshall Islands, making it an offshore broker. The broker offers its clients a maximum leverage of 1:200 to trade in Forex and CFD. The broker does not have an acceptable regulation, yet he wants to direct his services to customers resident in the United States, Europe, and Australia. If you are considering opening a forex account and you are reading this review, I advise you to read everything to the end.

ACCOUNT TYPES

Proper Trade offers only one standard account type. When making the initial deposit, traders can start trading and exchanging currency pairs or other assets offered by Propertrade. We need to warn that certain assets require a minimum deposit in order to be able to operate them, for example, metals.

PLATFORMS

Proper Trade offers its own trading platform, MetaTrader4 is not available.
Proper Trade offers us a web-based trading platform, but it is very simple, and it also lacks many features. This platform is well below MT4, which is certainly the trading platform most used by a wide community of traders.

MT4 is easy to use, has a wide set of management tools, advanced graphics, and a multitude of market indicators. It also has commercial robots with all kinds of strategies for users. With the use of these robots, you can be traded in an automated way.
All of the above is not possible with the web platform offered by Popertrade.

LEVERAGE

Leverage as high as 1:200. More and more offshore brokers offer high leverages. After the European Securities and Markets Authority (ESMA) limited leverage for Forex transactions to 1:30, many traders are looking for larger leverages, and so offshore brokers are proliferating, offering leverages higher than those determined by ESMA.
The US and Japan have long since limited leverages to traders in order to protect them from capital losses and reduce the financial risks of the customer.

However, if a trader wants to trade with higher leverage, he can always look for regulated brokers in Australia. Australian regulation is very important and allows higher leverages, this is possible because this country remains unrestricted.

TRADE SIZES

We have not found information about accepted commercial sizes. Normally in this type of brokers are allowed to open positions as small as 0.01 lots, which is a micro-lot or 1000 units of the base currency. Operating with micro-lots provides flexibility and is ideal for traders who want to trade with a small volume and accepting smaller risks.

TRADING COSTS

Account-holders only have to pay the differential (the difference between supply and demand prices). Proper Trade does not charge any commission when opening or closing a position. However, through almost any broker, traders must pay an exchange charge (interest) when a transaction is kept open overnight. Because this interest expense is based on the economic conditions and policies of the central bank of the currency’s country of origin, swaps are out of the brokers’ control. however, please note that swaps could be positive, such as when short selling a particular currency pair. In these cases, account holders make money.

ASSETS

Proper Trade has an advantage, it is the wide variety of assets with which it is possible to trade. In Forex we find more than 50 currency pairs, including exotic pairs like USDZAR, USDRUB, USDPLN, USDNOK USDTRY, USDSGD, USDSEK, USDMXN, USDILS, USDHUF, USDHKD, y USDDKK. It also offers CFD in silver, gold, Brent platinum, WTI Raw, natural gas, palladium and copper, agricultural products such as cocoa, cotton, orange juice, coffee, corn, soy, sugar, and wheat. The broker also offers trading in 23 stock indices, 30 ETF s, stocks, and bonds. For lovers of cryptocurrencies, Propertrade offers trading on a number of digital coins, including Ethereum, Ethereum Classic, IOTA, Litecoin, NEO, Qtum, Tron, Stellar, Monero, Ple, Zcash, Cardano, Bitcoin, Dash, and Dashgold.

SPREADS

We have tested the web trading platform offered by Propertrade to find out the spreads. We have seen how the spread in EUR / USD was around 3.5 pips. Actually this spread is very high, at least 3 times more than the spread levels that most brokers offer for this currency pair.

MINIMUM DEPOSIT

We have been unable to figure out the minimum deposit required by this broker to open an account with them. Normally these types of offshore and unregulated brokers usually admit small deposits to start trading, but this fact is not confirmed.

DEPOSIT METHODS & COSTS

The broker accepts, credit cards/debit, Mastercard, Visa, and American Express. It is also possible to deposit in the following e-wallets, Perfect Money, Skrill, QIWI, Webmoney, Neteller, and Okpay. All that remains is for this broker to accept bitcoin as a means of payment, but even this is not possible. No commissions apply to account deposits.

WITHDRAWAL METHODS & COSTS

Withdrawals will always be made to the method of payment with which we made the deposit.

The withdrawals have a commission charge, as follows:

Notwithstanding the above table, the Company reserves the right to charge a withdrawal fee equal to EUR 50. There is an inactivity fee. The monthly inactivity fee will increase as the total downtime increases:

A maintenance fee will be charged each month, regardless of whether there are transactions (deposits, withdrawals or business activity) in your commercial account or not. The commission shall be EUR 10 per month.

WITHDRAWAL PROCESSING & WAIT TIME

Withdrawals will always be made to the method of payment with which we made the deposit. Withdrawal waiting time ranges from 1 to 5 days.

BONUSES & PROMOTIONS

The Broker does not currently have any bonus or promotion available to its clients.

EDUCATIONAL & TRADING TOOLS

Proper Trade has an area of educational tools and of interest to the trader. It has an economic news section, this is good for all traders who like to trade with fundamental. It also has a technical analysis area of several currency pairs. This is a positive aspect for all traders who want to have a different vision about these assets, and also to have investment ideas.

In the educational section, there is also a section of videos. In these videos, different currency pairs are analyzed. Video can have a dual function, on the one hand educational, to learn how to analyze assets, and on the other hand, by being updated analyses, they can help us make investment decisions.

Finally, it has an economic calendar. Viewing the economic calendar on a daily basis is a good practice as it will help us detect all those news or events that may affect certain assets, so we consider this service very interesting.

CUSTOMER SERVICE

The customer has 3 ways to contact the customer service: Telephone, e-mail, and contact form. We note the absence of a live chat that usually provides a method of communication between the client and the broker.

The forms of contact are:

B-Market limited,
Kemp House, 152 – 160 City Road, London EC1V 2NX
Phone : +442039669160
[email protected]

DEMO ACCOUNT

Propertarde does not have a demo account for its clients. We consider this a negative aspect. Having a demo account is important, especially for all those novice traders who need to simulate a real operation without taking risks and gain experience in different markets.

COUNTRIES ACCEPTED

This FX broker does not offer services within certain other jurisdictions such as the USA, British Columbia, and Canada.

CONCLUSION

Trading with an unregulated and unlicensed intermediary like Proper Trade could present a higher level of risk. On the website, we can see from the contact details that Propertrade claims to be based in the United Kingdom, and provides us with the name of a company called B-Market Limited. We repeat that this company is registered in the Marshall Islands, a tax haven.

And as we have already commented, we are dealing with a broker without the necessary license to trade in the European Union, Australia, Canada or the United States.
Brokers wishing to operate in the United Kingdom must be authorised by the FCA (Financial Conduct Authority), or at least by the Cysec (Cyprus Securities Exchange Commission).

The bottom line is that traders may want to investigate this FX broker more before creating and funding an account with them.

SimpleFX is a robust online trading provider, offering to trade with Forex CFDs on Bitcoins, Litecoins, indices, precious metals, and energy. Their mission is to keep our offer and trading conditions simple and transparent. Company motto: “Keep it simple!” In this review, we will be looking into the services being offered by SimpleFX so you can decide if they are the right broker for you.

Account Types

There is only one account type available to sue with SimpleFX, this review will be going over a number of different aspects around trading conditions, so any information provided will be relevant to the account that you would be using should you sign up with SimpleFX.

Platforms

Simple FX use their own platform as well as MetaTrader 4 as their trading platforms of choice and its a good choice, let’s see what MetaTrader 4 offers.

MetaTrader 4 (MT4): Analytical functions are one of the strongest selling points of the SimpleFX MT4 platform. End-users can select from 23 different analytical objects to draw formations on the chart, along with 30 built-in technical indicators that greatly simplify this task. Thousands of additional indicators are available for download from the free Code Base. Built-in Market are making analytical capabilities work to make SimpleFX’s version of MT4 basically limitless.

SimpleFX Platform: The SimpleFX platform is a web-based platform that gives you the opportunity to trade on the go and in your browser, there is not a lot of information provided about it which is strange but it looks clean and intuitive, giving you all the tools you need to trade.

Leverage

The leverage that you have with SimpleFX depends on the balance of your account, we have set out a list below detailing this.

• Under $5,000 – 1:500
• $5,001 – $7,000 – 1:400
• $7,001 – $10,000 – 1:300
• $10,001 – $20,000 – 1:200
• $20,001 – $30,000 – 1:175
• 30:001 – $50,000 – 1:150
• $50,001 – $100,000 – 1:125
• Over $100,001 – 1:100

Trade Sizes

The minimum trade size available is 0.01 lots which are also known as a micro lot, the trades then go up in increments of 0.01 lots so the next trade would be 0.02 lots and then 0.03 lots. The maximum trade size is 100 lots, however, we would recommend not trading in sizes larger than 50 lots, as the bigger a trade becomes the harder it is for the markets or liquidity provider to execute the trade quickly and without any slippage.

Trading Costs

There are no added commissions which is great, as the account uses a spread based payment structure that we will look at later in this review. Swap charges are present though, these are interest charges that are incurred for holding trades overnight, they can be both negative or positive and can usually be viewed from within the trading platform of choice.

Assets

There are a number of different assets available, SimpleFX hasn’t broken them down into different categories, instead, they have just lumped them all into one category of tradable assets and put them in alphabetical order. Let’s see what they are:

ASX 200, AUDCAD, AUDCHF, AUDJPY, AUDNZD, AUSUSD, BTCUSD, CAC 40, CADCHF, CADJPY, CHFJPY, DAX 30, DJI 30. EURAUD, EURCAD, EURCHF, EURCZK, EURDKK, EURGBP, EURHKD, EURHUF, EURJPY, EURMXN, EURNOK, EURNZD, EURPLN, EURSEK, EURSGD, EURTRY, EURUSD, EURZAR, FTSE 100, GBPAUD, GBPCAD, GBPCHF, GBPHKD, GBPJPY, GBPNZD, GBPUSD, HAS 50, IBEX 35, LTCUSD, NDX 100, NIKKEI 225, NZDCAD, NZDCHF, NZDJPY, NZDUSD, SMI 20, SPX 500, STOXX 50, UK OIL, USDCAD, USDCHF, USDCNH, USDCZK, USDDKK, USDHKD, USDHUF, USDJPY, USDMXN, USDNOK, USDPLN, USDRUB, USDSEK, USDSGD, USDTRY, USDZAR, US OIL, ZAGAUD, ZAGUSD, XAUAUD, CAUEUR, XAUUSD, XPRUSD, XPTUSD, EURRUB, Natural Gas, USDILS, CHFPLN.

Then there are a number of different stocks including the likes of Amazon, Google, Apple, Tesla and many more.

