Tag: Forex

CrescoFX is a UK based foreign exchange broker and is a brand of Cresco Capital Markets. There isn’t a whole lot of information about them on the website, they state that they pride themselves in being able to offer their clients tailored services and innovation, seamless trading platforms and generally make it easy for their clients to succeed. We will be looking into the services to see if they live up to this and so you can decide if they are the right broker for you.

Account Types

There appears to be just the one personal account on offer from CrescoFX, the information is set out in an easy to read format on the website so we have been looking through all pages of the site in order to find the information related to this account., Due to this we are not putting it all in this section and instead, all sections of this review are relating to this one available account.

Platforms

CrescoFX uses two different trading platforms, one is the well known MetaTrader 4 while the other is their own custom made platform, let’s see what they include.

MetaTrader 4 (MT4): MetaTrader 4 (MT4) is one of the world’s most popular trading platforms and for good reason. Released in 2005 by MetaQuotes Software, it has been around a while, it is stable customizable and full of features to help with your trading and analysis. MT4 is compatible with hundreds and thousands of different indicators, expert advisors, signal providers and more. Millions of people use MT4 for its interactive charts, multiple timeframes, one-click trading, trade copying and more. In terms of accessibility, MT4 is second to none, available as a desktop download, an app for Android and iOS devices and as a WebTrader where you can trade from within your internet browser. MetaTrader 4 is a great trading solution to have.

Cresco Trader: Cresco Trader offers its users a unique opportunity to benefit from 100% automatic execution, competitive and reliable pricing as well as advanced risk management tools. In order to optimize the trading experience, the platform offers fully customizable layouts, advanced trading tools, and award-winning charting as well as a mobile application. Some features include 100% automated execution, trade using unrealized profits, trade directly from the charts, access to market, limits and stop entry orders, regular and trailing stop-loss orders; take profit orders and guaranteed stop-loss orders, live support 24/5, a live Economic Calendar.

Leverage

The maximum leverage allowed is currently 1:30, however, the maximum leverage depends on the asset that you are trading, we have outlined them below in an easy to read list.

• Forex Pairs: 1:30
• Major Indices: 1:20
• Spot MEtals: 1:20
• Commodities: 1:10
• Cryptocurrencies 1:2
• Equities: 1:5

Trade Sizes

The minimum trade size available is 0.01 lots which is otherwise 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.

We could not locate information surrounding 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

Unfortunately, we could not locate information on trading costs, both spreads and commissions are not really mentioned at all on the website, this is a shame as it is one of the aspects that a lot of penitential clients look for when deciding which broker to go for, so not knowing what the cost of trading is could put a lot of new clients off opening an account.

Assets

CrescoFX has broken its assets down into 6 different categories which we will give examples of different assets available for you.

Forex Pairs: USDJPY, AUDJPY, AUDUSD, CADJPY, CHFJPY, EURAUD, EURCAD, EURCHF, EURGBP, EURJPY, EURUSD, GBPCHF, GBPJPY, GBPUSD, NZDUSD, USDCAD and, USDCHF.

Major Indices: US 30, US 500, US Tech 500, HK 50, Japan 225, UK 100, French 40, German 30.

Spot Metals: Gold, Silver.

Commoditites: Brent Crude Oil, WTI Crude Oil.

Cryptocurrencies: BTCUSD, BTCEUR, ETHUSD, ETHEUR.

Equitites: AMZN, BABA, FB, GOOG, MCD, MSDT, RACE, TSLA, V AAPL.

Spreads

We could not locate any information regarding spreads at CrescoFX, however, we do know that 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 2 pips (example), other assets like GBPJPY may start slightly higher, 2.5 pips (example).

Minimum Deposit

The minimum deposit is not noted on the website nor is it in the terms and conditions of the site. It is strange not to have this information available to potential clients, as the last thing someone wants is to sign up and find they need to deposit more than they have available to trade with.

Deposit Methods & Costs

Once again, this information is not available, we looked through the site as well as though the terms of business and we could not locate any of it. This is information that is vital, we are going to be sending our own money to this company, the least we could expect is to know how we can do it and if there are any costs attached to it.

Withdrawal Methods & Costs

As there was no information on depositing we were confident that there wouldn’t be any on withdrawing either, and we were not wrong. Once again we will reiterate the importance of having this information available, many clients will not sign up without knowing about withdrawals.

Withdrawal Processing & Wait Time

This is also unknown to us, without knowing what methods re available we can not even give an estimate on processing or the time it will take to receive your funds.

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 eduction side of the website is unfortunately currently under construction. There is no method of what sort of things will or have been there so at the moment it seems that there are no educational or trading tools available from CrescoFX.

Customer Service

Should you wish to send a query or question to CrescoFX you can do so in a few different ways, you can use the online submission form to fill in your query and once sent you should receive a reply via email. There is also an email address that you can use to email directly along with the phone number should you wish to speak with someone on a more personal level. There is no mention of what the opening times of the customer support team are but we would be confident in saying that they will be closed over the weekend and on bank holidays just as the markets are.

Demo Account

CrescoFX is offering demo accounts, you can sign up by filling in a small submission form, you can choose between having a demo account on MetaTrader 4 or the CrescoFX Trader. Apart from this, there isn’t any information regarding trading conditions (although we expect them to be the same as the live account) or how long the accounts last, some brokers put an expiration time on the accounts so not to take up too much server space so it would be nice to know if CrescoFX do a similar thing on their 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

There is too much information missing for us to be able to recommend CrescoFX as a broker to use at this point in time. There isn’t a clear indication of what the account offers, things like spreads and trading costs are not accounted for which makes it hard to judge how worth it would be trading here. The worst part is that there is no information surrounding the financial aspects of the broker, we will be sending our money to home, we need to be able to know how we can do it, how much it will cost and also how we will get it back along with how long it would take. Without this information, we just can’t see ourselves treading there and so could not recommend it as a broker to use right now.

Key To Markets are registered in New Zealand, the UK and Dubai, and are both a DMCC and FCA regulated company. They offer MT4 trading services to their clients as well as PAMM accounts. In addition, they offer IB affiliate programmes and a white-label service for those wanting to expand their trading into a career or even business of their own. One thing that sets this broker apart from other forex brokers is that Key To Markets also offer their very own Savings account, which enables clients to earn interest (0.5% annual interest paid Monthly) on the money they have sat in their account, while it is not being used for trading. This idea is very forward-thinking, and a great tool to attract clients

Account Types

Key To Markets offer 3 accounts, 2 for trading, and 1 for saving and earning interest, which can then be transferred directly to the trading account and used for trading:

• ECN MT4 Standard: commission is charged using a 1 pip mark up to the inter-              banking spread, 1.0 pip + raw spread
• ECN MT4 Pro: 8$ per traded lot round turn commission, raw spreads
• Key To Savings account: 0.5% annual interest paid Monthly, savings can be used          and moved to trade account

PAMM investor and Social PAMM accounts are also available for those who wish to gain profit from essentially someone else investing their own money for them, with their management and experienced trader skills.

Platforms

Key To Markets offer the MT4 platform, and the trading services are compatible via the following platforms:

• MT4 for Windows PC
• MT4 for Mac OS
• MT4 for iPhone
• MT4 Android

Leverage

The maximum leverage that Key To Markets offers on their trading accounts is 1:500. However, the website does not specify if this is for all tradable assets available. In the absence of an FAQ page or live chat service, I called the customer support telephone number provided (during hours of operation) to find out more but was never answered after several attempts, and instead got an automated message on loop. This is very concerning that the customer support team are unresponsive, and not entirely clear on their website on what exactly they offer.

Trade Sizes

For both trading accounts, the minimum trade size requirement is 0.01 lot and the maximum trade volume is unlimited.

Trading Costs

Key To Markets charge trade commissions only on one of the two accounts, the MT4 Standard account charges 0 while the MT4 Pro account charges commissions of €0.06/$0.08 RT per 1 Microlot, so 6 EUR or 8 USD per lot (round turn). Of course, the STandard account spreads are marked up in replacement of the commission fee, so therefore the client cost on either account you choose is essentially almost the same. The commission fee of 4USD to open the trade and a further 4 USD to close the trade is actually not as expensive as it appears and is actually fairly average to what other brokers charge.

Assets

Key To Markets offers over 100 currency pairs to trade which include Forex, Indices & Commodities. Both the Standard and Pro trading accounts have access to the same markets. This broker is potentially limiting in terms of instruments offered, with assets such as cryptocurrencies not being available, which are definitely increasing in popularity to trade on margin, and not just Hold.

All available pairs are not displayed on the website, nor is there a demo account offered to view them on Market Watch, leaving the only alternative for clients to be opening a live account right away, which is not the norm, and raises suspicion and concern about the transparency of this broker.

Spreads

As mentioned earlier, the spreads offered by Key To Markets differ from the two trading accounts offered; the ECN MT4 Standard offers 1.0 pip + raw spread while the ECN MT4 Pro offers raw spreads. Bear in mind that this account does charge commissions while the Standard, does not, but the broker makes up for the cost by marking up the spreads to the clients, so client cost for trading balances out, no matter which account option you choose.

Minimum Deposit

The minimum deposit requirement set by Key To Markets, for both the MT4 Standard and MT4 Pro accounts are both set at $100, which is a little higher than what a lot of brokers require but at the same time is reasonable and gives ample room and fair start to trade a decent volume and taking into consideration the cost of the commission charge and spread.

Unfortunately, one cannot see the spreads on the website, and a reminder that there is no demo account to check these out, so you would need to open a live account to see all spreads available to you.

Deposit Methods & Costs

Key To Markets claims to offer Instant deposit methods, which are set out on the website, as follows:

-Credit / Debit card (Restrictions are applied to certain countries)
-Skrill (Only for non-European clients)
-Neteller
-Sticpay
-Bank Wire (no fee)

All deposit methods, aside from the Bank Wire method, incur a 2.5% fee, so do bear this in mind when funding your account.

Withdrawal Methods & Costs

The two methods of withdrawal offered by Key To Markets are Skrill or Neteller, and both will incur a 1% withdrawal fee.

Withdrawal Processing & Wait Time

On the website, Key To Markets claims they will process all withdrawals (Skrill and Neteller) within 48 business hours. Of course, this could vary depending on when you make the withdrawal request too; if you make the withdrawal outside of operating hours, you could be left waiting a number of days. To be clear, Key To Markets do NOT offer any INSTANT withdrawal methods.

Bonuses & Promotions

Key To Markets does not offer any bonus schemes to their clients however they do offer IB affiliate programmes for those who wish to expand their income outside of their personal trading. In addition, there is also a ‘refer your friend’ scheme, whereby you may earn income from onboarding your connections to Key To Markets.

Educational & Trading Tools

Key To Markets offer absolutely nothing in the way of trading tools or educational material. This indicated that the traders they target their services at are perhaps the more experienced traders already and do not require assisting tools provided by their broker. Of course, there is plenty of educational material freely available on many online avenues, including this very website, where ample reading and video material is available for free learning.

Customer Service

Key To Markets offers customer support service, which clients can make use of via contacting via telephone or email during the hours (UK) of 9 AM – 6 PM. There is no live chat service which may be off-putting to some potential clients as this means that to get a response, one must wait for a response, and this could vary in timescale, rather than receive an instant response. There is also no FAQ page for such short queries that a live chat alternative would be beneficial for.

In the duration of writing this review, we had no response from any customer support channel offered, which is highly concerning. How can clients feel assured of the security of their funds and trades, if the customer service is totally unresponsive?

Demo Account

It is very peculiar that an apparent FCA regulated company, do NOT offer their potential clients a demo account to backtest their service. How can you know for sure if this broker is suited for your trading style if you cannot test it fully yourself in the demo client area before opening a live trading account?

Countries Accepted

While there is no direct disclaimer fromKey To Markets regarding which countries are accepted to be clients, bear in mind that if your residency/jurisdiction does not comply with DMCC and FCA regulation policies, you will not be granted access to trade with this broker. Of course, this is your personal responsibility to check before registering to save disappointment, but of course, you will also be screened when you submit your document proof of address and Identification when you sign up for a live account.

Conclusion

Key To Markets are not wholly transparent when it comes to the ins and outs of their services. It is very disappointing to see they do not offer even a demo account, which does not allow potential clients a fair judgement on whether this broker is suitable and in line with their expectations as well s their prefered trading style and strategies. In addition, it is incredibly poor conduct for a regulated company (FCA) to be totally unresponsive when it comes to customer support. This is a clear demonstration that not all brokers can stand tall with their regulation status being their one tool to attract clients when they have no time or thought for their clients.

Java is an offshore broker that is located in Indonesia and regulated by Indonesia’s Commodity Futures Trading Regulatory. The key advantages of opening an account would be access to tight spreads, flexible leverage options, and 24/5 support, according to the broker’s website. As a smaller forex broker, you won’t fund much information or other user reviews about the company online. After noticing some discrepancies on the company’s website, we decided to do the research needed to paint a real picture of what this broker’s conditions look like.

Account Types

Java features one real account type, named Titan, in addition to demo accounts. If you take a look at the website in more detail, you’ll notice the broker lists three main account types as an advantage. Unfortunately, the advertised Mini, Regular, and Pro account types do not seem to exist, meaning that potential clients will only have one option. The account grants access to currency pairs, metals, futures, and energies with a maximum leverage cap of up to 1:200. The broker is asking for a $2,000 deposit in order to open an account with starting spreads from 1.8 pips. We’ve provided a quick overview of the account below.

Titan Account
Minimum Deposit: $2,000
Leverage: Up to 1:200
Spread: From 1.8 pips
Commission: None
Available Instruments: 24 currency pairs, 2 metals, 1 energy, 7 futures
Minimum/Maximum Trade Sizes: 0.1/20 lots

Platform

If you decide to open an account through Java, you’ll be trading from the infamous MetaTrader 5 platform. Usually, brokers tend to offer the earlier version, MT4, and we don’t always get the option to use the newest version, which has been designed to offer some more features and improvement in certain areas. Within MT5, traders will find a variety of trading tools, multiple timeframes, three different chart types, and more than 50 technical indicators. The platform is also easy to navigate and highly accessible – available for download on PC, Mac, iOS and Android devices, or accessible through the WebTrader.

Leverage

The broker is offering an average leverage limit of up to 1:200. Some regulators do set much lower limits, even as low as 1:30 on currency pairs, making Java’s 1:200 cap seem significant. We’d also like to point out that many traders wouldn’t even use leverage as high as the cap offered by this broker, as trading with higher leverages goes hand in hand with taking large risks. On the other side of things, some professionals may feel a bit restricted by the limit, and it is possible to find higher options, sometimes going into the thousands with other brokers if you take the time to look.

Trade Sizes

Java requires a minimum trade size of at least one mini lot, making it impossible to trade micro-lots through this broker. There is also a rather restrictive maximum trade size of 20 lots. Margin call/stop out would occur once when the account’s margin level reaches 10%. Scalping, hedging, and Expert Advisors are all allowed.

Trading Costs

The broker’s Titan account comes with basic trading costs, primarily charged through the spread, with no commissions taken. In addition, the broker would charge standard swap fees on certain positions that are held overnight. Details regarding the long and short swap fees can be viewed on the website under “Product” > “Save And Scroll Costs”.

Assets

Java’s investment portfolio is primarily made up of currency pairs, in addition to futures, spot metals, and spot energies. In total, the broker is offering 24 currency pairs, with a few exotic options. We also seem some cryptocurrency pairs on the list, including BTCUSD, DSHUSD, ETHUSD, LTCUSD, XMRUSD, and XRPUSD. The futures category is made up of 7 options, while the energies category only offers US Oil. As for the available spot metals, we only see the most basic options, Gold and Silver, with no option to trade extra metals like Pallidum or Copper. This brings the grand total of available instruments to just 34 options. Meanwhile, many other brokers offer more than 64 currency pairs and other CFDs.

Spreads

The broker’s Titan account advertises floating spreads that start from 1.8 pips. On currency pairs, this is the minimum spread, while average spreads typically range from 2 to 2.6 pips. On indexes, average spreads are 10 pips, and spreads can be much higher on more volatile instruments like metals and oil. Considering that the broker is asking for a steep deposit, we would hope to see spreads that are lower than those advertised. The industry average tends to be approximately 1.5 pips. Note that the website does advertise starting spreads of 1.5 pips in another location. This advertisement is false.

Minimum Deposit

Java is asking for a steep deposit in order to open their only account type, with the requirement being set at $2,000 USD. Elsewhere, traders would be able to find similar account types that only require deposits of $100 or less. The lack of affordability may force some traders to search for a better option, although those that were already planning to make a larger deposit won’t feel as affected.

Deposit Methods & Costs

Java does not provide any information that revolves around available deposit methods or the costs associated with making a deposit. We would assume that the broker is at least offering bank wire, and hopefully cards as funding methods. Despite their lack of transparency, Java does make an effort to make clients feel safe by speaking about funds being held in segregated accounts and protected by the Investors Compensation Fund (IFC).

Withdrawal Methods & Costs

We would expect there to be fees associated with making withdrawals through the broker, otherwise, we would likely see fee-free withdrawals advertised somewhere on the website. The complete lack of information is enough to make one apprehensive about making a deposit. Normally, we would recommend making a small deposit in order to test conditions; however, Java’s steep $2,000 deposit requirement makes it impossible to make one of these small test deposits.

Withdrawal Processing & Wait Time

Considering that Java is a smaller broker, we would expect to see processing times of at least a few business days. Once funds are sent, it can often take weeks to receive funds that are sent through wire transfer. If the broker does offer any e-wallets, then this would likely provide a faster way to withdraw funds.

Bonuses & Promotions

We couldn’t find any information on the website pertaining to bonuses or current promotional opportunities. We did notice that the broker mentioned a welcome bonus where advantages are listed, but this is the main page of the website where we found inaccurate and conflicting information. If such a bonus was available, the broker would likely advertise it more clearly. This doesn’t mean that the broker won’t provide any offers in the future, so be on the lookout for any changes.