Spreads

The spreads that you have are dependent on a few different things, firstly they are variable (also known as floating) so this means that when the markets are being volatile, the spreads will often be seen higher. It is also important to note that different instruments and assets have different starting spreads, so while EURUSD may start at 0.9 pips, other assets like GBPUSD may start slightly higher, in this case, 1.2 pips.

Minimum Deposit

You can start investing with any amount that you want, there is no set minimum deposit, while you can deposit as low as $1, we would recommend depositing at least $500 to allow for proper risk management and it also increases the potential for profit.

Deposit Methods & Costs

There is a wide range of ways to deposit with SimpleFX, we have outlined them below along with the currencies available to each deposit method.

• Bitcoin – BTC
• Bitcoin Cash – BCH
• Dash – Dash
• Ethereum – ETH
• Ethereum Classic – ETC, Fasapay – USD, IDR
• Litecoin – LTC
• Buy Crypto – BCH, BIT, DIT, EIT, LIT
• Monero – XMR
• Neteller – AUD, CAD, CHF, DKK, EUR, GBP, JPY, NOK, PLN, RUB, SEK, USD

As you can see they are strongly focusing on the crypto market when it comes to depositing, but there are a couple of e-wallets available too. There are no added fees for deposits, but as usual, be sure to check with your processor to ensure they do not charge any fees of their own.

Withdrawal Methods & Costs

The same methods are available to withdraw with the exception of Buy Crypto as that is a purchasing service only. There are no fees for any of the withdrawal methods apart from Neteller and Fasapay which as a 3% fee and 1% fee respectively. You should, however, check with your processor to ensure they do not add any fees of their own. Withdrawals must be made to the same method used to deposit if you have multiple deposits you must withdraw to the method that has the biggest deposit.

Withdrawal Processing & Wait Time

We could not locate any information surrounding how long it takes fro SimpleFX to process withdrawals, we would expect it to be within 48 hours, once it has been processed the amount of time it takes for your money to available for use will depend on the processing time of the method you used, as an example, Bitcoin will take a number of confirmations before it is available so it will depend on the speed of the network.

Bonuses & Promotions

Apart from the usual affiliate program, we could not locate any information on the website in regards to bonuses or promotions so it does not appear that there are any active ones at the time of writing this review. If you are interested in bonuses then be sure to check back regularly or get in contact with the customer service team to see if there are any upcoming bonuses or promotions.

Educational & Trading Tools

There doesn’t appear to be anything in regards to education, but there are a few trading tools such as automated trading, signals, and the standard analytical tools that come with the platform. This is a shame that there is nothing in the education department, as a lot of brokers these days are looking to help their clients improve and become more profitable with educational courses or tools to help them trade or analyze. It would be nice to see Simple FX do something similar for their clients.

Customer Service

The customer service page includes an FAQ page, and that is it. Luckily, at the bottom of the page in the website footer, there is an email address for the support department as well as the partnership department. It is a little disappointing that there are so few options to get in contact with SimpleFX, it is always nice to bale to speak to someone directly, unfortunately, this does not seem to be the case with simplex and it is something they should look at improving.

Demo Account

Looking through the site we could not see any information surrounding demo account so they may not be available, demo accounts allow potential new clients to test out the servers and trading platforms and it also allows regular clients to test out new strategies without risking any of their own capital. This is something that SimpleFX should look at adding in the future.

Countries Accepted

The following statement is found on the website: “SimpleFX Ltd. does not provide services to citizens and residents of the United States or any country where such distribution or use would be contrary to local law or regulation.“ If you are unsure of your eligibility, we would recommend getting in touch with the customer service team to find out.

Conclusion

SimpleFX is a little different to the usual broker, they only offer the one account and have their own trading platform, they do offer MetaTrader 4 as well, but they seem to be focusing on their own platform a lot more. Spreads are relatively low for a non-commission based account which is great and there are a number of different ways to deposit, however, it seems that the usual credit/debit cards and bank wire transfers are not, low fees are also a big plus. No demo account smake it hard for us to test things properly and the lack of ways to get in contact with eh customer service team can be a little offputting.

Alvexo is a forex and CFD broker based in Cyprus, offering over 450 trading assets, their vision is to empower and educate their client base by providing access to leading technologies, security of funds, providing a top-quality customer support team and to excel in delivering a comprehensive array of signal,s market news, analysis and more. In this review, we will be looking into the services being offered to see if they manage to achieve this vision.

Account Types

There are five different account son offer when signing up with Alvexo, each one has its own entry requirements and trading conditions, here is an overview of each one.

Classic Account: The classic account has a minimum deposit requirement of 500 EUR, it has spread starting from 3.3 pips and can be leveraged up to 1:30. Stop out level is set at 50% and the minimum trade size is 0.01 lots. In terms of instruments to trade, it has access to forex, commodities, indices, and cryptocurrencies. It provides you with one 1 on 1 support sessions as well as technical analysis and trading signals.

Gold Account: The gold account has a minimum deposit requirement of 5,000 EUR, it has spread starting from 2.2 pips and leverage can go as high has 1:300 for professional traders. The stop-out level is set at 15% and the trade sizes start from 0.05 lots. It has access to forex pairs, commodities, indices and cryptocurrencies. The account also comes with up to 2 1 on 1 session per month, technical analysis, trading signals, trading signals via SMS and daily market reviews.

Prime Account: Minimum deposits are increased to 10,000 EUR, it has spread starting from 1.8 pips and leverage can go as high has 1:300 for professional traders. The stop-out level is set at 15% and the trade sizes start from 0.25 lots. It has access to forex pairs, commodities, indices and cryptocurrencies. The account also comes with up to 4 1 on 1 session per month, technical analysis, trading signals, trading signals via SMS, daily market reviews and, email alerts regarding margin calls.

ECN Gold Account: The ECN Gold account increases the minimum deposit further up to 20,000 EUR, it has spread starting from 0 pips and leverage can go as high has 1:300 for professional traders. The stop-out level is set at 15% and the trade sizes start from 0.05 lots. It has access to forex pairs, commodities, indices, cryptocurrencies, bonds and stocks. The account also comes with up to 6 1 on 1 session per month, technical analysis, trading signals, trading signals via SMS, daily market reviews, email alerts regarding margin calls, margin call SMS alerts and daily live reviews.

ECN VIP Account: This is the top-level account and so in order to get this account, you will need to get in touch with the team at Alvexo. The account comes with spread starting from 0 pips and leverage can go as high has 1:300 for professional traders. The stop-out level is set at 15% and the trade sizes start from 0.25 lots. It has access to forex pairs, commodities, indices, cryptocurrencies, bonds, stocks and cannabis stocks. The account also comes with unlimited 1 on 1 session per month, technical analysis, trading signals, trading signals via SMS, daily market reviews, email alerts regarding margin calls, margin call SMS alerts, daily live reviews, meeting sessions and a direct line to senior account executives.

Platforms

Alvexo uses MetaTrader 4 as its sole trading platform. MT4 is very well-known and highly respected by FX traders. A few of the key features of the platform include:

• Navigational window and multiple order types
• Available through desktop, mobile and tablet interfaces
• 30 technical indicators and 9 timeframes
• Customization tools for more engaged strategy specific trading
• Graph and chart tracking

Traders can also choose to remain connected to their trading account and the global markets by using the MT4 App. The app offers a powerful and intuitive interface that allows you to buy and sell a wide variety of assets directly from the convenience of your mobile device. Alvexo provides real-time market quotes and price feeds to help render your trading experience even more effective and accurate.

Leverage

Alvexo follow the recommendations of the ESMA in regards to leverage, this means the following:

• 30:1 for major currency pairs
• 20:1 for non-major currency pairs, gold, and major indices
• 10:1 for commodities other than gold and non-major equity indices
• 5:1 for individual equities and other reference values
• 2:1 for cryptocurrencies

However, if you are considered a professional trader, then the maximum leverage with Alvexo is increased up to 1:300. Leverage can be selected when opening up a new account.

Trade Sizes

The minimum trade size that you have depends on the account you are using, we have outlined. them below.

• Starter: 0.01 lots
• Gold: 0.05 lots
• Prime: 0.25 lots
• ECN Gold: 0.05 lots
• ECN VIP 0.25 lots

We are not 100% on the maximum trade size, however, whatever it is, we would recommend not trading in sizes larger than 50 lots, as the bigger a trade becomes the harder it is for the markets or liquidity provider to execute the trade quickly and without any slippage.

Trading Costs

The ECN account and the ECN VIP account both come with added commissions, the commission depends on the currency being traded, for example, if we take AUDCHF as a pair, there will be a commission added in CHF, so for the ECN account, it is 18 CHF, while for the ECN VIP it will be 14 CHF, for AUDNZD it is 18 NZD for the ECN account and 13 NZD for the ECN Pro Account. The commissions are pretty high when you compare them with the usual $6 per lot traded.

Swap charges are also present, these are interest charges that are incurred for holding trades overnight, they can be both negative or positive and can usually be viewed from within the trading platform of choice.

Assets

There is a large number of assets available from Alvexo, too many for us to list (over 450), they have been broken down into 5 different categories, we will outline some examples from each.

Forex: Plenty to chose from including AUDCAD, EURCHF, EURRUB, GBPPLN, EURUSD, USDCZK, USDRON and, USDZAR.

Indices: Some examples include DAX, Dow Jones, IBEX, FTSE 100 and, Nasdaq.

Commodities: Quite a few on offer including Gold, Silver, Corn, Natural Gas, Coffee, and Light Sweet Crude Oil.

Shares: All the major players are available from the likes of Amazon, Apple, Facebook, Tesla, and Tesco.

Crypto: A nice selection of cryptocurrencies is also available including Bitcoin, Bitcoin Cash, Dash, Ripple, Litefoin and, Ethereum.

Spreads

The ECN and ECN VIP account some with raw spreads which can be as low as 0 pips, the other accounts all have spreads which we have detailed below:

• Classic: Starting from 3.3 pips
• Gold: starting from 2.2 pips
• Prime: Starting from 1.8 pips

The spreads are variable (also known as floating) so this means that when the markets are being volatile, the spreads will often be seen higher. It is also important to note that different instruments and assets have different starting spreads, so while EURUSD may start at 3.3 pips, other assets like GBPJPY may start slightly higher, in this case, 8.3 pips.

Minimum Deposit

The minimum amount required to open an account if 500 EUR, normally after an account is ok you can deposit slightly smaller amounts as top-ups.

Deposit Methods & Costs

Strangely, with all the information they provide about other aspects of their services, they do not make it easy to find out things about their deposit and withdrawal methods. Luckily after a lot of digging, we did find a little info.

In terms of methods, you can use Bank Wire Transfer, Visa, MasterCard, and American Express credit cards, Visa, MasterCard, Visa Electron, Maestro, Cash-U and V-Pay debit cards and QIWI Wallet as an E-wallet.

There are no fees added by Alvexo, but be sure to check with your bank or card issuer to see if they add any fees of their own.

Withdrawal Methods & Costs

The FAQ where we got the information doesn’t specify which methods are available for withdrawal, but the majority of the same will be, just like with deposits there are no added fees,m but you should check with your bank or card issuer to see if they add any fees of their own.

Withdrawal Processing & Wait Time

Withdrawals take a minimum of 3-5 business days upon completion of compliance requirements. For methods such as Bank Wire Transfer, it will take some additional time, usually between 2 to 5 working days for your own bank to process the transfer.

Bonuses & Promotions

We could not locate any information on the website in regards to bonuses or promotions so it does not appear that there are any active ones at the time of writing this review. If you are interested in bonuses then be sure to check back regularly or get in contact with the customer service team to see if there are any upcoming bonuses or promotions.

Educational & Trading Tools

There is a trading academy available which seems to contain a number of different things such as a glossary of forex terms and some articles and tutorials. It goes into detail on trading strategies and other advanced aspects of trading so it could be worth a look, especially if you are a client of theirs. There are also trading signals available that claim to be 82% accurate, we have no way of knowing unfortunately so we will need to take them at face value. There is also an economic calendar detailing upcoming news events and the markets that they may affect. Finally, there are trading calculators that you can use to calculate things like pips, margins profit and convert currencies.

Customer Service

Should you wish to get in contact with Alvexo you can via an online web form, fill it in and you should get a reply back via email, you can also call via telephone, they have number sin Cyprus, United Kingdom, France, Romania, Spain, Soth Africa, Italy, and Sweden. You could also get in touch via Twitter or other social media should you prefer to do it that way.

Demo Account

There doesn’t seem to be a demo account on offer, or at least we could not find any information about one. This is a shame as demo accounts allow potential new clients to test out the trading conditions and servers while it allows current clients to test out new strategies without risking any of their capital. This is an area that should be invested in and demo accounts should be made available.

Countries Accepted

The information about which countries are accepted and which are not is not present on the website, so if you are interested in joining, be sure to get in contact with the customer service team to check if you are eligible for an account or not.

Conclusion

Alvexo offers a lot when it comes to choice, at least with accounts, both STP and ECN accounts are available to choose from. Spreads can be quite high when it comes to the lower-tier accounts, and the commission is quite high when it comes to the ECN accounts, so the only accounts really worthwhile are the mid-tier ones. There are plenty of assets, so you will always be able to find something to trade. The only downside to the site is the lack of info easily accessible on the site regarding deposits and withdrawals. We had to dive deep into the back pages to find it, something that most potential clients won’t do and could leave not knowing this information.

AAA Trade is an online broker that offers leveraged trading of up to 1:200 on 1,000+ instruments, including FX, Metals, Indices, Futures, Shares, Bonds, Options, ETFs, and Cryptocurrencies. The company was established back in 2014, with a central location in Cyprus and regulation through the Cyprus Securities and Exchange Commission (CySEC). The broker’s main goal is to help their clients harness the potential of the financial markets by providing all-inclusive investment services, including unrivaled customer support, according to their website. Keep reading to fund out if the broker manages to uphold their mission statement.

Account Types

AAA Trade markets its CFD account types based on the trader’s skill level, with options being Novice or Experienced accounts. Alternatively, the CryptoExchange account is available for traders that would like the ability to trade Cryptocurrencies. Currently, the broker does not offer Islamic accounts, although demo accounts and corporate accounts are available in addition to the main individual account types. All accounts share the same deposit minimums and leverage options, although there are some small differences for trade sizes.

The main difference seems to revolve around the way that trading costs are paid, with a commission-free, higher spread option on the Novice account, or an option to pay low commission costs in exchange for lower spreads on the Experienced account type. The broker does not provide details about the costs on the CryptoExchange account type and it seems that one would need to reach out to support to open one of these account types since the option isn’t available on the main registration page. We’ve provided a quick overview of the account types below.

Novice Account
Minimum Deposit: $500 USD
Leverage: Up to 1:200 (See “Leverage”)
Spread: N/A
Commission: None

Experienced Account
Minimum Deposit: $500 USD
Leverage: Up to 1:200 (See “Leverage”)
Spread: From 1 pip
Commission: $4 per Standard Lot

CryptoExchange Account
Minimum Deposit: $500 USD
Leverage: Up to 1:200 (See “Leverage”)
Spread: N/A
Commission: N/A

During the registration process, traders will be required to fill in a short questionnaire that helps provide the broker with some insight into that trader’s experience level and knowledge of the financial markets. If one fails the questionnaire, the website will direct them to open a demo account and a 7 day wait period must be incurred before the test can be retaken. The broker will also require the client to take a selfie holding their passport/ID with a note stating the following; today’s date, telephone number, email, and signature. In addition, a copy of a recent utility bill, bank statement, local authority tax bill, bank reference letter, landline telephone or internet bill, etc. must be uploaded. As long as the submitted documents are acceptable, verification can be completed within minutes.

Platform

This broker provides three separate trading platforms; MetaTrader 5, AAA Trade, and CryptoExchange. For the Novice and Expert Account types, the broker’s own AaaTrade platform and MT5 are supported for download on Desktop or mobile. AAA Trade’s platform is also accessible through the browser-based WebTrader. The CryptoExchange account type supports the CryptoExchange platform, which is accessible through the browser, or for download through the App Store or Google Play.

While the website doesn’t offer a lot of details about their own supported platforms, the broker does mention that both platforms were designed to allow users to trade seamlessly across the global investment universe. One advantage of trading on MT5 with this broker would be the fact that this platform offers more available instruments than the others, although the broker doesn’t specify exactly how many more options would be available through MT5.

Leverage

Average leverage caps are limited based on the instrument that is being traded. The cap is set at 1:30 for major currencies, 1:20 for minor ones, and 1:10 for Commodities. Traders shouldn’t let the advertised 1:200 leverage cap be misleading and will need to know that this option is only available for clients that are considered professional. In order to increase the account’s leverage from the average options, traders must submit a request and complete the fitness test that was required at registration. In order for the broker to process the request, the trader will have to be considered a “professional” client and would likely need to earn a high score. Leverage can be lowered at any time from the settings within the client zone.

Trade Sizes

Minimum trade sizes for CFDs can vary based on the instrument that is being traded. The minimum is 0.01, or one micro lot, for FX options, and the broker suggests clients reach out to support for further information. For Cryptocurrencies, the minimum trade size varies based on the exact instrument. For example, Bitcoin, Bitcoin Cash, Litecoin, and Melon have a minimum trade size of 0.011 lot, while Dash, Ethereum Classic, Gnosis, and ZCash have minimum trade sizes of 0.035 lot. On CFDs, the margin call level is 50% and stop out occurs at 25%. On Securities, the margin call level is 70% and the stop out occurs at 25%.

Trading Costs

This broker profits through commissions (if applicable), spreads, and swaps. Commissions of $4 per Standard Lot are charged on the Experienced account type, while the Novice account is commission-free. Spreads seem to be competitive on the Experienced account, while the spreads are not listed for the Novice account type. All of the swap rates for each instrument can be viewed within the trading platform by clicking on the symbol in the market watch window, selecting symbols, clicking on the + beside an instrument, and then selecting “properties”. Traditionally, swaps are charged at a triple rate for positions that are held open on Wednesdays; however, this broker has responded to client feedback and only charges triple swaps on the weekend, starting from midnight on Friday.

Assets

This broker’s asset portfolio includes more than 1,000 FX, Precious Metals, Bonds, Futures, Indices, Shares, Options, ETFs, and Cryptocurrencies. FX options divided into 15 majors, 47 minors, and 11 exotics, for a grand total of 73 available currency pairs. Precious Metals include Gold, Silver, Platinum, Nickel, Pallidum, and Aluminum. In total, nine bonds are available from the US, Europe, and Asia.

The Futures category consists of 9 Agriculture majors and minors, in addition to 5 Energy majors and exotics. Indices are made up of 9 Asian, 2 Australian, 17 European, 2 Russian, and 7 USA options. 520+ Shares are also available from America, Australia, Japan, and many others. 80 total instruments are available from the Options category, including the sub-categories OPRA and the Eurex Exchange.

The ETF category is made up of 85 options and sub-categories include Bonds, County Index, Currency, Gold and Silver, US Sector & Industry, US Stock Indexes, and Volatility. The broker offers 50+ Cryptocurrencies, including popular options like Bitcoin, Litecoin, Ethereum, Ripple, and more.

Spreads

This broker offers floating spreads that vary based on market volatility and liquidity. The current spreads can be viewed from within the trading platform, or by checking the “Products” page of the website. We were alarmed initially to see that the broker didn’t provide a figure for spreads on their “Account Types” page, which could be a sign that spreads are higher than average. The broker does not provide exact options for the Novice account on their website, so this does leave some questions as to why 12where spreads can be checked directly. We saw examples of typical spreads like 0.00018 on AUDCAD, 0.002 pips on EURAUD, etc., although options can differ based on the exact instrument that is being traded.

Minimum Deposit

Instead of asking for a separate deposit amount for each account type, this broker separates each account into three tears; Basic Services, Advanced Services, and Premier Services. Traders must deposit at least $500 USD in order to open a Basic level of each account type, there is a $25,000 requirement for an Advanced level account, and a $100,000 deposit is required to open an account that is of Premier status.

Advanced level accounts are eligible for a 5% commission rebate on every trade, one-on-one training with a certified technical analyst, and a 0.25% positive interest rate. Premier account holders are eligible for a 10% rebate on every trade, a dedicated account manager, and concierge services. Aside from those perks, trading conditions will be the same, regardless of status level. Even if one wasn’t concerned about the account status, they would still be subject to the $500 deposit requirement, meaning that this broker is not as affordable as many of their competitors.

Deposit Methods & Costs

Accounts can be funded through Bank Wire, Visa, MasterCard, Maestro, Crypto Wallets, QIWI, Neteller, Skrill, FasaPay, and Union Pay. Prior to sending any funds from a Crypto Wallet, one would need to provide a screenshot that shows the user logged in with their full name and the wallet address. There is a maximum funding limit of 20,000 EUR for deposits via Neteller, Ideal, GiroPay, Yandex, and QIWI. A 50,000 EUR limit is placed on Visa/MasterCard/Maestro deposits. Deposits via card are processed instantly, while it can take a few days for the broker to process Bank Wire Transfers. Transfer fees are applicable to all deposit methods and those fees have been listed below.