Educational & Trading Tools

Initially, it seemed as though the broker had nothing to offer in this category, aside from an economic calendar. However, we discovered a link to an education center at the bottom of the website and were directed to an entirely separate part of the website that contains video tutorials, articles, courses for beginners, advanced traders, and experts, and practice quizzes. Educational resources are something that many brokers overlook entirely, so we feel that there is a real advantage for traders in Java’s education center. On another note, we will mention that the video tutorials are in Japanese, so some traders may not be able to benefit from this medium.

Demo Account

The broker does advertise demo accounts as being available, but clicking on the link to open a demo account only brings us the “Account Types” page. We were assured by the support team that demo accounts are in fact available, although the glitch in the website is rather frustrating and may cause some traders to abandon the notion to open a demo. Hopefully, the broker will work on the website’s link in the near future so that traders can access these helpful practice accounts.

Customer Service

In addition to being active on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and YouTube, the broker also offers active support 24/5 on LiveChat, via phone or fax, and through email. We did test out the website’s LiveChat feature, just to be certain that an agent would respond immediately. Fortunately, the broker’s agents do seem to be active and on standby on chat, making it incredibly easy to get in touch with a member of support. Other contact information has been listed below.

Phone: +62 21 222 32 200
Fax: +62 21 222 32 255
Email: [email protected]

Countries Accepted

There aren’t any restricted countries listed at the bottom of the broker’s website. This is usually a good sign that everyone is accepted, although we do always try to check the registration page to be sure. Surprisingly, the broker doesn’t even require the client’s address upon registration. This makes it possible for traders from all locations to open an account with no hassle.

Conclusion

Java offers leveraged trading as high as 1:200 on 34 instruments, which are made up of currency pairs, metals, and oil. The broker is only offering one real account type, which comes with a large $2,000 deposit requirement and higher than average starting spreads. Taking a look at the website as a whole, we see some red flags where the broker provides conflicting information about account types and spreads.

Once we noticed that the broker provides absolutely zero information related to available funding methods and the costs associated with making withdrawals, we felt that the lack of transparency was intimidating. Considering other things, the broker is offering a vast education center that focuses on beginners, advanced traders, and experts with different learning mediums available. This is something that other brokers don’t often make available. Demo accounts are also advertised, although a glitch on the website kept us from accessing the sign-up page.

At the time we checked, there weren’t any special promotions for traders to take part in, despite some conflicting information on the website. If you’re typically located in a restricted country, then you’ll still be able to open an account through this broker. Taking everything into consideration, it’s up to the individual trader to decide whether Java is offering enough benefits where it’s worth looking past their lack of transparency.

TurboForex is an offshore broker, based in St Vincent and the Grenadines. On first look at the website, the first thing that becomes obviously apparent about TurboForex website is that this is a broker that relies heavily on marketing to appeal to those seeking deposit bonuses, a bonus of 100% of the client deposit total. The website is a little outdated but simplistic nonetheless so navigation is straightforward. However there is no FAQ page for a quick reference guide, and this broker does not offer a live chat support service which also makes it’s appeal less likely if clients can’t reach out instantly for assistance.

Account Types

TurboForex offers a wide range of account types to choose from and all benefits to each are set out on the website so potential clients can easily decide which may be best suited for them and their trading style.

• Mini – Min deposit: 250.00 USD. Most suited for those trading smaller volume
• Standard – Min deposit: 1,000.00 USD. Suited for medium experienced traders
• Premium – Min deposit: 10,000.00 USDTargeted at experienced traders, with lower      overall trading costs
• Fixed- Min deposit: 1,000.00 USD. Offers the lowest fixed spread on the market for      long term traders
• Interbank- Min deposit: 5,000.00 USD. More suited for higher deposit clients, with        direct access to interbank markets

All account types are compatible via the MT4 platform and allow the use of the leverage of up to 1:500.

Platforms

TurboForex offers the trading platform we trust the most, which is MT4. Clients of TurboForex can trade via MetaTrader 4 Desktop, Webtrader, and Mobile/Tablet so you can trade both on the go or at home on a safe and trusted platform.

Leverage

The maximum leverage offered by TurboForex is 1:500 which in itself is highly appealing and generous, meaning clients can maximize profit by 500, on small capital and small trade sizes, on winning positions. If this leverage is a little too high for your trading style, of course, there is the option to lower it to your preferred amount.

The maximum leverage use limit does, however, vary between account types; Mini, Standard, Premium and Fixed account holders can make use of the full 1:500 while those who opt for the Interbank account may use the leverage of up to 1:200, which is still amicable and can be a handy tool to stretch profit gain in one’s trading you are familiar with how use of high leverage works.

Trade Sizes

The minimum trade size allowed with TurboForex is set as most do, at the standard 0.01 lot, which gives flexibility and is highly ideal for those who want to trade small volume, or scalp trade. There appears not to be any maximum trade size requirement.

Trading Costs

For the Following accounts: Mini, Standard, Premium and Fixed, there is no commission fee applied when trading Forex and Commodities. You will, however, be charged commissions if you opt for the Interbank account, where commission fees are $5 per $100.000 traded.

Assets

With TurboForex, clients have a fair wide selection of assets to trade, including:

• FOREX
• COMMODITIES
• STOCKS
• INDICES

All tradable pairs are displayed on the website, where you can also see each pair’s live floating spread.

Spreads

TurboForex offer spreads starting from 0.0, and you can see live floating spreads on the website. Each account type offers slightly different spreads on different assets, so be clear on checking which one offers what (on demo) before you go ahead and open the live account version. Both Indices and Forex pair spreads (floating) as displayed on the website are incredibly low and certainly ranked competitive to what other brokers offer.

Minimum Deposit

The minimum deposit requirements set by TurboForex are overall, high compared to requirements set by competitor brokers. Minimum deposits are set reasonably high across all the accounts types to choose from:

• Mini – Min deposit: 250.00 USD
• Standard – Min deposit: 1,000.00 USD
• Premium – Min deposit: 10,000.00 USD
• Fixed- Min deposit: 1,000.00 USD
• Interbank- Min deposit: 5,000.00 USD

TurboForex offers deposit bonus schemes of up to 100%, so even on smaller deposit requirements, clients can essentially double their starting capital. We do recommend that you read carefully about how bonus schemes work (regardless of the FX broker you are considering using) before jumping to conclusions, thinking this will add margin that you can withdraw easily, or at all.

Deposit Methods & Costs

TurboForex FAQ page states that the following deposit methods are available:

• Bank Transfer
• Credit / Debit Card
• Skrill
• Webmoney

These choice of deposit methods given by TurboForex are diverse and should offer at least one amicable funding solution for all clients. There are no deposit fees associated with TurboForex according to the website.

Withdrawal Methods & Costs

To withdraw your profits from TurboForex, you may request a withdrawal via Bank Transfer, Credit / Debit Card, Skrill or WebMoney. Although deposit and withdrawal fees are not mentioned by TurboForex, it is always best to check with your banking provider prior to making a request for a withdrawal/deposit, to see if you personally will be liable for any fees from their side to avoid any surprises.

Withdrawal Processing & Wait Time

The TurboForex FAQ page is a little ambiguous when it comes to telling us the withdrawal timescales, which are said to take anywhere between 24 hours and to ‘several days’. We could not gain any further clarification or pinpoint how on exactly ‘several days’ could be, but this uncertainty and lack of being to the point gives us an indication that this broker is not perhaps very consistent with the processing of their withdrawals, and do not want to give a timescale they cannot adhere to.

Bonuses & Promotions

If you were seeking a deposit bonus, TurboForex does offer these schemes, however, it is highly advisable to ensure you read and fully understand the terms and conditions of using such bonuses, or better still, avoid them entirely. Nevertheless, if you are interested to know what the bonus schemes are, there is information about all bonuses available, as below:

• Deposit from $500 to $999 = 25% bonus
• From $1,000 to $4.999 = 50% bonus
• From $5,000 to $9.999 = 75% bonus
• Over $10,000 = 100% bonus

Educational & Trading Tools

TurboForex offers an impressive set of trading educational material, which sheds light on MT4 separately and how it works, as well as how to navigate it. There is ample information on Trading itself and what it’s all about, in the form of webinars and free courses that you can take, while you learn to trade on the demo account.

Customer Service

TurboForex Customer service is less than satisfactory, with the agents being unresponsive and not easily reachable; the only method of contact that clients of this broker can rely on is via email. This means 0 instant contact, which is a little off-putting, especially in the case of a client panicking about a trade query and wanting to resolve it ASAP. It is furtherly concerning that we never received any response from the email customer support team, even over a full working week period.

Demo Account

A demo account is offered by TurboForex, which is especially useful if you are wanting to take the training courses offered, and learn to trade alongside trading in a practice, risk-free environment.

Countries Accepted

The website disclaimer does rightfully state that the provision of trading serviced by TurboForex will not be granted to those residing in the United States nor the European Union. This is, of course, vetted when all potential customers are required to submit a proof of Photographic Identification to prove you are over the age of 18 and then you are requested to submit a document proof of residency. If you are from the above jurisdictions, you will not be accepted to open a live account with TurboForex.

Conclusion

This broker, in reality, appeals to a specific type of trader; lacking trading experience and skill, and/or not entirely informed on how bonuses work and how detrimental they can be to one’s trading. TurboForex clearly strives to appeal to those with low capital to spare, by offering up to 100% deposit bonus schemes to alleviate that doubt that one cannot make a profit unless there is a large initial capital. This vision that a bonus will increase margin (false) is highly deceptive and wrong to assume it almost guarantees a profit.

The trading conditions themselves in respect of leverage allowance and the tight spreads offered are not to complained abut, however, the service as a whole is not wholly transparent and trustworthy on the surface; the customer support team is totally unresponsive and deposit and withdrawal timescales are not clear. These factors alone should cause you to be concerned if considering to become a client of this broker.

Eight Max Trading, otherwise known as 8max, is an online FX and CFD broker that offers leveraged trading as high as 1:1000 on currency pairs, precious metals, commodities, equity indices, and energies. The company lists its core values as putting the customer first, integrity, innovation, teamwork, and professionalism. 8Max is located in Vanuatu and provides company news to help keep their clients updated on relevant events. Keep reading to find out about some of this broker’s most significant advantages.

Account Types

8Max offers a Standard and Zero account, with a MAM (Multi-Account Manager) account offered as a third main account type. The Standard account has spreads of less than 1 pip, with zero commission charges, and leverage as high as 1:1000. There doesn’t seem to be much of a reason to choose a Zero account over the Standard account. We base this on the fact that the Zero account offers the same spreads and leverage cap, except the account asks for a higher deposit and actually charges commissions, where the Standard account does not. This account also limits the maximum trade size to 50 lots, while the Standard account allows for a trade size of 100 lots.

The MAM account offers a different experience, with its own specific conditions, including a fixed leverage, separate deposit requirement, etc. The details for each account can be viewed below.

Standard Account
Minimum Deposit: $5
Leverage: Up to 1:1000
Spread: Less than 1 pip
Commission: None

Zero Account
Minimum Deposit: $100
Leverage: Up to 1:1000
Spread: Less than 1 pip
Commission: Yes

MAM Account
Minimum Deposit: 30,000 JPY
Leverage: 1:100
Spread: Less than 1 pip
Commission: 50% of the trading profit per month

Platform

Along with the majority of other forex brokers, 8Max has recognized how revolutionary the MetaTrader 4 platform is, and has made the decision to support MT4 exclusively. MT4 comes equipped with a full range of features, including full EA functionality, 1-click trading, built-in news, technical analysis tools, charting tools, support for hedging, etc. Even with the release of MT5, MetaTrader 4 has remained the most preferred trading platform to date. Another plus is how convenient it is to access the platform, which can be downloaded on PC, iOS, and Android devices. It’s also possible to access MT4 through the browser-based WebTrader.

Leverage

The broker offers a maximum leverage cap of 1:1000, an option that we don’t often see available. This option can be accessed on both the Standard and Zero account types, with limitations in place that are based on the amount of equity within the account. Accounts with an equity of $20,000 or below qualify for the maximum cap, while accounts holding amounts between $20,001 and $100,000 qualify for leverage as high as 1:200, and accounts holding more than $100,001 only qualify for a cap of 1:100.

Do keep in mind that the broker is offering exceptionally high options, which can lead to greater losses. Trading with leverages as high as the 1:1000 offer is best suited for professional traders that prefer the high-risk high-reward experience. The leverage on MAM accounts is fixed at 1:100, with no option to select a different ratio.

Trade Sizes

All accounts allow for the trading of micro lots with a 200 maximum number of open positions limit. The Standard account allows for a maximum trade size of 100 lots, while the other accounts set the limit at 50 lots. No word on the exact margin call and stop out levels set by the broker.

Trading Costs

The broker profits through standard spreads, commission charges, and swap fees. Traders will not have to pay any commissions when trading from a Standard account. These charges are applicable on Zero accounts and the broker takes 50% of the trading profit on MAM accounts each month as their commission charge. Swaps are charged in the case that positons are held open overnight. On Wednesdays, triple charges would be applied to compensate for the upcoming weekend. Checking the swap values can be done conveniently on the website by selecting a certain instrument category, or from within the MT4 platform. There do not seem to be any extra costs, like inactivity fees, reactivation fees, etc.

Assets

8Max has an investment portfolio that is made up of FX options and CFDs on precious metals, commodities, equity indices, and energies. Available currency pairs include at least 40 options, which are divided into majors, minors, and exotics. Precious metals include the most popular options Gold and Silver. Commodities include Cocoa, Coffee, Corn, Cotton, High-Grade Copper, Soybeans, Sugar, and Wheat. In total, the broker offers 10 equity indices and 5 energy instruments, including Crude Oil and Natural Gas.

Spreads

Eight Max Trading advertises the same variable spreads across all of their accounts. In addition, the broker has fractional pip pricing, which allows clients to benefit from even the smallest price movements by adding a 5th digit quoting price. The accounts offer spreads as low as 0.00021 pips, that average 0.00043 pips on most of the currency pairs. On the MAM account, traders can exchange the spreads for transaction charges. The website doesn’t provide enough information for one to determine whether this would be cheaper than trading with regular spreads.

Minimum Deposit

This broker is highly affordable, with a low deposit of just $5 required on the Standard account. Surprisingly, the Zero account also offers a low deposit minimum of $100. As for the MAM account, we see a requirement of 30,000 JPY. This amount translated to roughly $276 USD at the time that we checked. However, most of the deposit methods require a minimum deposit of $300 USD. The only way to meet the lower deposit requirements is to deposit through domestic bank wire transfer, otherwise, traders wishing to fund with cards or from overseas will have to meet the $300 limit.

Deposit Methods & Costs

Accounts can be funded through Visa/MasterCard or bank wire. The variety of available options is somewhat limited, as many brokers offer e-wallets as additional funding sources. On cards, the broker has remittance charges, which are not listed specifically. When funding through a domestic transfer, the broker only applies the transfer fee to the deposit, while overseas transfers are charged a $3 USD fee + remittance charges. If you’re planning to make a smaller deposit, domestic bank wire is the only option, as there is a $300 minimum deposit requirement on cards and overseas transfers. Note that cards also set a maximum deposit limit of $3,500.

Withdrawal Methods & Costs

The only way to withdraw funds from an 8Max account is through wire transfer. On the bright side, the broker sets the minimum withdrawal amount at $5, so it should be easy enough to withdraw even the smallest of amounts from the account. On the downside, fees are inevitable. The withdrawal commission charges are between $5 and $30 USD.

Withdrawal Processing & Wait Time

The broker advertises a rather irritating withdrawal window of between 1 and 12 business days. Obviously, one or two business days would be a speedy timeframe, especially considering that those withdrawals are coming through bank wire. However, once you factor in weekends, the 12 business day timeframe seems exceptionally longer. We would recommend making those withdrawal requests in advance, in case it does take closer to the maximum timeframe to process those withdrawals.

Bonuses & Promotions

The broker offers a variety of promotions, all of which have been listed below.

• Account Opening Bonus
• Deposit Bonus
• Trade Bonus

The Deposit Bonus is a two-tier bonus, which offers up to $5,000 once combined. Deposited amounts of $500 or below are eligible for the first tear, which applies a 100% bonus. Deposits of $1,000 and up are eligible for the 100% bonus + a 20% bonus. The Trade Bonus is coming soon, but details are already explained on the website, so we can confirm that this bonus rewards trading activity with status levels and cash prizes. The Account Opening Bonus also seems to be in preparation, according to the website. Hopefully, the broker will start honoring this offer sooner rather than later.

Educational & Trading Tools

One thing that stood out to us was the fact that the website labels their education section “For Beginner”. From a glance, we were able to determine that the broker just isn’t going to provide the deep and insightful articles, video tutorials, webinars, and other resources that we love to see available. Instead, 8Max only offers a brief description of FX, describes how to start a transaction, and promotes MT4 for trading tools. Honestly, the website could do away with this section altogether and it wouldn’t feel as though anything was missing. On another section of the website, we see an economic calendar and trading signals.

Demo Account

Considering that 8Max actually mentions the importance of demo accounts, we were surprised to find the option to open a demo account missing from the website. The broker does seem to be in preparation for some areas of the website, so we would hope that adding demo accounts would be on their to-do list. However, it doesn’t seem promising, since the broker has already been around for more than 2 years.

Customer Service

Support is in the office from 9:00 to 21:00 (Japanese time) on weekdays, with the exception of public holidays. The broker doesn’t offer any instant contact options or direct phone numbers, and 8Max doesn’t seem to be active on social media. This limits the only available contact option to email, which we all know can be inconvenient. Trying to figure out a complicated issue over email can be frustrating, so we can only hope that the broker provides callbacks if they are requested. Listed contact information has been included below.