• Wire Transfer: 10+ Euros
• CommercialMT1xx (Charging Option OUR): 25+ Euros
• CommercialMT1xx (Charging Option BEN): 10+ Euros
• Credit/Debit Cards: 3% + foreign charges
• Alternative Methods (Excluding Cryptocurrencies): 5% + foreign charges
• Cryptocurrencies: 0.2% (Minimum Fee Applies)
• Internal Fund Transfers: 2.5

Withdrawal Methods & Costs

All available funding methods are also available for withdrawals. Typically, funds will be withdrawn back to the method that was used to fund the account. In the case that this isn’t possible, clients can contact support to explore alternatives. Profits will be withdrawn back to Bank Wire. The broker does not charge fees on Visa/MasterCard/Maestro withdrawals, while a 10 Euro charge will be applied to any bank transfers on the bank’s behalf.

Withdrawal Processing & Wait Time

Withdrawals are typically processed within a maximum of 24 hours once the request is received, although it can take a few days for the funds to reach the account. In the case of Bank Wire, it would be wise to expect a longer wait time, which is typical. Withdrawals through cards or Cryptocurrencies would likely be received much more quickly.

Bonuses & Promotions

Promotional opportunities are limited to positive interest rates and commission rebates, with no bonus options available. As we mentioned earlier, one would need to meet the deposit amount for the Advanced or Premier status in order to qualify for either of these. For the Advanced status, a $25,000 USD is required and traders would be rewarded with 0.25% positive interest rates and a 5% commission rebate back on every trade. To achieve Premier status, one would need to deposit at least $100,000 USD in order to access a 10% commission rebate and a 0.25% positive interest rate. Clients must keep accounts active, with at least one trade being open or closed every 30 days, otherwise accrued interest may be lost.

Educational & Trading Tools

This broker offers several resources under the “Tools & Academy” section of their website. Academy options include webinars, video tutorials, e-books, online academy, and sessions with the market research department. This should certainly be enough to help beginners get on their feet and traders should be able to learn enough through this section to pass the broker’s registration test. Looking at tools, we see an economic calendar, Market Analysis, live market events, AAA Trade Analysis, and trading calculators.

Demo Account

Risk-free demo accounts can be opened from the same window used for live account registration and the same initial details are required upon sign-up, including name, email, phone number, country, currency type, and account type, with the choice between the Novice or Experienced accounts. Alternatively, traders can sign-up using their Facebook or Google accounts. Demo accounts will remain active indefinitely, or for a period of up to 1 year with no trading activity. If you could use some experience, we would highly recommend taking advantage of this free option, since conditions mimic those experienced in a live trading environment so closely. If you don’t think you’ll pass the broker’s registration questionnaire, it may be a good idea to practice ahead of time on a demo account.

Customer Service

This broker advertises 24/5 support, available via LiveChat, phone, email, or by filling out a contact form on the website. While the hours do seem flexible, we didn’t get the advertised experience when we tested out the broker’s LiveChat. Initially, we were informed that support wasn’t available, even though it was during business hours. Five hours later, the chat was displaying the same message, even though an agent should have been available at that time.

It would certainly be more effective if the broker would at least take email addresses in order to get back to clients at a later time, especially if this is a common problem. If you also find that support is offline, the next fastest contact option would be a phone call, followed by email. Although the company is located in Cyprus, several contact numbers are provided for clients from different locations. We’ve listed the primary numbers below, although numbers for different countries can be found on the contact page.

Email: [email protected]

Phone:
Cyprus: +357 250 300 60
Australia: +61 283 173 544
Brazil: +55 1131 8174 09
Japan: +81 345 704 320
Russia: +7 499 609 4203
United Kingdom: +44 203 769 2245

Countries Accepted

While the broker tries their best to offer services to everyone, certain restrictions prevent residents from the following countries from opening accounts: Zimbabwe, Iceland, Mongolia, Ethiopia, Syria, Yemen, Sri Lanka, Pakistan, Panama, Tunisia, Trinidad, and Tobago, The Bahamas, Botswana, Ghana, Iran, North Korea, American Samoa, Guam, Samoa, US Virgin Islands, Sudan, US, Afghanistan, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Guyana, Algeria, Bolivia, Morocco, Nepal, Iraq, Lao PDR, Uganda, Cambodia, and Vanuatu. We did double-check the registration page to see if any of these options could be selected; however, the broker does seem to reinforce these restrictions.

Conclusion

Right off the bat, we noticed that one of the primary advantages offered by this broker would be the 1,000+ tradable instruments that are available from several different categories, including Bonds, Shares, Cryptocurrencies, and more. It costs $500 to open the most basic level of any account type, with larger requirements for Advanced or Premier status levels. This broker does set some restrictive limitations and requires traders to pass a test in order to open an account or to access leverage that would typically be available through another broker. Unless you’re a professional client, you’ll be limited to a stricter leverage cap, of up to 1:30 on major currencies.

Some details are also missing from the website, including exact spreads on the Novice account type. Accounts can be funded through a wide variety of methods and the broker has quick processing times for withdrawals. Promotions in the form of rebates and positive interest are limited to Advanced or Premier level status accounts, which requires a deposit of at least $25,000. The broker offers multiple educational resources and trading tools, making for a seamless learning environment. Support is available 24 hours a day on weekdays, although there were no agents online when we reached out via LiveChat during business hours. Overall, the broker does seem to be offering some advantages, although one would need to weigh those against potential disadvantages.

GBC FX is a forex broker based in Saint Vincent and the Grenadines. In their “Why Us2 section they claim to offer competitive spreads, advanced trading platforms, the fastest withdrawals, promotions, learning center, trading tools, and expert forex help. In this review, we will be looking into the services offered to see if they live up to these expectations and so you can decide if they are the right broker for you.

Account Types

There are three different accounts available should you sign up with GBC FX, here is a brief outline of their features and requirements.

Micro Account: This account requires a minimum deposit of $200, it must be in USD. It has leverage up to 1:400 and a floating spread starting from 2 pips. The minimum trade size is 0.01 lots with them going up in increments of 0.01 lots. Scalping is available as is the use of expert advisors. It uses market execution and tradable assets include Forex, CFDs, and Metals.

Mini Account: The Mini account increases the minimum deposit up to $2,500, as with the other accounts it much be in USD as a base currency. It has leverage up to 1:200 and a floating spread starting from 1.5 pips. The minimum trade size is 0.1 lots with them going up in increments of 0.01 lots. Scalping is available as is the use of expert advisors. It uses market execution and tradable assets include Forex, CFDs, and Metals.

Standard Account: The top tier account has an entry requirement of $10,000 and the base currency must be in USD. It has leverage up to 1:100 and a floating spread starting from 1 pip. The minimum trade size is 1 lot with them going up in increments of 0.1 lots. Scalping is available as is the use of expert advisors. It uses market execution and tradable assets include Forex, CFDs, and Metals.

Platforms

GBC FX uses MetaTrader 5 as its sole trading platform. MT5 is designed for the active trader who desires access to comprehensive news and analytics, real-time price charts and live quotes. The platform also contains a loaded suite of management tools, expert advisors (EAs) and indicators. A few of the prime features of the platform are as follows:

• Full account management
• Market Watch Window
• Navigator Window
• Analysis & Charting Tools
• Automated trading (Expert Advisor)
• Newsfeed & alerts
• Account history report center
• Order execution capabilities
• One-Click Trading

Leverage

The leverage that you are offered is dependant on the account you are using, the maximum leverage levels are as follows.

• Micro Account: 1:400
• Mini Account: 1:200
• Standard Account: 1:100

Leverage can be selected when opening up an account, should you wish to change it on an already open account you can do so by getting in touch with the customer service team.

Trade Sizes

The trade sizes that you have depends on the account you are using, they each have different minimum and increments to their trading sizes. The Micro account has a starting trade size of 0.01 (also known as a micro lot) lots and goes up in increments of 0.01 lots, so the next trade would be 0.02 lots and then 0.03 lots.

The Mini account has trade sizes stating from 0.1 lots (known as mini lots) and goes up in increments of 0.01 lots, so the next trade available will be 0.11 lots and then 0.12 lots. The Standard account starts with trade sizes of 1 lot (known as a standard lot), it then goes up in increments of 0.1 lots so the next trade is 1.1 lots and the 1.2 lots.

We do not know the maximum trade size, however, we would recommend not trading in sizes larger than 50 lots, as the bigger a trade becomes the harder it is for the markets or liquidity provider to execute the trade quickly and without any slippage.

Trading Costs

There does not seem to be any added commissions as the accounts use a spread based system which we will look at later in this review. There are swap charges though, and these are interest charges that are incurred for holding trades overnight. They can be both negative or positive and can usually be viewed from within the trading platform of choice.

Assets

We could not locate a breakdown of assets or any real information of assets apart from the fact that the account page states that there are Forex, CFDs, and Metals available to trade. It would be good for a breakdown to be added as a lot of potential clients will look at what assets are available to trade to ensure the ones they like are available, without it, they may look elsewhere.

Spreads

As there is no breakdown of the assets, we can only go by what the account page states which is as follows:

• Micro Account: Starting from 2 pips
• Mini Account; Starting from 1.5 pips
• Standard Account: Starting from 1 pip

This is reasonable for non-commission based accounts, we also know that the spreads are variable (also known as floating) which means that when the markets are being volatile, the spreads will often be seen higher. It is also important to note that different instruments and assets have different starting spreads, so while EURUSD may start at 2 pips, other assets like GBPJPY may start slightly higher.

Minimum Deposit

The minimum deposit required o open an account is $200 which gets you the Micro account, if you want a different account you will need to deposit at least $2,500. It is unknown whether the minimum deposit decreases once an account is already open.

Deposit Methods & Costs

There isn’t a whole lot of information on deposit methods, the methods available are Bank Wire Transfer, Visa, Skrill, and Neteller. We would expect MasterCard to also be accepted seeing as Visa is. There is no mention of any fees, but also no mention that there aren’t any so we cannot say for sure. We can say to check with your own bank or processor to see if they add any fees of their own.

Withdrawal Methods & Costs

Just like with deposits, there isn’t much information on withdrawals, all that we do know is that Bank Wire Transfer, Visa, Skrill, and Neteller are available for withdrawals. As with the deposits, there is no mention of any fees so we cannot say if there are any or not, but again, be sure to check with your own bank or processor to see if they add any transfer fees of their own.

Withdrawal Processing & Wait Time

We also have no information on this aspect of the withdrawals, we would hope that they would be processed by GBC FX within 48 hours. However long they take,m once it has been processed it will normally take between 1 to 5 business days for your funds to become available based on the processing time of your bank, card issuer or e-wallet provider.