Email: [email protected]
Address: Govart Building, Po Box 1276 Port Vila. Vanuatu

Countries Accepted

At the bottom of their website, the broker mentions that residents of the United States, Canada, Israel, and the Islamic Republic of Iran are restricted from opening accounts. However, the account registration page provides us with a different answer, as the US and Canada are available as options that come with an approved green checkmark. Israel and Iran are missing from the list, so we assume the broker upholds their previous statement there.

Conclusion

Eight Max Trading is an online broker that offers investment opportunities in FX, metals, equity indices, commodities, and energies. It costs as little as $5 to open a Standard account, with affordable minimums available for both of the other account types. Accounts with equity below $20,000 qualify for leverage as high as 1:1000, while accounts with more funds are limited to 1:200, or fixed at 1:100 on MAM accounts.

Spreads are shared and remain below 1 pip (on average) on all account types, although the options are variable and could fluctuate. The broker takes 50% of the monthly profits on MAM accounts and charges unspecified commission fees on their Zero account type.

Funding methods are limited to cards and bank wire, with a sneaky $300 deposit required on all methods aside from domestic bank wire. Withdrawals are limited to bank wire, which can take up to 12 business days to be received. Getting in touch with support seems inconvenient, as the broker can only be contacted through email, on weekdays, and during certain business hours. 8Max doesn’t provide any educational material that could be considered useful, and demo accounts are also absent.

On the bright side, we do see some promotional offers, although two of them aren’t yet available. The broker is willing to accept clients from the US and Canada while restricting those located in Israel and the Islamic Republic of Iran.

Exclusive Capital is an online FX and CFD broker that offers leveraged trading on several different asset classes, including FX, commodities, cash indices, ETFs, and stocks. The broker is located in Cyprus and fully regulated by the Securities and Exchange Commission (CySEC), making them more trustworthy than many of their unregulated competitors. The company has a commitment to provide the best customer service while providing maximum safety and security when handling their client’s funds. If you’re in the market for a broker, stay with us to find out whether that search can come to an end with this option.

Account Types

Exclusive Capital offers four different account types: Standard, Prime, Gold, and Exclusive. Islamic accounts are offered in addition, to those that can provide supporting documentation of Muslim faith. The Standard and Prime accounts are the most affordable, while the Gold and Exclusive accounts are the most expensive. All accounts come with the same leverage cap of 1:100 for clients that are considered professional. Starting spreads range from as low as 0.2 pips, up to 1.5 pips. The broker doesn’t charge commissions on their Standard account, but these charges do apply in differing amounts on the other three account types. Accounts also share various other factors, including trade sizes, stop out levels, tradable instruments, etc. Take a look at the exact specifications for each account type below.

Standard Account
Minimum Deposit: $200
Leverage: Up to 1:100 (professionals)
Spread: As low as 1.5 pips
Commissions: None

Prime Account
Minimum Deposit: $500
Leverage: Up to 1:100 (professionals)
Spread: As low as 0.2 pips
Commissions: $6 per side on FX and metals

Gold Account
Minimum Deposit: $5,000
Leverage: Up to 1:100 (professionals)
Spread: As low as 0.2 pips
Commissions: $3.50 per side on FX and metals

Exclusive Account
Minimum Deposit: $50,000
Leverage: Up to 1:100 (professionals)
Spread: As low as 0.2 pips
Commissions: $2.50 per side on FX and metals

Platform

Exclusive Capital supports MetaTrader 5 as their sole trading platform. Some may feel disappointed that MetaTrader 4 isn’t available through this broker, although many do prefer the newer features and layout of the world-famous platform’s successor. MT5 is powerful and provides everything one could need for all analysis and trading activities. Some upgrades we see from the previous platform include more pending order types, 21 timeframes, a built-in economic calendar, and a more efficient programing language. MT5 is available for download on PC, iOS, and Android devices. If you own a Mac or prefer not to download the software, the browser-based version can also be accessed through WebTrader.

Leverage

This broker limits the maximum leverage cap to 1:30 for traders that are considered retail clients. For professionals, the cap is raised to a maximum of 1:100 and awarded based on prior trading knowledge and other prequalifications. While the professional cap is decent, it is definitely possible to find significantly higher leveraged options elsewhere. Other brokers rarely tend to limit their options based on how much prior experience one has. For many beginners and even some professionals, this company’s cap may be flexible enough to manage. Others may feel that the options are more restrictive.

Trade Sizes

All accounts have a minimum trade size of one micro lot and a maximum trade size of 30 lots. Hedging, scalping, and news trading are all allowed. Accounts also share the same margin call and stop out levels, which are listed below. Traders should consider closing out some traders or making a deposit if the margin call level is reached. If the account reaches the stop out level, the broker will immediately begin to close out positions, starting with the least profitable.

Margin Call: 100%
Stop Loss: 50%

Trading Costs

Like the majority of other forex brokers, Exclusive Capital profits through spreads, commissions, and swaps. If you’re interested in a commission-free experience, the broker does offer 0 commissions on the Standard account in exchange for higher spreads. Otherwise, commissions are $6 per side on FX and metals on the Prime account, $3.50 per side on the Gold account, and $2.50 on the Exclusive account. The lower commissions on the Exclusive account certainly seem more attractive, but many traders will not be able to meet the account’s 50k deposit minimum and will have to settle for one of the higher commission costs. The latest swap rates can be checked within the MT5 platform and traders should be advised that triple swaps are charged on Wednesdays in order to compensate for the coming weekend.

Assets

All accounts offer access to 64 currency pairs, 4 commodities, 12 cash indices, and stocks. The impressive number of currency pairs is made up of 6 majors, 22 minors, and 32 exotics. We also see several indexes, industrial, regional, country, fixed income, and commodity ETFs. Commodities include the US and UK Oil, Silver, and Gold. Stocks include 47 US options in popular companies like Amazon and Facebook, in addition to ten more European options.

Spreads

All of the costs have been built into the spread on the Standard account type, resulting in higher starting spreads of 1.5 pips. Taking a closer look, we noticed that the broker does manage to keep these spreads around the same area, with options ranging from 1.6 pips to 3.1 pips on majors. On minors, the spreads tend to range from 1.5 pips up to 3.7 pips, except for on EURNZD and GBPNZD, which have spreads of at least 4 pips. As for the Prime, Gold, and Exclusive accounts spreads start as low as 0.2 pips.

The spreads don’t climb higher than 0.9 pips on majors and spreads are no higher than 1.4 pips on minors, although we do see options as low as 0.2 pips and 0.5 pips on many options. On their website, the company lists the standard and premium spreads for all instruments, with standard spreads being offered on Standard accounts and premium spreads being offered on other accounts.

Minimum Deposit

The broker offers two account types with deposits on the lower side, with a $200 requirement on the Standard account and a $500 requirement on the Prime account. These amounts are realistic, although we do wish the broker would lower the requirement on their Standard account since many competitors do offer at least one account for $100 or less. On the high side of the spectrum, we see a jump up to a $5,000 requirement on the Gold account and the Exclusive account requires a much more significant $50,000 deposit.

Deposit Methods & Costs

Exclusive Capital accepts deposits through a variety of methods, including Visa/MasterCard, Neteller, Skrill, WebMoney, bank wire, Eps, GiroPay, iDeal, Klarna, Poli, Przelewy24, Rapid, Trustly, and Nordea. In order to fund with a card, traders will need to provide a color copy of the front and back of the card, with the middle 8 digits on the front and the CVV code on the back covered. A screenshot of the client logged into an e-wallet account is also required to fund through one of those methods.

The first deposit must be verified manually by the funding department in order to verify the owner of the account, so it may take longer for the first deposit to be processed. Future deposits are credited instantly, except for in the case of bank wire, which can take 2-7 working days to be credited. There are no processing fees charged on incoming deposits.

Withdrawal Methods & Costs

All of the available deposit methods are also available for withdrawals, under the condition that withdrawals must be processed back to the original card, e-wallet, or bank account that was used to deposit. The majority of these methods have a flat withdrawal fee that is set at 1.8%. Exceptions would be Bank Wire, which has varying fees imposed on the bank’s behalf. Skrill would also be an exception, as it has a higher fee of 3% of the total withdrawal amount.

Withdrawal Processing & Wait Time

The broker manages to process all withdrawal requests within 24 hours. The website isn’t clear about how long it can take for those funds to show up once they’ve been sent, so traders will want to be prepared for a longer wait time just in case. Typically, it takes much longer to receive funds via wire, while e-wallets are often credited much more quickly.

Bonuses & Promotions

Sadly, we don’t see any extra opportunities to earn bonuses or to take part in any ongoing promotions. It’s always nice to see brokers offering deposit bonuses or cashback through rebates, so this is a little disappointing. On the other hand, many brokers do set unrealistic terms when these are offered, so traders should always look into the terms and conditions, especially if considering a broker based on this alone. If you do notice the “Promotions” section at the top of the website, you’ll notice that the broker only offers VPS in this category.

Educational & Trading Tools

The broker has dedicated two sections of their website to providing helpful resources; “Research” and “Academy”. The first category is mostly dedicated to technical and fundamental analysis, in addition to providing economic and holiday calendars. Under the “Academy” section, the broker provides several different sections, including the following:

• Upcoming Webinars and Seminars
• Forex Perception
• Commodity Insights
• Equities & Indices

These sections focus on helping traders to interpret global economics that impact the forex market, understanding the factors that drive commodity prices, and research on key concepts and ideas on global equities and indices. In addition, the broker also offers free demo accounts. If you’re interested in one of the broker’s webinars or seminars, you can visit that section of the website to view and sign up for any upcoming events.

Demo Account

Like many other forex brokers, Exclusive Capital recognizes the importance of providing free demo accounts to their existing and possible future clients. Signing up for one is easy, as there is a button labeled “Demo Account” at the top of the website, right beside the button that allows one to register for a live account. The application simply asks if one is registering as an individual or a company, before asking for some basic information like name, email address, etc.

From there, traders would be able to verify their email address and then select some more detailed specifics for their demo account, such as leverage. Any trader that could use some practice, needs to become more acquainted with MT5, would like to practice different strategies, test out the broker’s conditions, and so on can benefit from creating one of these risk-free accounts.

Customer Service

Customer service can be reached through LiveChat, via email, or by filling out a contact form. As usual, we did test out the broker’s LiveChat option in order to make sure that our expectations of the service were upheld. Fortunately, an agent responded almost immediately, so there are no complaints about the instant contact option. If you’d prefer to correspond via email, you should know that the broker provides several different email addresses for different departments, all of which have been detailed below. There are no direct phone numbers listed on the website, so it seems that filling out the contact form and leaving a telephone number is the only way to speak to someone over the phone. This is a little slower than being able to call directly, but still effective enough.

Email Addresses: 
Information: [email protected]
Backoffice: [email protected]
Funding: [email protected]
Customer Support: [email protected]
Compliance: [email protected]
Trading: [email protected]
Partnerships: [email protected]
Investment & Research: [email protected]
Marketing: [email protected]

Physical Address: 84-86 Pafou Street, 2nd floor, 3051, Limassol – Cyprus

Countries Accepted

The broker lists Canada, Cuba, Iran, Iraq, Japan, North Korea, Sudan, Syria, Turkey, Belgium, The United States, Latvia, and Russia as being restricted regions. To be sure, we did check out the registration page to see if any of these options were listed. Sadly, the US and any other related options, and all of the other listed countries are missing from the list, making it impossible to open an account from one of these locations.

Conclusion

Exclusive Capital is a regulated broker with an asset portfolio that includes currency pairs, ETFs, commodities, indices, and stocks. The broker allows hedging, scalping, and news trading from the MT5 platform. Leverage options are more limited with this broker, with an allowance of 1:30 for retail clients. The 1:100 cap isn’t set much higher for professional clients. It costs between $200 and $50k to open an account, depending on which of the four available account types have been chosen.

Taking a look at trading cost, we see spreads that start from 1.5 pips on the Standard account, while the other accounts offer spreads that start from 0.2 pips and stay below 1.4 pips on all currency pairs. The Standard account is a commission-free option, while the other accounts charge commissions up to $6 per side on FX and metals.

Accounts can be funded through a variety of methods, with zero fees on incoming deposits and instant processing times. Most of the withdrawal fees are set at 1.8%, aside from the 3% fee on Skrill or the bank fee charges on wires.

Support can be contacted directly through LiveChat or by email and we were able to get in contact with an agent instantly. The broker’s educational resources are a step ahead of many of their competitors, with live webinars and seminars, in addition to multiple other sections that focus on providing knowledge. One downside would be the lack of bonuses or promotional opportunities, which we do see offered by some competitors. The broker restricts clients in the US and several different countries from opening accounts.

KOT4X is owned and operated by an SVG-based company with the name KOT4X ltd. It is registered in St. Vincent and the Grenadines, a popular and well known offshore zone that is frequently used by unregulated brokers. Clients of KOT4X can use the MT4 platform with any of the four accounts offered by the broker namely; Standard, Pro and VAR and MINI.

A wide range of instruments including Forex, Indices, Stocks, and Cryptocurrencies are available for trading and spreads seem to be quite low. On their website’s front page, they claim to be a genuine broker made by professionals offering privacy and high growth possibility on a lightning – speed system. If you’d like to discover more about what KOT4X has to offer, keep reading this review as we go through their website to find out more.

Account Types

This broker has four accounts available, the Standard, Pro, VAR, and Mini. All account types follow the ECN STP trading model and all have access to high leverages of up to 1:500. The VAR account is the only one that comes commission-free, whereas the Standard and Pro account has a fee of $7 per lot and $1 per lot for the Mini account. Minimum deposits range from $25 to $500 which makes them affordable to a very wide range of potential clients. All accounts use the popular MT4 platform and their conditions are quite similar apart from the MINI account which has significantly fewer options when it comes to available instruments. You can find detailed information on how to open up a live account with KOT4X on their FAQ page. We’ve outlined the main characteristics of the four accounts down below:

Standard Account
Minimum Deposit – $ 50
Max. Leverage – 1:500
Min. Trade Size – 0.01
Spreads – from 0.8
Swaps – Yes
Avail. Instruments – FX, Indices, Commodities, Metals, Stocks, Cryptos
Commission – $7 per lot

Pro Account
Minimum Deposit – $ 500
Max. Leverage – 1:500
Min. Trade Size – 0.01
Spreads – from .4
Swaps – Yes
Avail. Instruments – FX, Indices, Commodities, Metals, Stocks, Cryptos
Commission – $7 per lot

VAR Account
Minimum Deposit – $ 250
Max. Leverage – 1:500
Min. Trade Size – 0.01
Spreads – from 1.2
Swaps – Yes
Avail. Instruments – FX, Indices, Commodities, Metals, Stocks, Cryptos
Commission – Fee Free

MINI Account
Minimum Deposit – $ 25
Max. Leverage – 1:500
Min. Trade Size – 0.01
Spreads – from 1.0
Swaps – Yes
Avail. Instruments – FX
Commission – $1 per lot

Platforms

This broker offers one of the most recognized and prestigious platforms around, the MT4. This platform offers trading on a number of devices namely; Windows, Mac, Android and IOS and you can find a download link on the KOT4X website. The platform offers 30 built-in technical indicators with adjustable and interactive charts that enable clients to stay afloat current trading market activities. Some other advantages of this platform include full customizability, Expert Advisors and multilingual service among many others. Although we now have the MT5, the ‘bigger brother’ of the initial MT4 platform, many traders still prefer the latter.

Leverage

Leverage is the same for every account this broker has to offer, 1:500 which is quite generous. This means that for every $1 that a client has in their account, this broker can trade up to $500, which can result in major wins, as well as major losses so clients, especially those just starting out in the trading world, should be cautious when dealing with such high leverages.

Trade Sizes

The minimum trade size available with KOT4X is similar to most other brokers, 0.01 lots (Micro Lot). They do not state whether there is a maximum trade size on their website, so we asked their support team through their live chat and we were provided with a list of lot sizes available for all the pairs the broker has available at the moment. You can find this information on their FAQ page under the Pairs/Instruments and their Lost Sizes title.

Trading Costs

Three of the available four accounts come with a commission fee of $7 per lot for the Standard and the Pro account, while the Mini has a commission fee of $1 per lot. The VAR account is the only one that is fee-free. We also found a mention of another fee clients may encounter on the broker’s Terms and Conditions page. Here the broker states that KOT4X reserve the right to charge a commission for telephone trades, but they do not offer information regarding how much this commission will be.

Assets

KOT4X have quite an extensive list of instruments available for trading including 55 Forex currency pairs ranging from Major, Minor to Exotics, 104 stocks including Apple, Amazon, Facebook, FedEx, Google, and Cisco Systems to name a few, 31 of the most popular Cryptocurrencies including Bitcoin, Dash, Litecoin, Ripple and EOS amongst others and 8 Indices. You can find the full list of available assets on their Trading Assets page.

Spreads

With KOT4x, spreads depend on the account type that you opt for. From their Accounts page, we could see that spreads are quite low, ranging from .08Pip to 1.2Pip. Obviously, potential clients shouldn’t take these numbers as factual as spreads are dependent on available liquidity so they are bound to fluctuate.

Minimum Deposit

This broker offers a very affordable minimum deposit requirement of $25 for their mini account, which is ideal for clients that are still testing out their trading skills. The highest minimum deposit is that of $500 for the PRO account, which is still relatively affordable when comparing it to other brokers who sometimes have deposit requirements of up to more than $5,000.

Deposit Methods & Costs

At the moment, this broker only offers Bitcoin or Instacoins as deposit methods. In order to do this, clients’ accounts must be KYC verified. This broker automatically credits the value of BTC or Instacoins that are received from deposits directly to the client’s account without taking any fees. Clients should note that the value credited to their account may differ due to either a transaction fee from the client’s own bitcoin wallet provider or because the value of bitcoin may have changed from the time of the deposit to the time the broker receives it.

The minimum Bitcoin deposit required is $10 whilst the minimum for Instacoins is $50. There is no maximum amount specified by the broker. The wait time clients should expect is between 1-3 hours as it depends on Blockchain Traffic and deposits need 3-6 confirmations to be processed.

We decided to speak to KOT4X’s live chat once again and asked for any available funding options for clients who do not have an e-wallet. They informed us that once clients are verified by KYC, they will be able to use Instacoins with their debit/credit card. In order to be verified, clients must provide certain documents. You can find the full information for this on their FAQ page under the Instacoins Deposit Method section.

Withdrawal Methods & Costs

Withdrawals can only be withdrawn back to a Bitcoin wallet, which makes this broker quite limited especially to those clients who are not interested in Crypto.

Withdrawal Processing & Wait Time

Withdrawals take approximately 1-3 hours as there are multiple confirmations that have to be processed before the funds go through.

Bonuses & Promotions

At the moment, this broker doesn’t seem to have any promotions or bonuses on offer. However, this doesn’t mean that they won’t in the future, so you can occasionally check their website for any updates regarding any promotions available.

Educational & Trading Tools

Unlike many brokers, KOT4X do not have a page dedicated to Education on their site. They do however have an extensive FAQ page where potential clients can find most of their questions answered simply. When it comes to trading tools, it seems as though this broker relies completely on the trading tools available on their platform of choice, namely the MT4, which should have enough tools for beginner traders as well as more seasoned ones.

Customer Service

This broker can be reached 24/7 through live chat or email. We were extremely pleased with this broker’s live chat. We were given detailed answers within seconds and the customer support provider was very helpful and informed about this broker’s conditions. The support agent also made sure that we were fully understanding their conditions and stayed with us until we had asked all our questions. Here is their info:

Demo Account

For those that are still uncertain about this broker, and would like to see how their conditions live up to actual trading, potential clients can test out KOT4X’s demo account. With this demo clients, will have an unlimited amount of funds and they can also choose leverage of up to 1:500, which means conditions will be identical to that of a live account. This is a great tool for potential clients as they can test out their strategies and get a hang of this broker’s trading conditions.

To kick start your demo account you have to fill in a simple form and choose the leverage and the balance you would like in your account.

Countries Accepted

KOT4x have quite a large number of countries that are restricted from trading with them, namely; Bahamas, Botswana, Burma, Cambodia, Congo, Cuba, Ethiopia, Ghana, Iraq, Iran, Japan, Lebanon, Libya, Malta, North Korea, Pakistan, Panama, Somalia, Sri Lanka, Sudan, Syria, Trinidad & Tobago, Tunisia, Vietnam, Yemen, and Zimbabwe. If you are from any of these countries, trading with KOT4x is impossible. This list is subject to change as new regulations come out regarding the trading industry.

Conclusion

KOT4X is an offshore unregulated brokerage registered in St. Vincent and the Grenadines. It provides the biggest platform around, the MT4 with very generous leverage and supposedly tight spreads. The minimum deposit required is also very affordable which could make this broker ideal for those just starting out in the trading industry, but always be cautious of working with an unregulated broker.

The instruments available for trading range from Forex to Cryptocurrencies with clients having a very wide range to choose from, which is always a plus. Their website is user-friendly and they have a very extensive FAQ section that holds many of the usual questions potential clients like to ask. For those people who have questions unanswered in the FAQ section, we had a very good experience when using their live chat.

We spoke to them on two separate days (Saturday and Sunday) and we were given answers within seconds on both occasions. Both customer support providers were polite and well informed about the brokerage. Clients have the option of opening up a demo account which mimics the conditions of a Live Account, this should be beneficial for those wanting to experience what it would be like trading with KOT4x without having to spend any of their money in the process.

Unfortunately, this broker does have a long list of restricted countries, including European Countries like Malta, which makes them unavailable for any potential clients residing in these countries. Another restriction that we felt could hinder potential clients’ interest in this broker, is the fact that clients can only deposit and withdraw via Bitcoin, which is quite unusual. Although bitcoin and E-wallets are increasing in their popularity, it is obvious that there are many traders that prefer using more traditional methods to deposit and withdraw. On the plus side, we did not find any mention of withdrawal fees and this was again confirmed by their live chat support providers.

If you’d like to know more about this broker, head on to their website and go through their FAQ page, as it answers many questions, and also have a go at speaking to their Live Chat as we found their response to be efficient and knowledgeable. As we’ve mentioned before, this broker is unregulated which means there might be commingling which means the broker might mingle together with the finances of the firm and the finances of their clients, which is never a good thing. Make sure to check out customer reviews and try out their Demo account before deciding to start trading with KOT4X.

JPMarkets claim to be Africa’s biggest broker. This is quite a big statement as trading has become very popular in African countries in the last couple of years. This broker is a Financial Services Board-Approved Brokerage (FSP no. 46855) that provides the popular MT4 platform and advanced technology that comes with it for their clients in Africa to trade in the international financial markets, specifically forex currencies. The brokerage was founded in 2016 by the founder Justin Paulsen. On their website, you can find detailed information about his education and experience in the trading market on their Company Profile document.

Their operations are based in various countries throughout Africa, with their main base located in South Africa. On their Company Profile, JPMarkets state they are determined to play a crucial role in the creation of at least 30 African-owned brokerages across Africa by the year 2020. On their website you can find a list of services that this broker offers namely; ECN or STP accounts, low spreads, instant deposits, and fast withdrawals, custom JP Markets App, stable and secure servers and a wide choice of trading instruments available including Stocks and Cryptocurrencies.

Having said that, we did come across quite a large number of online complaints about this broker, with many clients claiming to have serious issues when depositing, trading and withdrawing their funds. This is quite confusing as this broker, in 2019 won the Global Business Outlook award for Best Forex Broker in South Africa as well as International Finance’s Fastest Growing Forex Broker in South Africa. It seems quite contradictory for a scam broker, as the online reviews suggest, to manage to win such awards, so join us as we review their website and the conditions that they offer.

Account Types

JPMarkets offer different types of accounts structured to suit a number of trading styles. Information regarding the actual accounts is quite limited on their platform, but it seems like they offer an ECN account, a Standard account, and a VIP account. When using the ECN account clients will have commissions charged per transaction of $10 per lot. The VIP accounts benefit from lower commission rates but we could not locate specific information regarding this.

On the other hand, on the Standard account clients will be charged on the spread. This broker states that they do not differentiate between Micro or Mini accounts like many brokers do, but they allow their clients to trade all their available pairs without any restrictions. JPMarkets do not have a strict minimum deposit for accounts to be opened, but they do recommend starting with around R3 000 especially for those traders that are still starting out. Other info, such as exact leverage and spread values are not found on their website. We assume that one must open up an account to receive this information, which is inconvenient for potential clients.

Platforms

This broker supports the popular MT4 platform which is used by thousands of traders from all over the globe. This platform offers great tools for traders to use to enhance their trading such as; advanced charting, extensive backtesting and a very wide range of technical indicators. A particular tool that is very popular is the Expert Advisors that allow users to completely automate their trades and basically let the platform handle all the trading. Unfortunately, JPMarkets does not allow automated strategies to be used by their clients.

Apart from the MT4, this broker also offers its own JPMarkets platform which comes with an App for both Andriod and Apple. This application gives clients full control over their trading account and deposits reflect instantaneously, letting clients get in on the trades quickly. According to the application description, this platform enables clients to create new Meta Trader accounts with various deposit currencies and to transfer funds between these accounts using this platform. The online reviews for this platform are overwhelmingly negative, with complaints ranging from money disappearing from accounts to a serious lack of customer support.

If you’re thinking about setting up an account with this broker and using their platform, make sure to do some background research to determine if this would be a good idea.

Leverage

The highest leverage clients can use with JPMarkets is 1:500. We got this information from a screenshot of an open account on their FAQ page, as their website lacks any information regarding accounts and the leverage offered.

Trade Sizes

The minimum trade sizes allowed with this broker is 0.01 lots. Again, no more information, such as maximum trade sizes, are found on their website.

Trading Costs

Clients using an ECN account will be charged $10 per lot. This broker does state that VIP accounts have lower commission fees, but they do not specify the exact amount. On their terms and conditions page, we did find some more information regarding commissions or fees clients may encounter namely; that commissions may be changed by the company from time to time and it remains solely the clients’ responsibility to review the relevant section on their website regularly for any changes.

Assets

Strangely, we couldn’t find any information regarding what assets this broker has to offer. We tried to contact the broker via email to ask for more information, but we were not given any answers. From online customer reviews, we did gather that they offer over 200 Forex & Currency pairs, some cryptocurrencies, Commodities, Market Indexes, and stocks but we cannot confirm if this information is accurate or not.

Spreads

When trading with JPMarkets, clients will encounter variable spreads based on market conditions. This broker claims to offer very competitive spreads, for example, they state that on average, clients can get EUR/USD for about 2 Pips under normal market conditions. Potential clients shouldn’t take this statement as fact, as it is not providing any concrete information regarding the current spreads offered.

Minimum Deposit

Unlike most brokers, JPMarkets does not have a strict minimum deposit required to open up an account. Their clients are allowed to invest whatever they can afford and are comfortable with. They do however recommend depositing an initial amount of around 200 dollars, particularly those clients that require a substantial amount of training.

Deposit Methods & Costs

Clients can deposit funds via the following methods; Visa, MasterCard, iPay, Local Bank Transfers, M-Pesa, PayFast, Skrill and SnapScan. Clients can also fund their accounts using Bitcoin, but only through Skrill.

Withdrawal Methods & Costs

Withdrawals are processed Monday to Friday from 9 am to 5 pm, GMT +2 (South African Standard Time). For security reasons, this broker calls back clients to verify and confirm withdrawal requests. As a result, this might prolong the withdrawal process. On their FAQ page, clients can find a step by step explanation of how to withdraw funds from your JPMarkets account. This broker makes it very clear that all client documentation should be in order before submitting such a request. This documentation includes clear and scanned copies of Identity Card, proof of address and bank statement confirming the client’s individual bank details.

Withdrawal Processing & Wait Time

According to their website, withdrawals are processed immediately and paid within 4 hours provided that all documentation is in order and the client has given a verbal confirmation. As we’ve mentioned briefly before, we did come across a very large number of online complaints regarding issues with withdrawing money. We are unsure if these were the result of a technical issue, or whether this is a clear sign to stay away from JPMarkets.

Bonuses & Promotions

JPMarkets do have a bonus associated with using their Android App. Clients who trade using this method will be able to get a 100% bonus. Those who do not have an android phone can still use the online portal and be eligible. Clients who use an iPhone will be able to use the application once it is published by Apple.

This broker claims to have no tiers or scaling just a 100% bonus on all deposits up to R140,000 or equivalent in USD. The bonuses are applied automatically if clients use the JPMarket portal, so clients should be able to see the bonus immediately upon depositing. The bonus will stay in the account for 90 days and then it expires. One should note that this bonus is not withdrawable, so clients can only use it to trade. The maximum bonus clients can have at any time is 100% of their balance.

Educational & Trading Tools

JPMarkets seem to take education quite seriously as they have a packed educational section on their website. On this page, clients can find a glossary of common trading words and phrases, economic calendar, how-to documents, and a substantial Forex education course. Apart from this, they have a section called Total Trader where one can find a number of interesting articles that new traders might find useful.

They also have a blog section with a number of blog posts regarding forex trading and strategies but it doesn’t seem to be frequently updated as the latest blog was published back in March 2019.

Customer Service

This broker can be contacted either via email, telephone or via the chat feature available on their website. We did not locate any Live Chat buttons on their website at the time of writing this review. We also tried to contact this broker via email but after 24 hours no reply was received. Similarly, to their withdrawal methods and conditions, this broker claims to offer superior service to their clients, but online reviews show the exact opposite. Although we cannot confirm whether these negative reviews are based on fact or not, our own experiences show that JPMarkets customer support is lacking in many ways. This is their contact information;

Address: Black River Office Park 2 Fir Street
Observatory,
CAPE Town Gatehouse Building
2nd Floor
Telephone: 087 828 0576
Email: [email protected]

Demo Account

If you’d like to test out JPMarkets’ trading conditions, you can use their demo account by filling in an online application form. After receiving the login details of your account, you will be able to start trading with a default total of $10 000.

Countries Accepted

JPMarkets do not accept citizens from the US due to US Securities and Exchange (SEC) rules.

Conclusion

JPMarkets is a regulated, South African broker that supports the MT4 platform. We did find ourselves looking for information that should be clearly stated on their website such as; leverages, spreads, and assets, which is obviously inconvenient for potential clients. This broker does have some commissions applied with 2 of its accounts namely the ECN and the VIP, but the information isn’t very clear. Our experience with their customer service left much to be desired as we were not given any answers by their support team.

They do offer an interesting 100% bonus on all accounts, but this bonus can only be reused for trading and not for withdrawing. Although JPMarkets is regulated and the winner of prestigious awards, the number of negative reviews we found online made us question whether they are really reliable or not. If you’re interested in becoming a client of JPMarkets we highly suggest testing out their demo account and perhaps going through some of the online customer reviews to get a better idea of what you should expect when dealing with this broker.

Maxrich Group LTD is an international forex trading firm, dealing with over-the-counter forex contracts. MRG Forex brand is a registered financial services provider under New Zealand’s financial markets conduct act 2013 and is regulated by the Financial Markets Authority (FMA). In 2007 it also became a registered business company in the British Virgin Islands. This broker deals with Forex, commodities, shares and US index. Having a variety of accounts available this broker can work with a wide array of potential clients. If you’d like to discover more about MRG, keep on reading to find out what we’ve learned through an in-depth look at their website.

Account Types

If you’re considering opening an account with this broker, you have a choice between 4 types of accounts, namely; Basic, Sharia, Infinite and Premium. All accounts have the possibility of trading 29 different products. Let’s take a closer look at each account.
The Basic account has the lowest minimum deposit required which is just $10 making it a great option for new traders. Like all the other accounts, the Basic allows a minimum trading lot of 0.01, but unlike the others, the Basic account only allows a maximum of 1 lot to be traded. This account is fee-free and over-night swaps are allowed. The leverage for this account is set quite high at 1:500 and spreads which are also quite high, starting at 2.5 Pips.

The Sharia Account, as the name implies, is suited for clients that are of the Islamic faith. The minimum deposit required is $3,000 and the maximum number of lots that clients can trade through this account is that of 20 lots. This account comes with a commission of $20 per lot and leverage is set at 1:200. The spreads for this account are quite low at 0.8. The Infinite account has the highest minimum deposit required which is $50,000 making it quite unreachable for a number of potential clients. The commission is slightly lower than that of the Sharia Account, $15 per lot and one can trade a maximum of 30 lots with the Infinite account. Spreads start from 0.8, leverage is set at 1:200.

The last account MRG offer is the Premium account which has an affordable minimum deposit of $300. For this account the commission decreases to $10 per lot and leverage is set at 1:200. Spreads are also quite attractive for this account as they start from 0.8 Pips.
In their FAQ section, MGR state that there is no set minimum number of transactions required to maintain an account. They also do not deactivate accounts that have been inactive. Clients may have up to 100 trades open simultaneously.

We’ve outlined the main characteristics of these accounts below:

BASIC ACCOUNT
Minimum Deposit: $10
Leverage: 1:500
Spreads: 2.5 Pips
Commissions – None

SHARIA ACCOUNT
Minimum Deposit: $3,000
Leverage: 1:200
Spreads: Start from 0.8 Pips
Commissions – $20/1 Lot

INFINITE ACCOUNT
Minimum Deposit: $50,000
Leverage: 1:200
Spreads: Start from 0.8 Pips
Commissions – $15/ 1 Lot

PREMIUM ACCOUNT
Minimum Deposit: $300
Leverage: 1:200
Spreads: Start from 0.8 Pips
Commissions –$10/ 1 Lot

Platforms

MRG Forex uses the MetaTrader 4 (MT4) platform which is available for desktop as well as mobile versions. This platform, developed by MetaQuotes, is the go-to platform for many experienced traders. This is mainly because it comes equipped with detailed charting tools, more than 50 built-in indicators and a wide range of EA’S (Expert Advisors). Traders can make use of ready-made trading robots or there is also the possibility of creating your own, tailor-made for your own specific trading needs. MT4 offers a user-friendly, customizable interface that is suited both for new-comers as well as more experienced traders.

Leverage

The maximum leverage available through this broker is 1:500 which is quite high. This leverage is available once a client opts for a Basic Account. One should always be cautious of high leverages as they might incur major profits as well as major losses. In their Why Choose Us section of their site, they explain this high leverage as being a flexible risk which can be highly beneficial to their clients. The other accounts available with this broker all have maximum leverage of 1:200.

Trade Sizes

The minimum amount of lots one can trade with this broker is the same for every account that they offer, which is 0.01, which is known as a micro lot. As for maximum lots, the highest one can trade is through an infinite account which allows for 30 lots to be traded. The Premium and Sharia Accounts offer 10 – 20 maximum lots to be traded respectively.

Trading Costs

The only account that is fee-free with this broker is the Basic account which comes with no commissions. As for the rest of the accounts, they all come with a different commission fee; $10/1 Lot for Premium Account, $20/ 1 Lot for Sharia Account and $15/1 lot for the Infinite Account. For those thinking about opening a Basic or a Premium Account, it is worth keeping in mind that swap fees are still applicable. These are either received or charged when one holds a trade overnight.

Assets

MRG has 24 currency pairs available for trading, including both major and minor pairs and we also noticed some attractive spreads available for example EUR/USD and GPB/USD both have spreads starting from 0.8 Pips. Apart from this list of currencies, this broker also has 2 commodities listed on his site, namely; Gold and Oil, with spreads starting from 0.3 and 0.5 Pips respectively. MRG also has US Index namely; Nasdaq, S&P 500 and DOW JONES available to their clients as well. Although spreads are quite attractive we noticed that this broker is quite limited when it comes to available assets.