Bonuses & Promotions

We could not locate any information on the website in regards to bonuses or promotions so it does not appear that there are any active ones at the time of writing this review. With that being said, GBCFX does state that it does offer promotions from time to time. If you are interested in bonuses then be sure to check back regularly or get in contact with the customer service team to see if there are any upcoming bonuses or promotions.

Educational & Trading Tools

There is a small introduction section to trading which outlines what different aspects are such as what CFDs are or what a pip is. There is also a page on both technical analysis and fundamental analysis, this isn’t providing you with any, instead, it is just page detailing what it is and what is involved, not anything that will make you an expert at it. There is also a section on trading mechanisms and trading systems, again this is just basic information and not something that will improve your knowledge unless you are completely new.

Customer Service

If you want to get in contact with GBC FX there are a limited number of ways to do this, you can use the online submission form to fill in your query and you should the get a reply via email, there is also a direct email address available, then there are a number of different physical addresses provided. There is no phone number to use which is a little bit of a shame. There is a chat window in the bottom right of the screen but we have only ever seen it say offline so we are not sure if it is even functional.

The opening times of the support are also not mentioned but we would assume that they are closed over the weekend and on bank holidays just like the markets are.

Demo Account

Demo accounts are available, if you click the open demo account button it will instantly start downloading MetaTrader 5, you need to install this and then open a demo account from within there rather than within the GBC FX website. The trading conditions are unknown and which account it mimics is unknown and there is also no information on potential expiration of the demo accounts.

Countries Accepted

The information about which countries are accepted and which are not is not present on the website, so if you are interested in joining, be sure to get in contact with the customer service team to check if you are eligible for an account or not.

Conclusion

The trading conditions offered by GBC FX actually seem quite reasonable, the spreads are in line with many other brokers that also do not offer commission-based accounts. Leverage is acceptable at 1:400 for the Mini account. The main downsides are the lack of information regarding deposit and withdrawals, this info is vital as people need to know how they can get their money in and out of the broker and also how much it is going to cost them, without this, it can be hard to build a certain level of trust.

There are also limited ways to get in touch with the customer service team which is a little concerning but nothing that will prevent someone from signing up. The main decision is on the deposit and withdrawal info, we would not recommend them based on this information missing, but if you are able to ascertain this then they could be a potential broker to use.

Templer FX is an online forex service provider. Located in Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, Templer FX aims to provide a superior level of service to retail and institutional customers to sustain long-term relationships that will enable us to respond more efficiently and proactively to their changing needs. Templer FX’s goal is to provide its customers with the very best trade execution and service in the FX industry. In order to meet its goals, Templer FX employs three strategies that are the backbone of their success: Customer Service, Research and Execution. That is according to them, this review will be looking into the services being offered to see if they manage to achieve their three main targets.

Account Types

There are 5 different accounts available should you decide to sign up, each having their own requirements and features, so lets briefly look at what they are.

Universal FX: This account requires a minimum deposit of $25, the base currency must be in USD and it comes with spreads starting from 0.1 points and there are no added commissions. The minimum trade size is 0.01 lots with the maximum being 50 lots, there is also a maximum of 100 open trades at any one time. Leverage can be between 1:1 and 1:2000, a hedge margin is present at 50% and the margin call and stop out levels are 80% and 30% respectively, Expert Advisors are ok to use on this account.

Cent FX: This account requires a minimum deposit of $1, the base currency must be in USD and it comes with spreads starting from 0.1 points and there are no added commissions. The minimum trade size is 0.01 lots with the maximum being 50 lots, there is also a maximum of 100 open trades at any one time. Leverage can be between 1:1 and 1:2000, a hedge margin is present at 50% and the margin call and stop out levels are 80% and 30% respectively, Expert Advisors are ok to use on this account.

MAM: This account requires a minimum deposit of $1,000, the base currency must be in USD and it comes with spreads starting from 0.1 points and there are no added commissions. The minimum trade size is 0.01 lots with the maximum being 50 lots, there is also a maximum of 100 open trades at any one time. Leverage can be between 1:1 and 1:2000, a hedge margin is present at 50% and the margin call and stop out levels are 80% and 30% respectively, Expert Advisors are ok to use on this account.

Muslim FX: This account requires a minimum deposit of $25, the base currency must be in USD and it comes with spreads starting from 0.1 points and there are no added commissions. The minimum trade size is 0.01 lots with the maximum being 50 lots, there is also a maximum of 100 open trades at any one time. Leverage can be between 1:1 and 1:2000, a hedge margin is present at 50% and the margin call and stop out levels are 80% and 30% respectively, Expert Advisors are ok to use on this account. There are no swap fees or charges with this account.

Segregated Account: This account requires a minimum deposit of 50,000 EUR, the base currency must be in EUR and it comes with spreads starting from 0.1 points and there are no added commissions. The minimum trade size is 0.01 lots with the maximum being 50 lots, there is also a maximum of 100 open trades at any one time. Leverage can be between 1:1 and 1:2000, a hedge margin is present at 50% and the margin call and stop out levels are 80% and 30% respectively, Expert Advisors are ok to use on this account.

Platforms

Templer FX is offering two platform versions to help meet the needs of their clients. These include MetaTrader 4 and Templer Trader Professional. Below, we take a look at each.

MetaTrader 4 (MT4): This FX broker offers MT4 in both Android and iOS app formats. There is no shorts of information surrounding the MetaTrader platforms online, but we’ll still point out some of the key features below.

• Trading from a real-time live tick chart
• Ability to use all symbols available
• Place Buy and Sell orders
• Place Pending orders
• Set Stop-Loss and Take-Profit
• Close and Modify Existing Orders
• View Real-Time Profit/Loss of Live Trades
• View Past history
• Real-time interactive currency charts
• Real-time market price overview
• Technical analysis tools

TemplerFX Trader Professional: The broker’s very own proprietary trading platform, this terminal successfully combines important functionalities that allow for effective FX trading with exceptional usability. Templer FX Trader Professional is among the fastest within the industry and boasts the following key features:

• Unlimited chart-analysis possibilities
• Support of different time series
• A high number of technical indicators and surveys
• Creation of automated trading systems (Expert Advisor)
• Real-time data export about DDE record
• Internal e-mail system
• Generation of confirmations and accounting in real-time
• Available for Windows, Linux, Mac, WebTrader, and Blackberry

Leverage

The leverage available ranges from 1:1 all the way up to 1:2000 which is a ridiculously high amount. We would recommend not trading on such a high amount and would limit yourself to 1:500 as a max. The leverage can be selected when opening up an account and should you wish to change it on an already open account you will need to get in contact with eh customer service team with your request.

Trade Sizes

Trade sizes on all accounts start from 0.01 lots and go up in increments of 0,.01 lots so the next trade would be 0.02 lots and then 0.03 lots. The maximum trade size is 50 lots which are appropriate as we never recommend going over 50 lots in a single trade. There is also a limit of 100 open trades at any one time.

Trading Costs

There are no added commissions on any account as they all use a spread based system that we will look at later in this review. Apart from the Muslim FX account, swap charges are present on all other accounts, these are interest charges that are incurred for holding trades overnight, they can be both negative or positive and can usually be viewed from within the trading platform of choice. The Muslim FX account does not have these charges.

Assets

The assets on Templer FX have been broken down into 5 different categories within each are a set of different instruments, we have outlined what they are below.

Forex: EURUSD, GBPUSD, USDJPY, USDCHF, USDCAD, USDTRY, EURTRY, AUDUSD, NZDUSD, EURGBP, EURJPY, EURCHF, EURCAD, EURAUD, EURNZD, GBPJPY, GBPCHF, GBPCAD, GBPAUD, GBPNZD, CHFJPY, AUDJPY, AUDCHF, AUDCAD, AUDNZD, CADJPY, CADCHF, NZDJPY, NZDCHF, NZDCAD, USDZAR and, USDMXN.

Precious Metals: Just Gold (XAUUSD) and Silver (XAGUSD).

Energies: Brent Crude Oil seems to be the only energy available to trade.

Cash Indices: US 30, NAS 100, SPX 500 and German 30 are the only available indices.

Shares CFDs: There isn’t a breakdown of shares available, the website states that there are over 40 different shares available to trade.

As you can see, the asset index is sufficient, but many forex brokers do offer much larger asset indexes.

Spreads

The account comparison page states that spreads can start as low as 0.1 pips, however, looking at the contract specification it doesn’t look like any are under r0.8 pips. The spreads are variable (also known as floating) so this means that when the markets are being volatile, the spreads will often be seen higher. It is also important to note that different instruments and assets have different starting spreads, so while EURUSD may start at 0.8 pips, other assets like EURCAD may start slightly higher, in this case, 2.2 pips.

Minimum Deposit

The minimum deposit required to open an account is $1, this will get you the Cent FX account if you want a different account you will need to deposit at least $25. No matter which type of account you have, any subsequent deposits have a minimum of $1.

Deposit Methods & Costs

There are plenty of different methods available to deposit with, we have outlined them below in an easy to read table.

Withdrawal Methods & Costs

There isn’t any differentiation between the deposits and withdrawals, so we believe that the information provided above for deposits is also relevant for withdrawals. When using Ban Transfer be sure to check with your bank for any possible fees added by them.

Withdrawal Processing & Wait Time

There wasn’t any set information in regards to processing time, we would hile that Templer FX would process withdrawals within 48 hours. The total amount of time it will take will depend on the method used but you could expect some withdrawals to take between 1 to 5 business days to clear.

Bonuses & Promotions

We could not locate any information on the website in regards to bonuses or promotions so it does not appear that there are any active ones at the time of writing this review. If you are interested in bonuses then be sure to check back regularly or get in contact with the customer service team to see if there are any upcoming bonuses or promotions.

Educational & Trading Tools

The educational section contains three very basic sections, the first is three steps to becoming a trader, the page consists of just three sentences so nothing groundbreaking. The expert tips section contains three paragraphs on trading, again nothing amazing. Finally, there is a glossary of trading-related terms just uncase you come across something you don’t know the meaning of. Nothing here ill make you an expert or be too helpful if you are new to trading too so you will need to go elsewhere to satisfy your educational needs.

Customer Service

There are three different ways to get in contact with Templer FX, the first is to request a callback, simply put in your name, number and message and you should get someone giving you a call regarding your message. You can also email, using the online submission form, fill it in and you should get a reply via email. There is also a live chat available should you wish to communicate that way.

At the bottom of the page there is some additional contact information:

Address: Suite 305, Griffith Corporate Centre Beachmont P.O.Box 1510, Kingstown, SVG
Tel: +44 20 33557076
Fax: +44 02 071128046
Email: [email protected]

There is no information about opening times of the customer support team but we would expect them to be closed at the same time as the markets over the weekends and on bank holidays.

Demo Account

Demo accounts are available, but there isn’t any specific information about them such as trading conditions or if there is an expiration time. Demo accounts allow potential new clients to test the servers and trading conditions while allowing existing traders to test out new strategies without risking any of their own capital.