Spreads

Maxrich Group Ltd state that they offer ultra-tight spreads and that their normal dealing spreads are between 1 and 3 Pips. As we analyzed their website, more specifically their asset list, we were pleased to notice that most of their spreads are indeed between 1 and 3 Pips apart from a few exceptions namely; GBP/NZD which has spreads starting from 4.5 Pips and DOW JONES which has spreads starting from 10 Pips.

Minimum Deposit

This broker has a very affordable starting point for beginner traders looking to test out the trading business. You can open a basic account for a meager $10. The minimum deposit rate isn’t so small for the Infinite Account as clients would have to deposit a $50,000 or more to open up this account. MRG has another affordable account which requires a $300 minimum deposit, which is the Premium Account and the Sharia Account comes with a $3,000 minimum deposit.

Deposit Methods & Costs

Deposits to MRG can be made through bank wire transfer, credit card deposits, Skrill, FASAPAY and Indonesian local bank BCA, BRI and Mandiri. It seems like online wallets are not an option that can be used when dealing with this broker.

Withdrawal Methods & Costs

To withdraw money from your account you must submit a withdrawal form. Unfortunately, there is no information regarding any fees that might be associated with withdrawing your money. We also failed to find the withdrawal form so we cannot comment on it at the time being. We also tried to contact the broker regarding these queries through e-mail, but after 48 hours, no reply has been received.

Withdrawal Processing & Wait Time

The broker states that withdrawals are processed within 1 working day since the withdrawal form has been submitted. No further information regarding this is available on their website at the moment.

Bonuses & Promotions

On their FAQ page, MRG clearly states that they do not offer bonuses as the company makes money fairly from commissions, and as such, they do not need other financial incentives to lure potential customers. This is quite contradictory as on their home page one can see a number of bonuses and rebates being offered such as; MRG Cashback Bonus, Real Account|Contest VI 2019 and MRG Forex Rebate.

The information provided regarding these bonuses is outdated and unclear so it would be best to speak to the broker directly with any questions you might have regarding these especially because on another page on the website it is indicated that some of these bonuses are only applicable for MRG clients in Indonesia.

Educational & Trading Tools

MRG does not have a segment dedicated to education on their website. They do have some basic information regarding Forex throughout their website especially in the FAQ section, but it leaves much to be desired. They do have the latest news segment at the bottom of the home page, but it seems as though they only report news regarding the MRG company and not the Forex market in general. There is no mention of any particular trading tools that one might use when dealing with MRG apart from those that are present on their platform, MT4.

Customer Service

When compared to other brokers, MRG is definitely lacking when it comes to Customer Service. Clients can only reach MRG by filling out a form that you can find on their Contact Us page. We did fill out the form and asked some questions regarding their services, but we haven’t been given an answer yet.

The broker also fails to mention their address, telephone numbers, and e-mail addresses on their website, which seems slightly suspicious. Unfortunately, the option of live chat is also unavailable for clients which can be frustrating for those with urgent issues they would need to discuss with the brokerage. In their Why Choose Us page, this broker claims to offer prompt 24/5 customer support by e-mail.

Demo Account

MRG does offer a free demo account for those wanting to try out trading before actually opening a live account. You can find a create new demo button on multiple pages on MRG’s website, and it is quite easy and fast to create a free demo account for yourself. The broker also states that demo accounts are active for 30 days from the date of opening and then they are removed.

Countries Accepted

This broker accepts countries from all over the world, but it has a restriction for clients coming from the US because of CFTC regulations.

Conclusion

MRG offers a nice selection of accounts to their clients with very low minimum deposits of $10, average to low spreads, but there are some fees associated with a number of their accounts. The overall outdated look of their site, along with the less than impressive customer service we experienced leave quite a bit to be desired with this broker. If you’re interested in finding out more about this broker head on to their site for more information.

FXPIG isn’t your regular broker. That’s the first thing you notice when you go onto their website. They’ve really taken on their strong Pig brand and this is seen throughout their content on their out-of-the-ordinary site. As it is stated on their Core Values page, FXPIG has pledged to change the serious, boring and most times, unforgiving FX market, into one that is more laid-back and contemporary.

Apart from this, they want to move away from the over-used terms DMA, ECN, STP that are used by the majority of brokers and create a more transparent, and client-centric model. By joining this broker, you would be joining the revolution, so to speak. Now on to the really important parts.

FXPIG has been around for around 10years and it was founded in Auckland, New Zealand. After being in operation from 2010 to around 2016, with a pretty impressive track record, this broker deregistered from NZ and became registered in Vanuatu under a Principal’s License for Dealing Securities (Company no. 014578). It is important to note that although Vanuatu is a popular destination for unregulated, offshore brokers, it has already enacted rules regarding financial and AML audits. Then, in April 2017, following the approval of a membership application, this broker became a member of the Financial Commission in Hong Kong.

FXPIG claim to be a completely open and transparent STP broker that will never trade against their clients. Something which makes this broker quite unique is that they do not create their own market in house, which means that all client’s trades are pushed into the real transactional FX Marketplace. All client’s funds are held in segregated accounts and they are never used to cover company-related expenses. As a non-risk taker broker, they do not trade on their own accounts, they do not run a dealing desk and they also claim to never put company assets at risk at any time.

Another unusual piece of information that clients can view on FXPIG’s website is the full information about their main-team namely; the CEO, CTO, CFO, and CXO. Clients can read a short description of all members including trading experience and education. We think this is a nice touch that is already setting this broker apart from the rest, as the clients know who they’re dealing with, unlike with other brokers are that much more discreet about such information.

Account Types

As you’ve probably realized already, FXPIG prefers to create their own way, instead of following others. This is definitely the case with their accounts as clients can choose from either a SPA, MPA or Customized account.

The SPA Account (Single Point Aggregation) is a single hub aggregation of leading Forex liquidity providers customized to FXPIG’s clients’ needs. One can find a detailed explanation of how this works on their ‘DIFFERENTIATE’ page on their website. They explain that this is a single-flow, prime broker style feed that is completely made up of the top makers in the FX industry. The basics of the SPA technology ensures that no single provider is exposed to more than one hit per individual trade ticket, eliminating what is usually referred to as double-tapping. This ensures a better pricing flow and execution quality.

Apart from this, the SPA account has overall tighter spreads starting from 0.3Pips, filter-free trading, Zero margin hedge Trading, and no dealing desk. This account is open to all traders with a minimum deposit of $500 or equivalent. This account is a great choice for scalpers as they offer quite consistent pricing, tighter spreads, and higher tick values.

The MPA (Multiple Point Aggregation) gives clients direct access to the Forex market where they are able to trade with other traders. One main difference between this and their SPA model is that while the SPA’s liquidity comes from banks, MPA is mainly comprised of non-bank liquidity and pending orders initiated by participants within the MPA. This increases the available liquidity pool.

FXPIG states that their MPA Account is a hybrid between MTF (Multiple trading Facilities) and ECN (Electronic Communications Network). This account allows clients to take advantage of the multilateral matching that is the core of MTF, as well as the multiple aggregation that is found in ECN. This model has price filters set at various different levels. This acts as a protection against spread spikes. Its layered liquidity creates larger liquidity pools and it helps in keeping traders anonymous. The minimum deposit required for the MPA account is $500 or equivalent.

One can find a detailed list outlining and comparing both the MPA AND SPA’s characteristics on the FXPIG’s website.

Platforms

FXPIG offers you a choice of 3 platforms to choose from, namely; METATRADER4, cTrader and FIX API.

Undoubtedly, MT4 is the most popular platform used by traders all over the globe, but apart from the great advantages of using this platform, FXPIG claim to make trading through MT4 even better. They offer real STP on MT4, no b-book, no deal plugins, and no filters. Hedging is allowed on all feeds and there are no limits on the number of open orders clients may have at one time. FXPIG also pledges lean and fast liquidity bridge that is built in-house that processes orders in 5ms. This platform can be downloaded for Android, Windows, and iOS, on FXPIG’s site.

If you opt for cTrader as your platform, you are guaranteed a level trading field that will help you to reach your trading goals. The cTrader platform is compatible with FXPIG’s ALT, MPA, SFL, and SPA feeds. While other brokers might charge their clients extra when dealing through cTrader, FXPIG gives you the chance of using this platform at the lowest available commission rate in the industry; 2.50 per 100,000 traded. Apart from this cTrader has a number of other worthy advantages such as the ability to trade directly from charts, smart stop-out capabilities, enabling clients to set their own time zones and visual deal mapping on charts. If you’re interested in using this platform, you can find a lot of useful information on FXPIG’s Differentiate page.

The last platform available by this broker is FIX API which in itself is a perk. This basically means that clients who opt for this platform (which can be accessed through a minimum deposit of $500) will have a direct connection with the liquidity provider executing the orders. This means a much quicker order execution time as this eliminates the added latency that comes along with using any of the other platforms available. This is a great platform for seasoned traders that are aware that in this industry, every second counts.
If you want more information about this platform, head on to PIGFX’s website where they simply outline all the info clients need before choosing their preferred platform.

Leverage

This broker, unlike the rest, offer the same leverage for both their main accounts, SPA and MPA, but the leverage offered changes according to the current funds available in the client’s account. Since we couldn’t find more information about this on their website, we contacted FXPIG through their e-mail and after about an hour, we were sent this information: clients that have less than 1k balance in their account are offered a maximum leverage of 1:100 and for those with more than 1k have leverage up to 1:200. We were told that leverages do go up to 1:400 in some cases, but in that case, the SO level is fixed at 100% of margin consumption instead of the normal 50%. Since leverage offered depends on each client’s current account situation, it is best to speak to FXPIG to get more information.

Trade Sizes

Both the MPA and the SPA have a minimum order size of 1,000 units, also known as a micro lot. The maximum order size for the SPA account is 10mio whilst for the MPA, the maximum order size is dependent on liquidity.

Trading Costs

When trading with FXPIGs, clients must be aware of the commissions that are applicable. For both the SPA and MPA accounts there is a 25 per mio commission fee when trading through the MT4 platform as well as with the cTrader platform. On their Differentiate page, FXPIG state that although the normal commission rate for cTrader is 30 per mio, they are currently charging the same rate they offer for the MT4 and FIX API platforms.

Assets

FXPIGS have about 60 Forex currencies to trade as well as a few indices. This broker has a convenient list of pairs available for each account. Within this list, clients can find the available lot sizes as well as the spreads for each pair.

Spreads

As for spreads, FXPIG aims to keep them as low as possible, but they do add that sometimes low spreads come with an equally high slippage rate due to illiquidity. Apart from offering competitive spreads, they also make their client’s lives easier by having a real-time spread monitor on their website. While we were taking a look at this monitor, most of the spreads fell between 0.3 to 3 Pips, with the highest coming from the SFL (customized) account.

Minimum Deposit

Comparing FXPIG to other brokers, their minimum deposit is quite high at $500 for every account. This factor might be detrimental to smaller or inexperienced clients that have a lower budget.

Deposit Methods & Costs

If you are looking to deposit money into your FXPIG account, you have 5 choices available namely; Bank transfers, Credit & Debit cards, Neteller, Skrill and Uphold. This broker recommends all clients to deposit funds using Neteller as it is fast and secure. All the methods mentioned above have a commission associated with them as follows:

• Bank Transfers – €25
• Credit & Debit Card – 3.75% + 0.50 (on all deposits)
• Neteller – 3%-3.5%
• Skrill – 2.5%
• Uphold – $15

It is good to note that while FXPIG does not charge you to move money back to your Skrill or Neteller account, both these gateways charge 1% and 2% respectively. This amount is deducted from your withdrawal.

Withdrawal Methods & Costs

FXPIG claims to have simple and efficient withdrawal methods available. If you want to withdraw money from your FXPIG account you can use any of the following; Neteller, Skrill, EURO SEPA, UPHOLD, ATM and even by moving your money back to your credit card. Neteller and Skrill offer the service fee-free but the rest have the following fees:

• EUROSEPA Transfers – €35
• Worldwide SWIFT transfers – €50
• UPHOLD transfers – $15

This broker also provides their clients with a great option of getting their own PIGcard which allows them to make instant withdrawals from eWallet accounts. This means a PIGcard is a low-cost alternative to Skrill, Neteller or bank wire, it gives you the ability to have instant and worldwide access to your cash. The PIGcards are conveniently available in Eur, GBP, and USD. If you’re interested in getting your very own card, you can order one from inside your MyFXPIG profile. The cost of the card is $20 which includes standard airmail delivery, but if you prefer your card to be sent via courier you will have to pay an additional $50.

Withdrawal Processing & Wait Time

Apart from the fact that withdrawing with a PIGcard is instant, there is no more information regarding withdrawal processing and the waiting period associated with it.

Bonuses & Promotions

After a thorough look through this broker’s website, it seems as though there are no bonuses or promotions being offered at the moment.

Educational & Trading Tools

FXPIG has an interesting page dedicated to education on their website. Like the rest of the site, this segment has the PIG brand all over it. From interesting articles to myth-busting videos, this broker has really made an effort to educate their clients as well as drive their strong brand.

They also have an FXPIG COMPANY NEWS as well as an FX MARKET ANALYSIS page that can help clients make their way through the ups and downs of trading. It is nice to see that both these segments are very frequently updated, making the information offered up to date. It is refreshing to see innovative content regarding the forex industry and not the usual standard information that one finds on most other brokers’ sites.

Apart from their impressive educational information, FXPIG also has a slippage and average time execution calculator available on their websites. This can help clients make the right choices during their trading.

Customer Service

If you ever wish to contact the pigs at FXPIG you can choose between either filling out a form found on their contact page, sending an e-mail, Skype or via the PIG Messenger (live chat), by clicking on the purple widget at the bottom part of FXPIG’s website. When we wanted to contact them, we spoke to them via the PIG messenger and we got a detailed answer after about 30 minutes. Here is their contact information:

Email: [email protected]
Skype: chat.fxpig
Address: Prime Intermarket Group Asia Pacific Ltd.
Level 2 Transpacific Haus Lini Highway
Port Villa, Republic of Vanuato

Demo Account

If you’re curious about this broker and would like to test out FXPIG without actually spending any money, you can try out their Demo account. Through their MyFXPIG Portal you can open numerous demo accounts on both the cTrader platform or the popular MT4. You can find detailed information about how to open up a demo account on their website.

Countries Accepted

This broker does not open or maintain accounts for entities or residents who are classified as retail or low net worth clients, based in Vanuatu or the US. Governmental restrictions along with FXPIG’s company policies, prohibit it from opening accounts originating from OFAC sanctioned countries. This information can be found in the footer of FCPIG’s website.

Conclusion

FXPIG is definitely a breath of fresh air for the Forex industry and will possibly be revolutionary when it comes to the way forward. Their website content is engaging, unique yet still informative. Apart from having up to date information and educational content on their website, they offer decent spreads, deep liquidity pool, own debit card to access eWallet funds and friendly customer service. On the downside we did notice there are no swap-free accounts, deposit fees are quite high and the minimum deposit fee is quite high for many potential clients. If FXPIG has managed to capture your attention, go onto their one of a kind website to find out more.

DAX100Fx claims that they are Europe’s Main Trading Center, offering a variety of financial assets to trade using six different accounts. When it comes to regulation, the information provided on the Dax100Fx website is confusing, to say the least. The brokerage seems to be registered in Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, but, under the name Veneda Partners Ltd. Those of you who have been trading for a while, probably know that this address is one of the most commonly used among unregulated brokers.

The information gets confusing as one can see another company name mentioned on the website which is ZEUS Partnership OU which is claiming to be registered in Estonia and on the Terms and Conditions page the broker claims to follow the laws of Bulgaria, a member of the European Union, but apart from here, we find no other mention of a Bulgarian company or license. Although all this information suggests that this broker might not be the most reliable out there, they do use the most popular platform available, the MT5. If you want to find out more about this broker, keep reading this review as we will share with you all that we found regarding DAX100Fx.

Account Types

This broker offers its clients a choice of 6 different accounts namely; Basic, Bronze, Silver, Gold, Platinum, and Black. Unfortunately, the information provided by the broker leaves many questions unanswered. Apart from claiming that all accounts receive 24/5 support, daily market reviews, pro webinars and price alerts, the only other information given is the minimum deposit required which ranges from $250 for the basic account, to a whopping $100,000 for the Black account. The Gold, Platinum and Black accounts also receive an expert intro session, Strategic analysis, private session and a number of live webinars.

The Black account also enjoys an exclusive access position. The broker does not go into detail about these benefits. As a result of the lack of information provided, we cannot comment on leverage, available currencies, maximum order size, margin calls or stop out levels. Needless to say, the lack of information does seem a bit fishy. 4 of the available 6 accounts do have a welcome bonus but we will go into detail about this in the Promotions and Bonuses section of this review.

Platforms

DAX100Fx appear to have their own trading platform that is the product of years of investment expertise as well as technological experience. This broker states that its platform combines simplicity in a user-friendly format with a variety of tools and features that guarantee a professional trading practice. The platform enables real-time trading with asset prices updated second-by-second, checking of account balance and transfer funds in and out of trading accounts easily and clients can also access their trading history and analyze their personal performance.

It is interesting to note, that although this broker claims to be using their own platform, we realized they are actually making use of the Meta Trader platform. We are unsure why they would do this, as most brokers would be more than happy to use the MetaTrader as it is by far the most trusted, and most popular platform available at the moment.

Leverage

Although there is no clear information on their Accounts page regarding leverages offered, we did find a brief mention of it on their FAQ page, where this broker stated that they provide leverage up to 1:400 on selected assets, but these selected assets were not named.

Trade Sizes

We cannot offer any information about trade sizes as we could not find any on DAX100Fx website. If you are interested, you can try and get in touch with the broker through their contact us page.

Trading Costs

On their FAQ page, DAX100Fx claims to have completely eliminated brokerage fees, stamp taxes, and other handling charges. They also go further to guarantee that when using this broker, there are no hidden fees, service charges, commissions or administrative costs. This is quite contradictory to some information we found regarding withdrawing funds and idle accounts, but we will go through this later on in the review.

Like many other aspects of this broker’s website, we failed to locate any info regarding spreads or commissions that clients may encounter when dealing with DAX100Fx apart from on their main page where we did find information claiming that they offer spreads as low as 2 Pips and low overnight fees, but again we cannot comment any further on this.

Assets

DAC100Fx offer over 300 of the world’s most popular financial assets to their clients. We did find some information about these assets on their Charts Page. There are 6 currency pairs available namely; EUR/USD, BPG/USD, USD/JPY, USD/CHF, AUD/USD, and USD/CAD. We are unsure if this is the full list of currency pairs available or just a sample. One can find similar lists for Indicies, Commodities, and Bonds available through this broker.

Spreads

As we mentioned before, not much information is given regarding spreads, apart from a bullet point on their main page stating that this broker offers spreads as low as 2 Pips.

Minimum Deposit

The minimum deposit required for the six accounts available through DAX100Fx are all different. The cheapest deposit is available for the Basic account at $250. This increases to $1000 for the Bronze account, £5000 for the Silver, $10,000 for the Gold, $50,000 for Platinum and $100,000 for the Black account. The numbers are quite high especially when considering that some brokers offer minimum deposits of under $10 in some cases.

Deposit Methods & Costs

Clients may deposit their funds via Visa, MasterCard, wire transfer and ecoPayz. On their Terms and Conditions page, one can find information about which fees apply for depositing your money. For credit card deposits, when a client chooses an account in a different currency than USD, the credit card will be debited properly in accordance with the amount deposited and the applicable exchange rates.

Additional credit card fees may apply, if this occurs, the client may notice discrepancies between the sum deposited and the sum charged onto his/her credit card. The broker also mentions that only the equal amount (or less) of money deposited per card may be withdrawn from the same card. We advise you to contact the broker for a more detailed explanation of what charges/fees you might expect when dealing with DAX100Fx.

Withdrawal Methods & Costs

An area that we think it quite troubling with this broker is the withdrawal fees. There is a dormant account fee of 10% per month, as well as a withdrawal fee, minimum withdrawal amount and a turnover requirement. If your red flags are flashing, we don’t blame you. Expect to pay $50 or equivalent for wire transfers, $25 or equivalent for credit card withdrawals plus an additional processing fee of $10, £5 or 7Eur and $25 or equivalent for ePayments. Definitely not the cheapest withdrawal fees we’ve encountered.

Apart from this, clients will have to pay 10% of the withdrawal amount to any withdrawal from accounts that have not executed more than 200 turnover and/or from accounts that have not been verified. We hope that clients are very aware of these charges before dealing with this broker, as they may have a detrimental effect on their funds.

Withdrawal Processing & Wait Time

In order to withdraw funds from your trading account with DAX100Fx, you are required to fill out a ‘Withdrawal Form’ and submit it accordingly. On their FAQ page, this broker states that you should allow 3-5 business days for the funds to be fully credited to your banking account, whilst on their main page the broker claims that withdrawal requests are processed within 48 hours. On their FAQ page, we also found out that clients have exactly 24 hours to cancel a withdrawal request.

Bonuses & Promotions

Four of the 6 accounts offered by DAX100Fx have bonuses allocated to them namely; 10% Welcome bonus for the Silver account, 20% Welcome bonus for the Gold account, 30% Welcome bonus for Platinum and 30% for the Black account. We did ask for more information via email, but after 48hours we were not given any more info regarding these bonuses.

Educational & Trading Tools

Although this broker has an Academy page on their website, it is completely empty. We aren’t sure whether there was an issue with the site whilst we were going through it, or whether this section is lacking any kind of useful information for potential clients.
As for trading tools, this broker does offer one calculator which is a Pip Calculator and on their website, you can also find charts for Indices, Commodities, Bonds, and FX.

Customer Service

If you want to get in touch with DAX100Fx, you have 3 methods at your disposal. You can either fill out a contact form, send them an e-mail or call their landline. We did, in fact, try to contact them via e-mail, but even though this broker claims to offer 24/5 customer response, we were left without any answers to our questions.

Unfortunately, DAX100Fx does not offer a live chat option which is generally a very quick and efficient way to contact many brokers. We also found another piece of puzzling information on their contact page as there seems to be an Azerbaijan address. We are unsure how this ties in with their registration in Saint Vincent and the Grenadines and Estonia that we mentioned earlier on in this review. Here is their contact info;

Address: Partner for Reception of Payments
MasterPay LTD. 60/89 Mr Jalal Str.
Baku, Azerbaijan
Support Email: [email protected]
Compliance Email: [email protected]
Phone: +44207862469

Demo Account

There seems to be no Demo account available for potential clients to test what it’s really like to trade using DAX100Fx.

Countries Accepted

This broker does not state whether it has any restrictions regarding the opening of accounts from certain countries. When we were scrolling through their available countries on their open account page, we did not pinpoint any missing countries, so this broker might accept clients from all over the globe. If you cannot find your country in the list, try contacting the broker directly for more information.

Conclusion

When comparing the pros and cons of DAX100Fx, it is quite evident that we have encountered more cons than pros. The website is quite bland and lacking a lot of essential information that clients definitely look for when choosing a broker. Apart from the incomplete information, we also found a lot of contradicting statements that make us wonder whether this broker is in fact trustworthy.

This broker also offers no educational content or current news articles for clients to expand their trading knowledge. On the plus side, even though we’re not 100% sure, this broker seems to offer competitive spreads starting at 2Pips and it does support the popular MetaTrader platform.

The trading conditions, numerous extra fees and limited asset portfolio along with inconsistent information make this broker one to be wary of. If you’d still like to discover more about DAX100Fx you can head on to their website to decide for yourself whether this broker is the right one for you.

AlainFX is a UK-based broker that has been established since 2015 and seems to be a big hit in India. AlainFX offers online trading for a wide range of financial assets, including shares, indices, foreign exchange, and commodities. It is unregulated and the footer on their site indicates that they are incorporated in Saint Vincents, a location used by many unregulated brokers.

As one can see from their ‘About Us’ page, AlainFX claims to have a successful history full of high achievements, long-term relationships with their clients and even technological breakthroughs. Contrary to these claims, we found quite a large number of negative feedback about this broker on online reviews, so keep reading to discover what we’ve found out about AlainFx and determine whether they are the right broker for you.

Account Types

If you decide to trade using AlainFx you will have a choice of three different account types, namely; Basic, Economy, and Classic. All three accounts are similar when it comes to minimum trade size, which is 1 micro lot and all three are fee-free. The minimum deposit required changes according to which account you opt for, and these range from $100 for a basic account to $10,000 for a Classic account, which means this broker has an account suitable for beginners as well as more advanced clients.

The stop levels for the Basic and the Economic accounts are at 50% but this increases to 70% for the Classic account. When it comes to leverage this broker offers a maximum of 1:400 for the Basic account (remember to always be cautious of such high leverages as these can result in major losses), 1:200 for the Economic account and leverage is decreased further to 1:100 for the Classic account.

We have noticed that this broker’s average spreads are quite high when compared to other brokers, as they amount to around 2.5pip for the Basic account and decrease to 0.7pips for the classic account, so this would mean that in order to get decent spreads when using AlainFx, you would have to open a classic account, which is not affordable to everyone as it has a minimum deposit of $10,000.

On their website, you can find a clear account breakdown that can help guide you towards the ideal account for you. We have also listed the main conditions for all three accounts listed below.

Basic Account
Minimum Deposit: $100 – $1000
Leverage: 1.1 – 1:400
Spreads: 2.5 Pips
Commissions – None

Economic Account
Minimum Deposit: $500 – $5000
Leverage: 1:1 – 1:200
Spreads: 1.7Pips
Commissions – None

Classic Account
Minimum Deposit: $10000 – Unlimited
Leverage: 1:1 – 1:100
Spreads: 0.9Pips
Commissions – None

Platforms

AlainFX uses MetaTrader 5 (MT5) solely as their platform, and we can’t complain, as this platform, released in 2010, is used by millions worldwide and for good reason. The MT5 platform comes equipped with around 40 technical indicators, 44 analytical objects and they also provide candlestick, line and bar charts with a wide variety of time frames and much more. As it is stated in AlainFx’s site, the MT5 is compatible with windows, Mac, iPhone and Ipad as well as android. This means that you can access your accounts wherever you are through your phone or tablet.

Leverage

The leverage ratios offered depend on the type of account that you opt for and the volume of funds that your account holds. As we mentioned before leverages range from 1:1 to 1:400. We couldn’t find much more information regarding leverages on their website; obviously it would be beneficial to have more information regarding this before opening an account with AlainFX.

Trade Sizes

The minimum trade size offered by AlainFX is the same for all three accounts, that of 0.01, also known as a micro lot. There is no indication of what the maximum trade size is for this broker but it is not recommended to go over 50 lots as this makes it harder for instant execution.

Trading Costs

From the information provided on their website, we could not find any commissions added to trades. Even when going through the Trading Conditions segment of their site, we did not find any mention of fees or commissions. We tried to contact AlainFx to make sure no hidden fees are present but no answer was provided during the writing of this review. It seems that clients’ costs are derived from the spread, which we will look at later on in this review, as well as overnight (swap) financing, where applicable.

Assets

AlainFX has broken down their assets into six categories namely; Forex with over 55 currency pairs consisting of major, minor and also exotic pairs available for trading, Metals including Gold and Silver, CFD’s, Commodities including cotton, corn, WTI crude oil, coffee and sugar amongst others, Indices and shares. We found no mention of cryptocurrencies available for trade with this broker.

Spreads

This broker states that their clients can enjoy low spreads through interbank sources, acquired from over 100 of the world’s leading banks and alternative market makers, providing a concrete source of liquidity for their traders. On their site, AlainFx claims to have spreads starting from 0.0pips but as we went through all their available products, we failed to find one where the spreads actually started at 0.0pips.

We actually found a segment of the site where this statement is contradicted as it states that spreads start from 0.2 pips, so we are uncertain about this detail. As we mentioned before, AlainFX offers spreads which range from normal, like 0.026 for USD/JPY, to quite high like 2.4 for USD/RUB. It is always advised to have a clear indication of what spreads a broker offers before beginning to trade with them.

Minimum Deposit

The three accounts offered by this broker have different minimum deposit requirements, as is the norm. The most affordable account is the basic account which requires a fair $100. The Economic account, which is stated as the most popular on their website, has a minimum deposit of $1000 which is still quite affordable, whereas the Classic account required a $10,000 deposit which makes it suitable for experienced traders.

Deposit Methods & Costs

This broker offers a variety of deposit methods namely; MasterCard, Visa, American Express, Neteller, Webmoney, China Union Pay, Skrill, Yemadai, Local Deposit, Ideal and Giropay among others. One can see that this broker offers a very wide variety of deposit methods which is convenient. It seems that all deposit methods are fee-free, but the processing time varies from instant with Mastercard, Visa, WeChatPay, American Express, Ideal, Maestro, etc to 5-7 days with International Deposit. You can find a list on AlainFX’s website indicating the waiting time for each method.

Withdrawal Methods & Costs

Withdrawal methods and costs on AlainFX’s website are exactly the same as their deposit methods, so clients have a wide variety of options when it comes to withdrawing their money. We must also mention that we found a number of online complaints regarding withdrawals with AlainFx. Although we cannot verify these complaints, it is always suggested to do your own research before working with a particular broker.

Withdrawal Processing & Wait Time

As with the deposits the waiting time varies from instant to 3-7 days depending on the method you opt for.

Bonuses & Promotions

On AlainFx’s accounts website page, it is indicated that both the Basic and Economic accounts have promotions, but we did not find any other information regarding these. We also tried to reach out for more information but it seems that their LiveChat isn’t functioning at the moment. Although we could not find any promotions or bonuses on the website, they do have an interesting Partnership page that offers a number of different opportunities to those interested in partnering with this broker namely; Introducing Broker, Regional Representative, Alai Card Dealer or White Label. You can find more information about these on the Partnership page on AlainFX’s website.

Educational & Trading Tools

Although this broker has a dedicated page to Education on their website, it seems to lack useful articles for anyone looking to learn more about the subject. The website also indicates that there is a quiz that one can take to determine their trading personality, but we could not find the actual quiz on the site. The only information found on the Education page is a description of the types of traders one can find namely; Beginners, Intermediate and Expert. Needless to say, this segment leaves much to be desired.

When it comes to the tools used by this broker, namely; MT5, the broker does offer some brief information about this platform. It is important to note that although the Education part of the website is practically non-existent, one can still find snippets of information regarding trading throughout the site for example product histories and descriptions.

Customer Service

This broker seems to have good customer service from what is stated on their website. A multi-lingual support team is available 24hours a day during the Forex trading week. You can reach out to them either via live chat, phone or through a number of different emails available. It is good to note that the Sales and Technical Support Team is available 24/7.

When it comes to actually using the customer service AlainFX has to offer, we encountered a number of issues. The live-chat buttons don’t seem to be working at the moment, an e-mail we sent with some queries was not answered after 48hours and we also noticed that the Facebook, Twitter and Instagram buttons on their site, all direct the user to the main AlainFX website. We also realized that although there are 6 different numbers which one can call for these different reasons, namely; Complaints, Technical Support, Payments, Account support, Sales and General Queries, all 6 numbers are identical.

We are unsure if these are all temporary issues that the broker is arranging at the moment or if this broker has a below-average customer care service.

Demo Account

This broker offers free demo accounts for any potential clients that would like to practice and sharpen their trading skills before actually delving into the trading market. Singing up for a demo account seems very straightforward and should only take up a minute of your time. To sign up you must provide your first and last name, e-mail address, date of birth, country of residence and a contact number. There is no information about what type of account this demo would mimic (Basic, Economic or Classic) and again our questions have not been answered by their customer service.

Countries Accepted

AlainFX welcomes traders from all over the globe. As we went through the list of countries whilst setting up a live account, we did not notice any missing countries. So countries such as the USA, New Zealand and Japan which are sometimes not accepted due to law violations are welcome to use this broker for their trading. However, if you do have an issue with finding your country whilst setting up your account, speak to the customer service for further information.

Conclusion

AlainFX is an unregulated broker that provides a variety of trading options, including; 3 different account types that vary in leverage and minimum deposits, making this broker affordable for a wide range of trading enthusiasts. Although this broker only works with 1 platform, MT5, it is still one of the most popular platforms out there with ample extra features to help you with your trading activities.

This broker also offers several funding methods and there seem to be no extra charges associated with deposits and withdrawals. At the moment there are no ongoing bonuses or promotions available on their website and the education segment is quite lacking when it comes to up to date information which can help guide beginners. The support seems to be adequate but our own experience thus far has been lacking as no feedback was given through email and we could not access their live chat. A good factor about this broker is that there are no restricted countries which means you can easily set up an account with AlainFX from any part of the globe.

Topic Markets, otherwise known as TMFX, is an online FX & CFD broker that is located in the United Kingdom. The company is registered with the Vanuatu financial service commission under the name TI Securities Limited and has managed to attract a growing number of clients since its establishment in 2018, although the website doesn’t provide us with an exact figure. The company offers leveraged trading as high as 1:400 on FX, metals, and CFD options. Stay with us to find out more about the conditions on the broker’s five different account types.

Account Types

Topic Markets features five different account types: Classic, Pro, Premium, VIP, and Islamic/Swap-Free. The Classic account provides a typical trading experience, minus the ability to trade metals, with the lowest deposit requirement and the highest leverage option. The Pro account keeps spreads at the industry average or below while providing access to metals and offering a commission-free experience. The Premium and VIP accounts reward those that can make larger deposits with tight spreads, although commissions are charged are both accounts. It’s also nice to see an account created specifically for clients of the Islamic religion, as many others seem to offer these accounts as an afterthought. The drawbacks to choosing this specialized account would be higher spreads and a lack of market execution.

Classic Account
Minimum Deposit: $200
Leverage: 1:400
Spread: 1-2 pips
Commission: None
Instruments: FX & CFDs

Pro Account
Minimum Deposit: $3,000
Leverage: 1:200
Spread: 0.8-1.5 pips
Commission: None
Instruments: FX, CFDs, & metals

Premium Account
Minimum Deposit: $7,500
Leverage: 1:200
Spread: 0.1-0.5 pips
Commission: Yes
Instruments: FX, CFDs, & metals

VIP Account
Minimum Deposit: $15,000
Leverage: 1:100
Spread: 0.1-0.5 pips
Commission: Yes
Instruments: FX, CFDs, & metals

Islamic/Swap-Free Account
Minimum Deposit: $1,000
Leverage: 1:200
Spread: 3 to 5 pips
Commission: Yes
Instruments: FX

Platform

The broker supports the award-winning MetaTrader 4 platform, available on PC, mobile, tablets, or through the WebTrader, in addition to their own mobile platform, which can be downloaded on Android and iOS devices. MT4 is a timeless option and is most commonly chosen by forex brokers, due to the wide range of tools and features that are built into the platform. Within MT4, we see Expert Advisors, multiple languages supported, the ability to trade micro-lots, and other extra features that aren’t always supported by others. The broker describes their own platform as having a sleek look and feel, with robust trading options, new execution gestures, and the most accurate market rates.

Leverage

The highest leverage option goes up to an impressive 1:400 on the broker’s Classic account. This would be the best option for those that absolutely require a large leverage ratio for trading. Meanwhile, the Pro, Premium, and Islamic accounts all offer leverage as high as 1:200. This amount should be satisfactory enough for most traders since many find it too risky to trade with a leverage level that is higher than this. As for the VIP account type, we see the lowest limit at 1:100. Brokers often place these limitations on accounts that require large deposit amounts, so it isn’t surprising to see the lower cap here.

Trade Sizes

The Classic account is the only option that allows for the trading of micro-lots. The Pro and Islamic accounts set the minimum at one mini lot, while the Premium and VIP accounts require a minimum trade size of 1 lot. The Classic account allows for 100 simultaneously open orders, the Pro and Islamic accounts allow for 200 open orders, and the Premium and VIP accounts allow for 300 open and pending orders. As for the exact margin call/stop out levels and maximum trade sizes, the website isn’t as transparent.