Countries Accepted

The following statement is present on the Templer FX website: “We do not provide services for US, UK, EU, Canada, Turkey, Israel, and Japan residents and entities of any kind.” If you are unsure of your eligibility we would recommend getting in touch with the customer service team to check.

Conclusion

You get a good selection of options when choosing an account, however, a lot of the trading conditions for the accounts are all the same, so the only difference seems to be the cost of entry. Leverage can be up to 1:2000 which is far higher than most brokers, but also far higher than anyone would recommend, it is nice to have the option though. Plenty of ways to get in contact with the customer service team and the spreads along with no commission can make the trading experience a non-costly one. There is a slight lack of tradable assets, the instrument list is not too big, which could mean that there are times of no trading due to there being no suitable assets. The trading conditions seem good, so the decision is now up to you.

UAGTRADE is an STP broker with no dealing desk that provides trading services for fund managers as well as retail traders. This company was founded back in 2015 and it is currently based in Dubai. This company is registered in Ajman Free Zone in Dubai with the registration number AFZ/OS/1454. For those who have never heard of it, Ajman Free Zone is a free trade zone in the United Arab Emirates offering offshore company setup and operation to investors.

AUGTRADE is also authorized and regulated by the Cambodia Securities Exchange under the reference number 160/18 SECC/ D. We always advise clients to be highly cautious when dealing with offshore brokers as there are risks which one should take into consideration.

This broker claims to be secure, transparent and profitable whilst trading currency pairs, precious metals, index CFDs and commodities. They offer a variety of account options with varying spreads and minimum deposits plus they also cater to Islamic clients as they have the option of having a swap-free account. Join us as we unveil what this broker has to offer and determine whether this broker is the right one for you.

Account Types

UAGTRADE offer their clients a choice of 3 accounts namely, the Pro Account, The Supreme Account and finally the ECN account. The cheapest account to open is the Pro as it has a $100 minimum deposit. Spreads for this account are quite low since they start from 0.3 Pip which is the same for the ECN account. On the other hand, the Supreme account has spreads starting from 1.3 Pip which is rather high.

To make up for the high spreads, the Supreme account comes fee-free whereas both the other accounts have a commission fee applied namely; $17 per lot for the Pro account and $5 per lot for the ECN account. Minimum and maximum trade sizes are the same for all accounts; Minimum lot 0.01 and Maximum 100 Lots and the stop out level and margin calls are also identical for all accounts. The stop-out level is set at 50% whereas the margin call is set at 150%. All accounts have USD as their currency.

In order to open up an account with UAGTRADE, it is of utmost importance to have an introducer. For those who do not have an introducer, the broker suggests to contact them via live chat or email to discuss getting one. Since no other information is given regarding what the Introducer actually is, we decided to take a look at their FAQ page which generally houses information such as this, but to our disappointment, the FAQ page of this broker is either not working at the moment or non-existent. We also tried to contact the broker via live chat to ask about the introducer but we were not given a reply so we cannot comment any further about this for the time being.

As we mentioned before, this broker also caters to clients who follow the Sharia Law as it has a swap-free account. We are not sure of the trading conditions for these swap-free accounts as they are not explained on their website.

Platforms

This broker offers the MT4 trading platform which is a very popular, user-friendly interface with fast executions and numerous technical indicators and charts that help traders make the right choices. Some advantages of this platform include; detailed analysis of quote dynamics, the ability to view multiple charts simultaneously, pre-programmed analytical tools and a frequently updated news feed to keep users up to date. This platform can be used on a number of devices including Mac, Windows, Android, and iOS. You can find MT4 download links on UAGTRADE’s Platforms page.

Apart from the MT4, this broker also has its own UAGTRADE mobile application. This app enables you to access your account wherever you are and effectively manage your portfolio. At the moment, this application is only available for Android but it will be made available to download for iOS in the future.

Leverage

The maximum leverage offered by this broker is 1:200 (0.5% margin requirement). This ratio is industry standard as most brokers offer it as maximum leverage.

Trade Sizes

The minimum trade size available with AUGTRADE is 0.01 lots and the maximum is 100 lots.

Trading Costs

Unless a client opts for an Islamic account, he/she will have to pay the swap rate and overnight fees. It is good to note that Wednesdays are a triple swap day for all trading instruments due to the markets being closed on Saturday and Sunday. Obviously this can go both ways as clients can either make a good sum out of it or lose more money than they intended to.

Apart from the swap rates, the Pro and the ECN accounts both have a commission namely; $17 Per lot for the Pro, which is quite high, and $5 per lot for the ECN account. Although the Supreme account comes fee-free, the spreads of this account are way higher than the others, so clients should choose wisely before opening up an account.

Assets

UAGTRADE has quite a variety of trading instruments available including Forex, precious metals, energies, and Index CFDs. On their Trading Instruments page, we counted over 25 currency pairs including AUD/NZD, AUD/CAD, EUR/USD and GBP/CAD just to name a few major pairs whilst they also have a decent number of minor and exotic pairs available for trading.

Clients can choose between Gold and Silver as precious metals and BRENT or WTI as energies. This broker also offers over 10 Index CFDs including Nasdaq, Dow Jones, and CAC FRANCE among others. You can find a detailed list of all available assets and their average spreads, contract sizes and trading hours on their Trading Instruments page.

Spreads

UAGTRADE offers variable spreads for all their trading instruments, so expect spreads to widen or tighten based on the overall market volatility. Since this broker is an STP broker, meaning they do not have a dealing desk, there will be no requotes and pricing is more transparent. On their Trading Conditions page, they state that their spreads start from 0.3 Pips for the ECN and the Pro Accounts, whereas the Supreme account has higher spreads starting from 1.3 Pips.

When going through their list of available assets and their spreads, we found that the most popular currency pair EUR/USD has a spread of 0.7 for the Pro and ECN accounts and 1.3 for the Supreme account, which is quite standard. Other less popular pairs such as CAD/CHF has a spread of 2.4 for the ECN and Pro Accounts and 2.5 for the supreme. You can find all this information on their Trading instruments page.

Minimum Deposit

The minimum deposit required varies from account to account. The cheapest entry amount is $100 which is required to open up either a Pro account or the Supreme account. The amount increases drastically for the ECN account as clients are required to deposit $10,000.

Deposit Methods & Costs

Clients can deposit funds to their UAGTRADE accounts by Direct bank transfer, Paypal or through a bitcoin wallet, strangely they do not offer credit/debit card deposits for some reason. This broker processes all deposits within 24 hours upon a successful transaction and they do not have any fees applied to their depositing methods.

Withdrawal Methods & Costs

Clients can withdraw their money using the same method they used to deposit it. Although UAGTRADE does not have any fees for withdrawals, clients are still susceptible to transfer fees which are independent of the broker. Any fees will be deducted from the client’s withdrawal amount.

Withdrawal Processing & Wait Time

UAGTRADE processes all withdrawal requests within 1-3 working days and any requests coming in during the weekend will be processed on the next working day.
For faster processing, all account holders of UAGTRADE are now required to submit deposit and withdrawal requests from the members’ dashboard which clients can find on their trading platform.

Bonuses & Promotions

At the moment, this broker doesn’t seem to have any ongoing bonuses or promotions on offer. We also found no mention of any previous bonuses or promotions, so this broker might not be interested in offering anything similar to a welcome bonus.

Educational & Trading Tools

On their website, clients can find a Resources and Education segment which includes weekly technical analysis by Muhd Haniff (Hanzo). According to their website, Hanzo is a full-time trader and fund manager with more than 5 years’ experience (which might not seem like a lot to clients that have been trading for longer than that themselves). Going through their analysis articles, we were pleased to find that these are in fact uploaded weekly. The analysis comes in the form of videos, approximately 12 minutes in length, with Hanzo himself analyzing charts and giving tips on how to trade during certain market conditions. These can be very helpful for those who are still starting out. Apart from these videos, clients also have access to UAGTRADE’s Fundamental News & Report.

In this section, the broker takes into consideration factors like interest rates, productions, earnings, employment, gross domestic products, housing, manufacturing, and management in order to forecast the overall state of the economy. Although the idea is pretty cool and quite useful, these articles aren’t uploaded very frequently, with the latest one being uploaded back in September 2019.

UAGTRADE also provides training, education & preview sessions, seminars, and classes for their clients to suit their individual skills, strategies and overall knowledge of the subject, or at least that is what they state on their website. When we opened up their calendar to take a look at what sessions or seminars are available in the near future, we found the calendar to be completely empty, so although they claim to offer some seriously useful guidance and education, at the moment they don’t have anything to offer apart from the weekly analysis.

Customer Service

UADTRADE’s customer service isn’t the best out there for sure. We tried to contact them via live chat and even through e-mail (on two separate occasions, both on weekdays during office hours) but we weren’t given any answers to our questions. We are unsure whether there were any technical issues with the live chat, as our messages remained pending, or whether this broker needs to invest more into their customer service. This is their contact information:

Address: P.O Box 337188, Office N 706
Jumeriah Bay X2 Tower, Cluster X, Dubai
United Arab Emirates
Email: [email protected]

Demo Account

If you’d like to test out UAGTRADE’s trading conditions, you can sign up for a free demo account that can be created through their website. Clients are required to fill in a simple form, choose what leverage they want to try out with (maximum offered is 1:200) as well as how much they’d like to deposit. The demo account uses the USD currency. We found no information regarding how long clients can test their skills out on their Demi account. We did reach out to them via e-mail and live chat but we weren’t given any answers.

Countries Accepted

There is no information on whether UAGTRADE has any restrictions regarding countries that might be banned from doing business with them. We did try to contact the broker via E-mail and via Live chat, but no answers were provided. We did go through the list of available countries when filling in the open account form, and it seems like all countries are accepted as we didn’t notice any that are missing.

Conclusion

This broker has a decent variety of assets available for trading on 3 different account types that cater to a variety of trading enthusiasts. Spreads are average on some accounts whilst being quite high on others and minimum deposits vary from $100 to $10,000 which means this broker is suited for new traders as well as more professional ones. Their website has a cool layout and quite a lot of educational information, but we did find the FAQ section to be non-existent, which is frustrating since this section usually holds a lot of important information, and their customer support leaves much to be desired as we were left without answers after multiple attempts at getting in touch with the brokerage. They do offer a demo account, so if you’re interested in what this broker has to offer, try the demo out and decide whether this broker could be the one for you.