Trading Costs

Topic Markets profits through typical charges on spreads, commission fees, and overnight financing fees (or swaps). Starting with commissions, we will note that these charges aren’t applicable on the Classic and Pro account types. One thing that the website fails to cover is the exact charges incurred through these fees. As fans of transparency, we are disappointed that the exact figure isn’t available. We are also curious as to whether the broker charges the same standard commissions on each of these accounts, or if each account has a different charge.

We’ll offer more detail on spreads later, but for now, traders should know that most accounts keep the spreads well-below average, with the exception of a couple of the accounts. Overnight interest charges can be viewed within the MT4 platform and will be charged on applicable positions that are left open overnight, with triple charges occurring on Wednesdays. The broker does not seem to tack on any extra fees, like inactivity fees, transfer fees, etc.

Assets

Before we provide more detail on the available instruments, we’d like to remind traders that there are some limitations on the Classic and Islamic accounts that exclude those account holders from trading metals. Otherwise, the broker’s instrument portfolio consists of FX, metals, and CFDs. More than 50 currency pairs are available, while the broker also offers CFDs on stocks, indices, commodities, and energies like oil and gas. Metal options include Gold, Silver, and Pallidum, in addition to a few other possible options.

Spreads

All of the spreads offered by Topic Markets are floating, however, there are limitations that stop spreads from going higher than a certain amount. This is reassuring, as we often notice that brokers advertise the lowest possible spread when their options can climb much higher. Those with the Premium and VIP account types will see the tightest spreads, which start from 0.1 pips and go no higher than 0.5 pips.

The Pro account comes in second place, with options beginning at 0.8 pips and topping out at the industry average of 1.5 pips. From there, we see higher spreads on the Classic account, which are between 1-2 pips. On the bright side, the account doesn’t have any commission charges, meaning that this offer is fairly competitive. Islamic account holders will see much higher spreads that range from 3 to 5 pips. The higher options would stem from the lack of swap charges, although this option still seems high, considering that Islamic account holders pay commissions.

Minimum Deposit

The broker’s lowest deposit offer is $200 on their Classic account. The asking amount is so-so, as many others allow a deposit of around $100 or less on at least one account type. Islamic account holders will have to make a significant deposit of at least $1,000 in order to open one of those accounts. Even though this broker has paid special attention to those clients, some may be forced to look elsewhere for a cheaper option.

The Pro account requires a $3,000 deposit, while the Premium account asks for $7,500, and the VIP asks for the highest deposit at $15,000. Note that the Premium account has an ongoing promotion that lowers the account’s requirement to $5,000 for now. Many traders may be limited to the Classic account because of the higher requirements this broker is asking for on most of their accounts.

Deposit Methods & Costs

Accounts can be funded through bank wire, credit/debit cards, and Neteller. Transactions through bank wire are handled by the company’s affiliate bank, which can almost definitely guarantee that fees will be applicable on deposits. However, the broker mentions that any fees incurred on deposits will be reimbursed, so traders will definitely want to check with support if there are fees deducted when funding through any method.

Withdrawal Methods & Costs

The broker doesn’t offer much information about withdrawals on their website, other than mentioning that all deposit methods are available for withdrawals and that it is necessary to withdraw through the method that was used to fund the account. The fact that the broker isn’t willing to provide us with information about potential fees is concerning. We would definitely recommend making a test withdrawal to be aware of any hidden charges.

Withdrawal Processing & Wait Time

The broker mentions that withdrawals are processed instantly. Typically, it can take companies anywhere from 1 to 5 business days to process funds. Once those funds have been sent, we see a waiting period of at least a few business days. Neteller would likely be the fastest option since e-wallets are usually credited with funds much more quickly than bank wire and card options are.

Bonuses & Promotions

The broker has an entire section of their website dedicated to promotions, which includes the following offers:

30% Cashback & Rebate
Introduce & Earn up to $5 IB Commission
Brexit Deal

The IB commission offer seems to reward $5 per client. The Brexit Deal is a multi-offer that would either allow one to open a Premium account for only $5,000 instead of the regular $7,500 requirement or to earn a 75% bonus on the Pro account. The broker also lists free educational resources as an offer, but we would consider this to be something that should already be free.

Educational & Trading Tools

TMFX has an education section that is made up of a forex glossary, economic calendar, FAQ, forms, and a blog. The forex glossary and FAQ seem to focus on providing some of the most relevant terms that revolve around forex trading. The forms section is less of an educational resource, as it simply contains various company documents (KYC, transfer form, account opening form, etc.). The broker’s blog can be helpful, as it focuses on trends in the market and provides predictions that may help traders make choices about which instruments to trade.

Demo Account

The broker has made the strange decision not to provide demo accounts. Anyone that has traded from a demo before knows how helpful these accounts can be when it comes to getting much-needed practice and testing strategies. The majority of others do provide demo accounts. Hopefully, TMFX will offer the option in the near future.

Customer Service

Support can be reached 24/5 through chat instantly, or via phone, email, or by filling out a form on the website. Although the broker does provide 24-hour support, we did notice that there weren’t any agents on chat when we checked on a weekday. The broker also provides two phone numbers, but there doesn’t seem to be any specific reason to call one or the other, as the numbers aren’t linked to different departments or offices.

If you’d like to get in touch through email, you’ll be able to send your email to one convenient address. Otherwise, the contact form on the website can be filled out by navigating to the “Contact US” page, located on the top menu. The contact information has been listed below.

Phone
+44 2032 870795
+44 2032 397894
Email: [email protected]
Address: Golden Cross House, 8 Duncannon St, London WC2N 4JF, United Kingdom

Countries Accepted

The broker seems to be accepting of all clients, as we couldn’t find any disclaimer listing specifically restricted countries. To be sure, we did check out the registration form to check for any missing locations that stood out. Fortunately, we found the United States, Iran, Iraq, North and South Korea, and all other options available on the sign-up page.

Conclusion

Topic Markets offers the ability to trade more than 50 currency pairs, metals, and CFDs on oil and other commodities from five different account types. A Classic account can be opened with $200, while Islamic account holders will have to pay $1,000 and it would cost at least $3,000 to open the Pro account and up. The broker offers a maximum leverage cap of 1:400, with caps lowered to 1:100 and 1:200 on most of the accounts. There are limitations placed on the spreads that keep options within a reasonable amount, with spreads going no higher than 0.5 pips on some accounts.

On the downside, the broker doesn’t provide us with the exact commission charges that are applicable. When it comes to payments, the website is extremely vague about potential charges, although we do see instant processing times and the company is willing to reimburse any fees charged on deposits. Support is available 24/5, but instant support is not always available during business hours.

The broker is currently offering several promotions that would credit cashback rebates on deposited amounts, IB commission bonuses for referred clients, and an option to open the Premium account for $2,500 less. There are some educational resources available, but options are fairly limited and don’t go into much detail. Demo accounts are also missing from the list. The broker is willing to accept clients from all locations, so this could be a plus for those located in commonly restricted regions.

London Capital Group is a veteran broker doing business since 1996 and has grown into a multi-branch company regulated by 3 different authorities. In 2018 LCG got delisted from the London Stock exchange to become a privately held company, effectively detaching from the LGC Group Holdings. The main reason behind this step according to the press is to cut losses. LCG has 3 domains or website versions, and depending on the client country the regulation could be from CySEC, FCA or Securities Commission of Bahamas (SCB) for their international website. The registration will give you an option to select BHS, CySEC or FCA Account as all can be opened at the same time.

For traders, the biggest practical difference is the leverage allowed. LCG is well known for its extensive asset range and one of the big players on the scene boasting with $20 trillion executed trades volume and $1 billion in deposits. There are also multiple awards in different categories, from platform innovations to the best Forex Fundamental Analysis Provider. LCG launched its platform, LCG Trader in 2016, as a specialized platform that will effectively use and integrate their services. On top of this, LCG states they offer security, tight spreads, and analysis. As for the security, FCA regulation includes the FSCS compensation scheme up to £85,000 or up to €20,000 ICF compensation for the CySEC regulated account in the case of LCG insolvency.

The LCG website is well designed, polished, with great transparency and information availability. The content is mixed with marketing as expected, like stating that LGC Group is publically listed, but this has nothing to do with London Capital Group Limited. Still, it does leave an impression of a serious broker for professional and intermediate traders. Interestingly, all these features did not result in good user ratings. On several independent benchmarking sites, LCG received average or bad ratings and none of these reviews received attention form the LCG staff.

In the following sections of this LCG review, we will evaluate their service so traders can see if LCG is a match for their trading style and other requirements.

Account Types

LCG offers Classic and the ECN Account type. Classic Account does not have any special traits except no minimum deposit requirements and relatively competitive spreads. This is the standard account as the ECN type will require a much higher minimum deposit, and additionally, a minimum balance required to maintain it.

The ECN Account has a bit lower leverage than Classic under the BSC regulation but still high enough. ECN Account has a commission charge and spreads from 0 pips for Forex instruments, no requotes and is classified as a Direct Market Access type. Islamic Account or Swap-free is also available upon request. All Accounts have the same asset range and no other differences except for the spread, leverage, and commission. More detail on each category in the following sections.

Platforms

LCG established the LCG Trader platform and holds the license for the MetaTrader 4. MT4 is a well-known platform and LCG offers it in the Web-accessible version as well as for Desktop and laptop computers running on Windows and Mac OS. Mobile versions are also available for Android and iOS. MT4 Multiterminal version is offered for managing multiple accounts and usually used for MAM. Upon installation, MT4 showed 4 LCG servers, LCG-Live 1 and 2 and LCG-Demo 1 and 2, all with around 54ms latency.

We are met with the default layout, with four major forex charts without visible One-click trading buttons. The client version is the latest and set to defaults with the LCG physical address in London not mentioned on the website. The default 4 forex pairs are not open for trading by default as they belong to symbols that are closed for trading and this may confuse first-time users. Some of the symbols have a dot suffix and some are disabled for trading. These are used just for conversion purposes as we are informed by the LGC staff.

The symbols are neatly grouped into groups and subgroups that match the category they belong to. Some groups have E or C suffix, probably signaling the Classic and ECN account assets. The instruments’ specification window is showing all the important trading information. Trading Terminal is showing all trading costs and other relevant data. Execution times were 114ms on average with very small deviations, rarely going up above 117 ms.

LCG proprietary platform is one of the best web-accessible platforms in the industry. The platform is also available for mobile devices running on Android and iOS. Spot on you will notice all the tools and features that experienced traders will understand without hassle. The platform has good looking charts with a similar color palette like Tradingview, completely modular windows with the flex auto arrangement. Each chart window has toolbars to the left, right and on top of the frame.

Starting for the top, traders will have the instrument selector, chart linking, and timeframe options. Timeframes are not classical and the standard has M1, M2, M3, M4, M5, M10, M15, M30, H1, H4, H12, D1, W1, MN and the Tick variant has the range from 1 to 1000 ticks. Right next is the Single chart mode switch. The left toolbar side has the chart type selection with Bar, Line, Candlestick, Dots, Heaikin Ashi and HLC. Below is the Indicators selection, we have counted more than 60 indicators equally distributed into 5 categories, Trend, Oscillators, Volatility Volume, and Others.

The indicators will have settings to change line colors, add levels apply different calculations, etc but still, custom indicators from MT4 can be superior in terms of setting versatility and combining with others. Templates are similar in function like in MT4 and also workspaces can be saved. The left sidebar contains the windows arrangement buttons, and various on-chart drawing and measuring tools. These include Crosshair measurements, Market Spanshots, Trendlines, Channels, Fibonacci tools, Shapes, Text, and Coloring.

Price Alert button is the last and will serve as a selectable on-chart pointer where the alert will be triggered. The alert window will give you options to set a higher or lower range trigger to Ask/Bid price. The alert can play a sound and pop up. The right part of the platform holds the Watchlist and the instrument Finder. The watchlist can be customized but we have noticed that the Spread and other information MT4 has is not available.

Trading instruments are neatly categorized into logical relevant groups with the finder toolbar. There are also settings for fast trading orders, dark theme switch, notifications, Email Alerts, and hotkeys list. The platform is fully packed with integrated services from the broker. An interesting and useful Analyze mode is added where traders will find data about their trading risk, exposure, drawdown, and many more, similar to the MT4 Strategy Tester. Newsfeed, Live Chat, Economic Calendar, Trading Central Signal service, all are integrated into the platform.

The right side panel contains information about the selected market including the DoM on 3 levels, Standard DoM, Price DoM, and VWAP DoM. In addition to all this, the Sentiment indicator is present on many useful places for a glance. Ordering options are also more advanced than in MT4 that professional traders will appreciate. We were connected to Frankfurt servers and we had a latency of just 19ms. Overall, the platform deserves all the rewards.

Leverage

The leverage levels depend on the account type, asset, trader categorization and on the regulation. ECN account under the BSC has 1:200 leverage for most, non-exotic Forex currency pairs, except for CHF/JPY pair which has 1:50 leverage. Exotic forex currency pairs have 1:50 leverage. For Spot Gold quoted in the USD is 1:200 and for Silver is 1:100. Indexes have leverage from 1:100 for uncommon and 1:500 for majors while spot Oil assets have 1:200. Cryptocurrencies have interesting, uncommon leverage of 1:8 according to our measurements in MT4.

Classic account traders under the BSC regulation will have 1:500 leverage for the major forex currency pairs while for minors it is reduced to 1:200. Exotics have 1:50 maximum leverage. Spot Gold has 1:200 and Silver 1:100, the same as with ECN. Indices, Commodities and the rest of the asset categories do not have differences according to the account types.

Under the EU or FCA regulation, the leverage for the ECN and Classic account is the same for the Retail traders, 1:30 for majors and 1:20 for exotic currency pairs. Spot precious metals have 1:20 for Gold and 1:10 for Silver. Indexes have 1:20 or 1:10 leverage depending on the grade and all Commodities have 1:10 leverage. Retail traders will also have 1:5 maximum leverage for Stocks.

Classic and ECN account Professional traders under the FCA or CySEC regulation will have the same leverage as traders under the BSC regulation stated above. BSC regulation does not have trader categorization.

The broker applies dynamic leverage adjustments according to the volume. So a trade above 3 million will automatically have reduced leverage to 1:200, then to 1:100 above 6 million units and so on. The full table scheme will be visible in the LCG Trader.

Trade Sizes

LCG supports micro-lot trade sizes or 0.01 lots for Forex instruments for both account types. Spot Gold and Silver is stated to have a 0.1 lots minimum trade size although what we have seen in the MT4 platform is 0.01 lots. Indices have 0.1 lot minimum except for Nikkei 225 which has 0.01 lit minimum trade size.

Commodities all have 0.1 lots minimum while Bitcoin has 0.01 lot minimum stated in MT4. Note that the Cryptocurrencies offer is not published on the website. What we have noted in the MT4 is 0.01 lot minimum trade size a maximum of 7 lots per trade for Bitcoin. For other cryptos, it is 0.1 lots minimum and 50 lots maximum.

Stops level is zero for almost all forex currency pairs, the exception being the GBP based exotics like GBP/ZAR with 150 points stop level. Although for spot Gold and Silver, it is set to 50 pips which are not negligible. Cryptocurrencies have 20 points Stops level while Oil types have 1 point.

Margin Call and Stop Out levels are not disclosed but from other sources, we have found out that Stop out is set at 50% margin level and Margin Call is at 100%.

Trading Costs

LCG non-spread costs are account, platform and asset-specific. ECN account has the tightest spreads and LCG charges a commission of $45 per $1M traded on the LGC Trade platform and $10 per lot on the MT4 for any asset. This commission is not disclosed in the MT4 instrument specification. Classic Account is commission-free as broker fees are included in the spread. LGC will also have a markup on the spreads for Shares and they go from 0.1% to 0.25% for the SEAQ market. ETF will also have markup to the actual spread from 2 cents per share to 0.2%.

Swaps are under normal levels with frequent positive values. LGC website states 0.04% “admin fee” for overnight open positions but this figure is not additional cost. The swaps shown in the MT4 specification window or the LCG Trader are the full charge or credit. Forex swaps are calculated in points and tripled on Wednesdays. For the EUR/USD the long position swap is -9.32 points and 4.28 for short.

Other majors like USD/JPY also have a positive swap, on the long side is 2.8 points and -7.9 on the short. In the majors’ group, almost all currency pairs had one positive swap and almost all negative swaps are single digit. The exception being the GBP/CAD with -8.76 pints long and -0.36 points short swap, USD/CAD with -3 points on both sides and the EUR/CAD with double-digit negative swap on the long side, -12.22 and 5.28 on short.

Minors had more negative swaps but still, only GBP/NZD had a double-digit negative swap, -14.6 for long and -12.1 points for short position. Exotics currency pairs have a much higher swap as expected. The biggest swap is noted for the EUR/MXN pair with -627 points for long and 215.66 for a short position. USD/RUB pair had the biggest all negative swaps, -287.33 for long and -110.83 points for short.

Precious metals swaps are also calculated in points. Spot Gold quoted in the USD has -11.8 points for long and 3.4 positive swaps for a short position. For the cryptocurrencies category, the swaps are calculated in points too but tripled on Fridays. The long and short position swap is the same, for the BTC/USD is -469.34 points or in other words $4.6934 per traded Bitcoin per day.

Assets

LCG has one of the biggest asset ranges on the market. Starting with Forex class, all the majors and minors are present, and a great number of exotics extend the range to over 60 total pairs. Traders will see a lot of emerging market currencies with GBP, EUR, and USD as a base currency. We have found pairs like GBP/ZAR, EUR/ZAR and more common USD/ZAR. This is also true for PLN, NOK, HUF, CZK, TRY, SGD (also AUD/SGD), PLN (also CHF/PLN), MXN, and SEK. Others are available with the USD like USD/CNH, USD/HKD, and USD/RUB.