NaviFX is an STP broker that uses the popular MT4 platform. On their website the information regarding the company is slightly confusing as on one hand they speak about the NAVIFX company and its claims and on the other hand they also mention the company CHF CLEARING which in fact is a member of the Financial Conduct Authority. They boast that CHF clearing won a number of awards including Best Liquidity Provider, Finance Magnates awards 2014/2015/2016/2017. The relationship between the two is unclear, and we when tried to find the connection, we didn’t find any relationship between NaviFX and CHF clearinghouse. We also found it quite strange that NAVFX does not state where they are located as no address is provided.

Moving on from this worrisome information, this broker offers 1 type of account with a variety of assets to choose from. Their website seems to be a bit outdated and it is translated from Chinese so getting a clear idea of what this broker has to offer might be slightly challenging. Join us as we delve into their website to discover more of what this broker has to offer.

Account Types

Surprisingly information regarding their available accounts is not available on this broker’s website. We went on their Create Account page to find out some more information and there seems to be only one type of account available. It is indicated that the minimum deposit required to open up this account is $1000, but apart from this, nothing else is mentioned.

Platforms

This broker uses the most popular platform available, the MT4. This is a well-equipped trading platform that provides analytical tools, detailed charts, Expert Advisors, real-time transactions and many more. From NaxiFX’s website, clients can download this platform for their Desktop, Iphone or Android device.

Leverage

On their Traded Product List, clients can find the leverage offered by this broker, but it is written under the title Margin. It seems like the highest leverage offered it 1:100 and this is available on certain currency pairs such as EUR/USD, USD/CAD AND AUD/NZD just to mention a few. The lowest leverage we could see was 1:10 and this was available for EUR/TRY and USD/TRY. Other pairs have a leverage of 1:50, 1:25 and 1:33. Although there is a variety, the leverage offered seems to be quite low in general. Clients can find the full list of available leverages on their Product list page.

Trade Sizes

On the same list, clients can see the contract specifications for each asset available for trading. The broker does not specify whether the amount listed is the maximum or the minimum but we assume it is the maximum. For example, a large number of currency pairs such as EUR/CHF, AUD/JPY and GBP/JPY have a contract specification of 100,000 whereas XAU/USD has a contract specification of 100. On their Advantages page, we found a small mention that the broker allows trades as low as 0.01 mini lots, but we are unsure if this is the case for all available assets.

Trading Costs

Although this broker claims to offer very low trading costs, we could not find any information regarding the type of spreads that this broker has to offer so we cannot comment on this at the moment.

Assets

NaviFX has 4 types of assets available for trading namely; Forex with up to 43 currency pairs including Us Dollar, Euro, British Pound, Japanese Yen, Australian Dollar, Swiss Franc, etc, Precious metals including Gold and Silver, CFDs including Brent Crude Oil, and Us Crude Oil and lastly Stock Index. Their Stock Index page was empty so we cannot specify which indices are available for trading.

Spreads

The only mention of spreads on their website is a generic question about what spreads are on their FAQ page, so we are unsure about the type of spreads one can expect when dealing with NaviFX.

Minimum Deposit

Although it is not clearly outlined, from their Create an Account page we found that clients must deposit a minimum of $1000 to open up an account with NAVIFX.

Deposit Methods & Costs

Unfortunately, the deposit and withdrawal page found on NaviFx’s website is either not working at the moment, or nonexistent. Apart from claiming to have fast and secure deposit and withdrawal methods, we found no other mention of what methods are available.

Withdrawal Methods & Costs

We cannot comment on this as no information is provided.

Withdrawal Processing & Wait Time

Same as before, we cannot comment about withdrawing processing and time. We did try to contact the broker via e-mail but we did not receive any information.

Bonuses & Promotions

From what we could see from their website, NaviFx does not have any bonuses or promotions on offer at the moment.

Educational & Trading Tools

NaviFX has a Learning Center on their site which has a number of articles which explain what certain terms such as Spreads and Margins mean, how certain fundamentals affect the trading market as well as information about how to read charts and determine the best trading strategies to go with them. NaviFx also has a video page under their learning center, but this seems to be empty at the moment.

When it comes to Trading tools, clients can find updated news articles as well as an updated financial calendar on NaviFx’s homepage.

Customer Service

Clients who’d like to contact NaviFx can do so via email or through a message form found on their website. They do have a live chat button on their website but the button seems to not be working at the moment. We did try to contact the broker via email but we haven’t received any feedback yet. We find it quite strange that NaviFx can only be reached through e-mail and no telephone numbers or addresses are provided.

Demo Account

For those who would like to test out the trading conditions offered by this broker, a trial demo account is available. Potential clients can open up this demo account by filling in a simple online form. On this form, clients have to choose their deposit amount which varies from 3000 – 5000000 (the currency is not specified) and also the group which can either DemoNGL or DemoNGL02. Unfortunately, the difference between the two groups is not explained anywhere on the site, so we cannot comment on what this means.

Countries Accepted

Although we found no information about banned countries, on their Create an Account form we found no countries missing on their list. If you cannot find your country of residence, we suggest speaking directly to the broker.

Conclusion

As you’ve probably noticed, this broker seems to be involved in a shady brokerage business and there are multiple reasons why we got this impression. The information about the brokerage itself, such as registration, license and contact info such as address or telephone number is nowhere to be found. NaviFx also mentions the CHF Clearing company which is in fact a regulated company, but we could not find the relation between the two. Apart from this, there are certain buttons on their website that are either not working at the moment or are simply put there to impress potential clients.

Information about Accounts provided and their specifications such as spreads and minimum deposits required are nowhere to be found. We also realized that this broker does not have a terms and conditions page and their FAQ page only has generic questions and not specific to the broker’s own trading conditions. Obviously, this lack of information should trigger warning signs for any potential customer thinking about opening up an account with this broker. However, if you still think this broker might be the one for you, test out their demo account before actually investing your money with NAXIFX.

GEMFOREX presents itself as a Japanese brand broker that has interesting beginnings and a special way of doing business. The broker has started in 2010 as an automated trading software company for the MT4 platform (EAs) under the name of Gem Trade. This service was recognized among all tech-savvy Japanese clients that boosted the popularity of the company. The main selling point was the free EAs available, a breakthrough window for the market that was seeking for such service.

Later in 2013, Gem Trade went on and recognized the popularity of copy trading service that was adopted to complement the already popular EAs aimed at clients who just want to copy other traders without involvement in EAs or manual trading. In 2014, the company merged all the best features of Forex trading and created GEMFOREX brand allegedly based in New Zealand, under the name of GEM GROUP NZ LIMITED. License from the New Zealand Financial Services Provider – NZ FSP is legit although with some inconsistencies with the company history.

Currently, the broker has the main office in Auckland, and branches in Hong Kong, Vietnam, Vanuatu, and London. Their website has a simple style and a great amount of useful information on every category. Transparency and trust are used as the main marketing, especially evident with statements such as that GEMFOREX do not investigate client backgrounds as long the clients is 18 years old, self-responsibility is encouraged. This statement could even be false as the ID documents have to be uploaded at one point.

Following Japanese ethics, the website contains ads, although we could say the main promotion effect is the open-handed approach to the visitor that is backed up with actual services and products. Their EA and mirror trading are still available under certain requirements. Transparent on their trading conditions, GEMFOREX also strives to bring competitive spreads, fast withdrawals, and deposits.

As their main drive is the Global-Expansion-Method – GEM, this broker is competitive but not in every category. This GEMFOREX review will reveal what is best about this broker, possible issues, and are the overall conditions good to your trading style.

Account Types

Before opening any live account, the broker advises trying the demo first. This practice is a good sign the broker is not pushing for deposits. Traders ready for live experience can choose 2 account types, All-in-One and the No Spread Account. The first account encompasses all the automated and mirror services without any limitations although the spreads are somewhat wider than using the No Spread Account. EAs are not available with the No Spread Account, it is dedicated for manual trading. Traders will allegedly enjoy 0 pip spreads for major currency pairs but will have increased minimum deposit, unlike the All-in-One account which does not require any specific amount.

GEMFOREX published a good comparison table although more information about trading instruments could be included. The account opening process is fast indeed as the broker promotes. No documents verification is needed for the actual account opening, just the email. Of course, ID verification is necessary for deposits and withdrawals. All account types are denominated in JPY or USD. Traders can have up to 4 different accounts at their disposal if they want different types.

Platforms

GEMFOREX offers only the MetaTrader 4 platform in all versions. MT4 is available for Windows and Mac operating systems as well as for smart devices running on Android and iOS. The installation package is not exact as the default, some visuals and text are different and the platform startup is automatic after installation is finished. The log in screen will show three GEMFOREX servers, Live 1, Live 2 and Demo. All of them show around 210 ms ping rate. Interestingly, the about window shows GemTrade company and the address location in Seychelles and the updated version of MT4 client.

The starting template is by defaults, showing 4 major forex charts on the H4 timeframe with One-click buttons visible. There are no added custom indicators, EAs or templates. The symbols are grouped into 3 classes, Forex, CFD Indexes, and CFD Futures. The No Spread account instruments will have a “cn0” suffix. Opening a specification window will show enough trading information for each instrument. The trading terminal will show commissions and swaps columns even though GEMFOREX is a commission-free broker.

As for the execution times, they are 270 ms on average with small deviations from 260ms to 278ms. Note that the latency may be better if you are located in Asia-pacific. On some occasions, the orders were given an Off quotes message that did not repeat on retry. This may be signs of low liquidity caused by inadequate liquidity providers. Note that if the EA used has a high frequency of trading, trading could be suspended or limited by the broker.

Leverage

GEMFOREX is offering 1:1000 leverage and we have confirmed this in the MT4 platform. This leverage is true even for exotic currency pairs. For indexes, the leverage is 1:100 except for the Nikkei 225 at 1:200 and Hang Seng 50 at 1:66. For commodities, the leverage is 1:66. Spot Gold and Silver also employ the maximum leverage of 1:1000, which is very rare to see. These levels are one of the highest in the industry, especially if we know that the Margin Call does not exist and the Stop Out level is at 20% closing the biggest position first.

Trade Sizes

GEMFOREX sets micro-lot minimum trading sizes on all forex assets or 0.01 lots. The maximum trading size is 100 lots while additional volume steps are also in micro-lots. This setup is very good for scaling in and out trading allowing for maximum position precision. For Indexes, the minimum volume is increased to 1 lot, 12500 lots maximum and 1 lot for volume steps. Commodities have the same sizing policy as Indexes but precious metals assets are using 0.01 lots as the minimum trading volume size and 100 lots maximum.

Trading Costs

GEMFOREX does not charge a commission for any of the account types they offer. Trading costs emerging from the overnight open positions, or swaps, are the only trading costs if they are negative for that side of the position. The swaps do not have many positive figures on one side, many currency pairs feature only negative swaps. They are calculated in points and tripled on Fridays.

For example, the EUR/USD has -3.68 points for long and -1.78 points for a short position swap. Similar is with USD/JPY -2.88 points for long and -4.28 for short. Other majors have similar figures except for AUD/USD with a positive swap for long position 1.63 points and -6.37 for short. In fact, many AUD pairs have a positive swap. Exotics have a double-digit swap but in case of USD/MXN, the swap is -196.74 points for long and 33.29 for short. Precious metals swap is only negative but very low. XAU/USD has -2.17 points for long and -1.04 points for short and XAG/USD -4.68 long and -0.23 short. Swaps for Indexes are tripled on Wednesdays, all are negative although much lower than with forex currency pairs.

GEMFOREX uses the inactivity fees policy. For live accounts without transactions for the past 3 months, a fee of $15 will be charged on January 1st, April 1st, and October 1st. Note that the account balance will not into negative this way. Other fees may apply under certain conditions such as for withdrawals. More on this in the Withdrawal Methods & Costs section. Also, the broker may charge traders a fee for breaking the Terms and Conditions. Traders should still be aware of all of the limitations in that legal document.

Assets

The only category where GEMFOREX is not competitive with the largest forex brokers is the asset range. The broker offers only 4 categories and some of those are modest. These are Commodities or better to say Energies, Precious metals, Forex, and Indexes. Forex has exotics pairs but there are only 34 in total. Although all majors and minors are present, some may notice Scandinavian currencies missing. Exotics are USD/MXN, USD/TRY, ZAR/JPY, USD/ZAR, USD/HKD, USD/CNH, and EUR/ZAR.

Precious metals are limited to Spot Gold and Silver against the USD. Again, GEMFOREX does not offer anything special here. The Indexes range is similar, with modes with 10 listed in MT4. They are all majors except for the Spain 35. Interestingly, the Index symbols have EUR or USD suffix to denote what currency is used. Commodities are limited to two Oil types, Brent and WTI. And this is the end of GEMFOREX’s assets offer to leave a very thin impression compared to other brokers.

Spreads

GEMFOREX has floating spreads applied for all trading instruments. All-in-One account has noticeable wider spreads then the No Spread account. According to the dedicated page on spreads, EUR/USD has an average of 1.2 pips spread. During the day ending, when the spread is usually wider, we have observed a 3 pip spread for this currency pair and then going back to 14 points soon after. The spread figures on the GEMFOREX website are precise and are competitive. The broker openly stated that they do not wish to engage in overspread dumping to keep the trading service in balance with other issues like liquidity, execution time and so on.

None of the major currency pairs have spread over 3 pips and minors largest average spread is with the EUR/NZD – 3.2 pips, GBP/AUD – also 3.2 pips, GBP/CHF – 3.1 pips, GBP/NZD – 3 pips, and GBP/CAD with 3.3 pips. During our observation during the high volatility period for the day end, none of the non-exotic currency pairs pushed the spread above 7 pips. For the exotics, the average spread is 17.4 pips for the USD/CNH, 15 pips for USD/HKD, 22 pips for USD/TRY, 16 pips for USD/ZAR, and the highest was for the USD/MXN 55 pips on average. XAU/USD average spread is 21 pips as stated by GEMFOREX, and from the MT4 it is 60 pips. Later, during the London trading session, we have expected spread narrowing. The spreads were lower up to 1 pip.

No Spread account showed similar if not the same spread levels during the high volatility period. It looks like the only difference between these accounts is the lower minimum limit. According to the broker’s website, the average spread for USD/JPY and EUR/USD is 0.3 pips, and a minimum of 0.0. Periods, when the minimum is achieved, is probably between trading sessions, but this never happened in our testing. For the rest of currency pairs, the average spread is mostly under 3 pips, except for the GBP/AUD at 3.1 pips and EUR/NZD also at 3.1 pips. XAU/USD average spread is 21 pips.

Generally, No Spread Account features 0.1 to 2 pips lower spreads under normal conditions than the All-in-One account, but this is inconsistent. The broker went a step further and promoted their research on spreads with other brokers that do business in the area. The article presents a comparison table with major forex brokers and their spreads for major currency pairs. The writer went ahead and even explained the execution models such as NDD (Non-dealing Desk) and DD.

In our opinion, the spreads given by this account type were nowhere near 0.0 pips at any time. In fact, we have observed XAU/USD having wider (44 pips) spread than with the All-in-One account (30 pips) during the normal trading volatility period.

Minimum Deposit

For the All-in-One account, the minimum deposit is $1, although this amount may not be possible for all deposit methods. For the No Spread Account, the minimum initial deposit is $3000 or 300,000 Yen. The broker has published all the traits for each deposit method. So, for Credit Card payments the minimum is $50, as well as for Netteler and Skrill. Bitcoin and Ethereum have 0.01BTC and 0.1 ETH respectively, PayPal, PerfectMoney, MegaTransfer, PAYEER require $100. UnionPay, China domestic bank, Wechat deposits require 500 CNY. Bitwallet method is currently unavailable but it requires 10,000 JPY. MASTER / JCB, China domestic bank, STICPAY, and FastPay require $50. Note that deposits that are not made in US dollars will automatically be converted.

Deposit Methods & Costs

The broker does not charge any fees for deposits. Some transaction fees could exist with payment processors. There are more than the usual number of deposit methods available. Deposits by Credit Cards, Neteller, Skrill, cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin, PayPal, PerfectMoney, MegaTransfer, PAYEER, UnionPay, STICPAY, FastPay, and China domestic banks. The deposit will not be executed if positions are opened in the trading account, so they have to be closed first.

Withdrawal Methods & Costs

GEMFOREX does not charge a fee for the first withdrawal in a month. The fee for the second and subsequent requests in a month is 2% of the withdrawal amount. Also, in case of withdrawal without opening any positions after a deposit, the fee of $45 will be deducted from the withdrawal amount. Withdrawal amounts of more than $5000 in a month will be either processed by wire transfer to the specified bank or traders will have to wait for 30 days expiration.

Currently, 5 possible methods are available for withdrawals. Note that the broker will accept only domestic financial institution accounts where the client belongs to or with a matching nationality of the account holder. Any fees related to the transaction can be covered by the broker, traders will need to send a picture of the transfer and fee statement. The methods offered are Skrill, Neteller, Bitcoin, Bitwallet, and Wire transfer.

Withdrawal Processing & Wait Time

Withdrawals and fund transfer are not possible until all current positions are closed. In case of withdrawal, the bonus amount also disappears from the account. Wire transfers take from 3 to 5 working days, Skrill and Neteller 2 to 3 working days and Bitcoin or Bitwallet 1 to 3 working days. Note that Bitcoin withdrawal minimum amount is 0.1 BTC, or at the current rate about $750. The maximum amount for the BTC method is $30,000, while for e-wallets is $5000 monthly.

Bonuses & Promotions

The bonus is mentioned several times on the broker’s website although we could not find any promotions of this kind. Introducing brokers and white labels are available. Currently, the bonus of 200$ is on right now. However, the bonus campaign is limited to the Japanese market where Japanese or foreigners work and live in Japan.

Educational & Trading Tools

GEMFOREX is known for its allegedly free EA and Mirror service. In practice, to use the EA service you will have to meet the requirements. First, you need to open an account with GemTrade at another domain. After linking the two accounts from the member’s area and meet the minimum deposit requirement you will be able to use EAs according to the following scheme: From $500 to $ 1,000 – one EA can be used per month, $1,000 to $ 2,000 – 3 EAs, $2,000 to $ 3,000 – 5 EAs and from $3000 deposit unlimited number of EAs.

Moving EAs between account is not supported and if your balance drops below the category requirements, you will have to deposit to maintain that service level. The selection of EAs is very good, with many to choose from and it is also great to have filters to narrow the search. You can filter EAs by trading strategy (scalper or swing), low drawdown, trading frequency, profitability and so on.

The Mirror service need to be linked the same was as the EA service. Traders will have to register an account at a new domain and then link the accounts. The service is not advanced and it is not on par with some other brokers offering this service. Mainly it is for beginners.

GEMFOREX does not have an Economic Calendar or any other trading tools. Educational material is limited and is mostly guides and how-to content related to the page visitor is on. FX Column section has a few reports on the trader’s performance for the mirror service. None of which has any interesting information. FX Dictionary is published and also on the homepage some research articles that feature comparisons of GEMFOREX with other brokers. The data presented in these articles are not consistent with what we have observed.

The News section available form the homepage of GEMFOREX’s website contains just important notifications about trading and the company. These are updated regularly but do not have anything related to fundamental or technical research. GEMFOREX also provides VPS service under certain volume and other requirements. For those who cannot meet the criteria, the paid option is offered.

Customer Service

The company is reachable by email, phone line and by chat service if it is open. Our query by email was not answered in 24 hours and chat service is open from 10:00 am to 5:00 pm on weekdays local time. Their representatives are very fast, you will not have to wait for more than 30 seconds for an answer, and their English is very good. Although they could not answer us to some more demanding questions, they answer in full. Generally, the support service is acceptable, but not top-notch as advertised.

Demo Account

The demo account is available only for the All-in-One account and the expiration date is 90 days from the opening. The demo is accurately representing live trading conditions but not that you will not be able to test GEMFOREX EAs unless they have the minimum balance requirements. Traders will not be able to open the demo within the MT4 platform, the only login with the credentials sent to the email address they have provided. The demo will have $10,000 in practice money.

Countries Accepted

GEMFOREX does not have any records of restricted countries. The broker support replied to us that they accept all counties, even the US. Now, this is against many of the regulation protocols and there are specific restrictions on financial products outside the USA, that apply to USA citizens or persons resident in the USA. The broker recommends that you read the information about Terms and Conditions of financial products outside the USA, before making any decisions.

Conclusion

In this section of the GEMFOREX review, we will present important facts not stated above. We have found a few inconsistencies while investigating the GEMFOREX New Zealand FSP license. Namely, the company has changed the name from EFS GROUP LIMITED to GEM GROUP NZ LIMITED in June 2019, something that is not disclosed by the broker. Also, the directors are changed frequently and do not have Japanese origin as stated by the broker on their website. Furthermore, there are inconsistencies with the address in the MT4 platform where the broker is located in Seychelles, a location not mentioned in the company history or other web pages.

Upon further investigation, we have seen many changes and reports by the reputable broker benchmark sites about the broker and some negative reviews. The broker does not have any offices in Japan but uses the “made in Japan” ad. Trading conditions are also not as they are promoted, the spreads are not even close to 0.0 pips, during our testing, the EUR/USD pair spread never went below 1 pip. Traders are also not aware of the deposit requirement for their EA and copy trade service and that the procedure is overcomplicated.

Given all this, it is hard to shake the feeling GEMFOREX is not as good as it is presented on the first look. The regulation does not have any weight in this case even though the license is valid.