Precious metals are the weakest offer with only Gold and Silver offered. Some Gold futures also are on the list but none of the other precious metals like Platinum or Palladium are found.

Commodities range is very good. The spot market is focused on Oil types. Both Brent and WTI are listed. In the futures offer traders can also have both Oil types and 13 more commodities. These are US Coffee, World Sugar, Cotton No.2, Orange juice, Soybean, US Cocoa, Wheat, High-Grade Copper, Carbon Emissions, Gas Oil, Heating Oil, Natural Gas, and US Unleaded Gasoline.

Indexes range is one of the best in the industry with 27 total. Some of these are CFD futures and are repeating. There are a lot of uncommon like Russ 2000, Netherlands 25, Swiss 20, Spain 35, Hong Kong 35 and Italy 40. We have found some additional indices not listed on the website like the very popular Cannabis Index and Wall Street Cash Index.

Stocks are categorized into the country and other classification groups. There are more than 4000 tradeable shares in the LCG platform while in MT4 only 3 groups are present with a much lower number of spot stock CFDs. A total of 16 groups are present in the LCG Trader and one of them is focused on Cannabis company stocks. MT4 has UK, US and EU groups with around 100 total companies. This offer is great but is somewhat limited to the LCG Trader platform only.

Bonds and Interest rates are not common to see available for trading. LCG offers a total of 6 Bond types and 3 CFDs on Interest Rates. Bonds offer include BOBL, Bund, Gilt, Schatz, US 10 Year and 30 Year bonds. Interest Rates CFDs are very rare to see, what is offered is Euribor, Short Sterling, and Swiss Euroswiss. These assets are not available in MT4.

ETFs are also offered by LCG. They are only available in their LCG Trader platform and do not have an assigned group so traders will have to search them by typing ETF or similar. They are scattered throughout the shares groups.

Cryptocurrencies are listed on both platforms but are not published on the website. Major coins are present while less common cryptos are Dash, EOS, Ethereum Classic, Litecoin, NEO, Monero, and Ripple. These are also quoted in USD, EUR, GBP, JPY, and even CHF, expanding the range with interesting trading alternatives.

Spreads

LCG is a variable type spread broker for all accounts. The spreads for the ECN account are tighter but include a commission. The spreads range is not live on the website nor there is a demo for this account. We have observed ECN account MT4 spreads for most traded assets across categories and they are competitive. The usual marketing phrase from 0 pips is not far from the truth as EUR/USD has 2 points spread. Spot Gold has 20 pips and bot Oil types have 3 points spread. Bitcoin remains unchanged and has the same spread as the Classic account of 3610 points of $36.1. This means the biggest benefit out of this account is for Forex category.

Classic account has average spreads and for some traders, it may be a dealbreaker.EUR/USD has 15 points spread as well as USD/JPY while other major forex pairs have significantly higher spreads. GBP/USD has 21 points, GBP/JPY 35 points, EUR/CHF 25 points and so on. Minors forex pairs, again, have increased spreads comparing to other brokers. For example, NZD/JPY has 87 points spread, GBP/AUD 86 points, CHF/JPY 38 points, AUD/CAD 40 points, and GBP/NZD 138 points. The biggest spread belongs to the USD/RUB with almost 2000 pips, followed by USD/ZAR with 2200 points, USD/MXN 1743 points, GBP/NOK 1822 points, EUR/TRY 1500 points. USD/CHN has 220 points spread and the SGD quoted pairs have around 9 pips. Spot Gold has an acceptable 34 pips spread while both Oil types have 3 points.

Minimum Deposit

The minimum deposit for the ECN account is $10,000 and requires to maintain this balance level for eligibility. The Classic account does not have a minimum requirement.

Deposit Methods & Costs

LGC has a deposit channel open for Debit/Credit Cards, Bank transfers, and digital payment processors like Skrill and Neteller. The cost for the Debit/Credit cards is 2%, LGC does not accept some VISA Electron cards and American Express. Note that all options may not be available for all countries or regulations.

Withdrawal Methods & Costs

Even if a trader is registered under the Bahamas regulation the same method for withdrawal must be used as with the deposit. Credit Cards will have a fee of 2% while Debit is free of charge. Bank transfers do not have any additional charges by the broker as well as online payments like Skrill and Netteler. Note that any Withdrawals less than £50 may be rejected by the broker.

Withdrawal Processing & Wait Time

Withdrawals are requested within my LCG area where the process is automated once the form is submitted. Mobile optimized My LCG portal also has the ability for withdrawals. The broker will finish the process within the same business day and the funds will reflect inside the trader’s account in 30 minutes for online payment processors, and 3-5 business days for the bank transfer method.

Bonuses & Promotions

No bonuses or promotions are presented. Affiliate and Introducing Broker programs are offered with solid compensation schemes.

Educational & Trading Tools

LCG has a dedicated section for Education and Analysis. It consists of Economic Calendar, Technical Analysis, Latest News, Analysis Videos, Trading Videos, Glossary, Webinars and Support Guides. On top of this, the broker has integrated some of these services into the LCG Trader platform and also offers Guaranteed Stop service for a fee.

Economic Calendar on the website is very well developed with multiple filters for countries, impact, timeframe, category, and the ability to save settings for the next session. Also, the Calendar features a search box for quick results. Clicking on the event will reveal more details about it, the link to the source and the figures related. A similar Economic Calendar is integrated into the LCG Trader platform.

Technical Analysis is available in the My LCG client portal and also inside the LCG Trader. The analysis on the website is presented on a slowly rolling bar with trading instruments. Hovering over the asset will open a window with the analysis detail for that asset. The content has the broker preference trade, an alternative scenario, comment or argument based on MACD, RSI and MA, and the support/resistance lines. The success rate of these projections is not disclosed.

The latest news page is full of fresh and important news only. The news content is very good with a mix of technical detail and the implications of the fundamental event. The arguments are very logical and results backed, making this section a very valuable addition for traders.

Analysis Videos section consists of two kinds of videos, Market Insight and Week Ahead. These are not updated and the latest videos are from August 2019. Although the Week Ahead videos are fresh, about 15 minutes long, and of high-quality content. LCG put a lot of effort into these.

Trading videos also have two categories, Basics, and Advanced. The Basics cover topics like “What is Forex“, “Common trading Mistakes”, “Analysis: technical vs fundamental” etc. The videos are of high-quality content and production. The Advanced category has 10 videos and very interesting topics. For example, “How the LCG Cannabis Index works”, “MACD- the momentum indicator”, “Risk management and trading plans”, etc.

Webinars and live sessions available by booking only. We do not have an insight into their quality but we can assume they follow the same form as the videos and held by the same staff. Topics covered at the moment of this LCG review are: “Market Analysis”, “Platform Guide – LCG Trader”, “Trading Education”, and “Platform Guide – MT4”, The duration is from 20 to 50 minutes.

Support Guides is a helping section with How-To guides on basic topics. The section is divided into Introduction to Trading, How To Guides, and Customer Support. The content has a good mix of text and graphics and a bit of marketing. Some topics are “All about the LCG Cannabis index”, “How to Apply Indicators to a Chart”, and “What is the Spread in Trading?”. There are 10 articles in total and we are not sure what is the purpose of having 3 groups.

Finally, to mention the Guaranteed Stop service. This Stop Loss is an absolute risk protection form flash crash scenarios that can happen on any market. No slippage execution is guaranteed. There is a premium for using a Guaranteed Stop included in the spread. This premium is presented as a multiplier applied to trade size. Not all instruments have this option.

Note that the Trading Central analysis and news feed is integrated into the LCG Trader platform and is available for live accounts.

Customer Service

LGC support is not 24/5 but opens from 6 am to 8 pm UK time Monday to Friday. As we are informed they will soon introduce 24h customer service. The chat service requires a minute or two to receive a reply and any subsequent query will also leave you unattended for a few minutes more. It is also integrated into the LGC Trader platform The staff is knowledgeable and willing to help, even for more demanding tasks they will not refer you to write an email. The company also has a dedicated phone line.

Demo Account

The demo account cannot be opened within the MT4 platform so you will need to register with a valid email first. From the My LCG area, it is possible to open multiple demo accounts on different platforms. Each will have 10,000 virtual currency. The demo reflects the actual trading conditions. Demo for the ECN account type can be requested by email and the LCG staff will consider your request.

Countries Accepted

Unsupported countries are Singapore, Belgium, Canada, New Zealand, Australia, and the United States regardless of the regulation.

Conclusion

This section will give additional key information to this London Capital Group review. The biggest selling points of this veteran broker are the LGC Trader platform, extended asset offer, and great tools complementary. This comes at the cost of having somewhat increased spreads which will avert fast trading traders. The ECN account that offers much better conditions for some assets sets a steep wall with the minimum balance requirement.

Traders also need to pay attention to the user rating as this broker has below average grades and most of the reports are similar. The main issue is the withdrawal denial for traders in substantial profit. Even the FCA regulation does not have a great effect here, any fine will not be a problem for a big broker like LCG. We cannot confirm this practice but the majority of similar reports leave a suspicion. Also, note that the company is restructured since it became privately held recently, management could have different policies that could affect to a better or worse for the trader.

CodexFX is an FX and CFD broker that is owned by CodexFX Ltd and FM Marketing Ltd, located in the Marshall Islands. The broker offers a 100% execution rate with no rejection of orders, no re-quotes, and 99.35% of all orders are executed in less than 1 second. One of their primary objectives seems to be offering easy and convenient deposit and withdrawal options, with a guarantee that funds are held in secure accounts. This is certainly something we would demand from our broker, although there’s a lot more to consider when it comes to trading costs, leverage options, and other features. Keep reading to find out all those details.

Account Types

CodexFX offers five different account types: Mini, Standard, Gold, Platinum, and ECN. As for affordability, the Mini, Gold, and ECN accounts share the same $500 deposit requirement, while the other accounts require deposits of $10,000 or more. Accounts also share the same leverage caps of up to 1:50. All accounts, aside from ECN accounts, share spreads from 1-3 pips on FX majors, minimum and maximum trade sizes, and stop-loss levels. The broker also offers a commission-free experience on those account types, with commissions charged in exchange for better spreads on the ECN accounts.

With so many shared similarities, it seems that the only real difference for most of the account types would be the minimum deposit requirements and the balance that each account can hold. For example, one can only deposit between $500 and $5,000 on Mini accounts, so this may force those that would like to make larger deposits to choose an account type that can hold the larger balance. A quick overview can be viewed for each account type below.

Mini Account
Minimum Deposit: $500 – $5,000
Leverage: Up to 1:50
Spread: 1-3 pips on majors
Commission: None

Standard Account
Minimum Deposit: $5,001 – $10,000
Leverage: Up to 1:50
Spread: 1-3 pips on majors
Commission: None

Gold Account
Minimum Deposit: $500 – $5,000
Leverage: Up to 1:50
Spread: 1-3 pips on majors
Commission: None

Platinum Account
Minimum Deposit: $10,001 – unlimited
Leverage: Up to 1:50
Spread: 1-3 pips on majors
Commission: None

ECN Account
Minimum Deposit: $500 – unlimited
Leverage: Up to 1:50
Spread: From 0.6 pips
Commission: $7 per Standard Lot

The broker requires one to submit compliance documents within 4 days of the account being opened, otherwise, the account may be closed. Documents must consist of proof of identity and proof of address document, in addition to proof of card ownership (photo of the credit card) and Declaration of Deposit form, which can be downloaded on the website. Documents can be submitted by emailing [email protected] or through the broker’s mobile app.

Platform

Regardless of which trading account you’ve chosen, you’ll be trading from the impressive MetaTrader 4 trading platform if you decide to make CodexFX your broker. MT4 is the most commonly offered trading platform among forex brokers, due in part to its user-friendly interface, customizable charts, and a vast array of features – including Expert Advisors, custom indicators, four pending order types, support of micro lot trading, analytical tools, trading signals, market news, and more.

Even with newer platforms being released, MT4 has stood the test of time and remains the most preferred option available. The platform is available for download on PC, or through Android, and iOS devices, including phones, tablets, etc. This allows for the optimal experience trading on the go so that clients can monitor their trading account from anywhere at any time.

Leverage

One will not find the outrageous leverage caps that go into the hundreds range that we often find with other forex brokers available through CodexFX, and will instead have to settle with the 1:50 leverage cap on FX options. The cap drops to 1:25 on Commodities, 1:12.5 on Indices, and 1:5 on Equities. The maximum cap isn’t absolutely the lowest option you’ll find – some regulatory authorities do require brokers to set their cap at 1:30.

This may not be such a downside for novice traders since we wouldn’t really recommend choosing high options if you don’t have the capital to risk or the experience. Still, we do wish that this broker would offer higher options on at least one account type so that those professional traders could make their own decision about what leverage to use.

Trade Sizes

All accounts allow for the trading of micro-lots and there is a maximum trade size limitation of 10 lots on all instruments. Required margin levels are 2% on currency pairs, 4% on Commodities, 8% on Indices, and 20% on Equities. The margin call level is 200% on ECN accounts. The stop-out level is set at 100% on all instruments on all five account types. Hedging is allowed on all accounts and ECN accounts also support scalping, news trading, automated HFT, and Expert Advisors. The broker will allow one to hold up to 200 positions simultaneously.

Trading Costs

This broker profits through spreads, commissions, overnight interest, otherwise known as swaps, and inactivity fees. Spreads range from 1-3 pips on FX majors on the majority of the accounts. CodexFX does not charge commissions or other fees beyond the minimum spreads for each currency pair on the Mini, Standard, Gold, or Premium account types. Commissions on the ECN account start from 7 USD per Standard Lot, in exchange for better starting spreads from 0.6 pips.

Daily swap charges are posted by financial institutions and are subject to change based on market conditions. The latest swap rates can be viewed within the MT4 trading platform by selecting “View” > “Market Watch”, right-clicking and selecting “Symbols”, choosing a currency pair, and then selecting “Properties”. Inactivity fees seem to be exclusively charged on ECN accounts, with a $10 maintenance fee for every month that there is no trading activity and a $50 reactivation fee once an account has been deemed inactive.

Assets

CodexFX offers leveraged trading of up to 1:50 on FX, Commodities, Indices, and Equities. FX options and made up of majors, minors, and exotics. There are 50 total currency pairs and the most popular options EUR/USD, GBP/USD, and USD/JPY are available, in addition to some more exotic options like the USD/TRY and the USD/SEK, etc. Available Commodities include Aluminum, Cocoa, Copper, Cotton, FCATT, HOIL, LCATT, lead, nickel, and pallidum. In total, there are 39 entries under the Indice category, including BTC/USD, Brent, sugar, and more. Equities bring the grand total of available instruments to more than 270 options, making for a significant number of investment opportunities.

Spreads

Typically, brokers offer different spreads on certain account types, with higher deposit requirements resulting in accounts that offer significantly tighter spreads. CodexFX does not seem to market spreads based on account type for the majority of their accounts, aside from ECN accounts. Instead, the broker offers floating spreads that average 1 and 3 pips on major currency pairs on the Mini, Standard, Gold, and Premium Account types.

Although the broker doesn’t list an estimate for the spreads one would see on other instruments, it isn’t difficult to pull up the asset page in order to view those average spreads. On FX options, we did see the advertised spread of 1 pip on AUD/USD and even 0.6 pips on EUR/USD but spreads also climbed to 3.9 and 4 pips on other options.

On Commodities, spreads fluctuate much more significantly, with the lowest option listed at 1.2 pips. Spreads on Indices range from 0.9 to 7.2 pips or higher, depending on the specific instrument. On ECN accounts, spreads start as low as 0.6 pips and it seems that one should expect those options to be lower than those seen for the other accounts.

Minimum Deposit

Each account has a separate deposit requirement and there are also limitations on the maximum account balance. For the Mini account, traders will need to deposit at least $500, but no more than $5,000. An ECN account can also be opened with a deposit of $500 and there is no limit on the account balance.

The Standard account holds between $5,001 and $10,000. Surprisingly, the Gold account type can also be opened with a $500 minimum deposit and tops out at $5,000, the same as the Mini account. The Platinum account would be the most expensive, with a deposit requirement of at least $15,001.

Sadly, affordability is not one of this broker’s strong suits and accounts can be opened elsewhere with as little as $5. Requirements are especially high for the Mini and Standard account types compared to the same options elsewhere.

Deposit Methods & Costs

Accounts can be funded by card, Wire Transfer, or through several online payment methods. Card options include Visa, MasterCard, and Diner’s Club, while the list of electronic payment methods includes: Abaqoo, eKonto, ePay, eps, Euteller, Giropay, Halcash, iDeal, Multibanco, Neosurf, Przelewy24, Sofort, Sporopay, Teleingreso, Ticket Surf, Trust Pay, and Poli internet banking.

There is a maximum limit of $3,000 EUR/GBP per month through credit cards. Accounts can only be funded through EUR, HUF, CZK, BGN, PLN, LVL, LTL, AUD, NZD, depending on the deposit method. All deposits are credited instantly. Unfortunately, the broker is less than transparent about any potential fees that may be incurred on deposits, so traders will want to watch out for any surprise costs.

Withdrawal Methods & Costs

Clients will be required to withdraw funds back to the originating payment method in the same currency that was used to make the deposit. Withdrawals are subject to processing and handling fees and although the broker mentions that these fees are available on their website, there is no explanation of any such fees. The broker does mention potential intermediary bank fees and suggests clients reach out to their bank regarding those fees, as they are not responsible for those charges. There is a steep $3,000 requirement for withdrawals via Wire Transfer, so be sure to keep this in mind before depositing through this method. Accounts must be fully verified before the client can submit a withdrawal request.

Withdrawal Processing & Wait Time

On their website, the broker lists processing times as instant for all withdrawal methods. Unfortunately, checking their withdrawal policy reveals some conflicting information. The broker can actually take up to 5 business days to process withdrawals and then there can be an additional 10-day wait to receive funds back to card or bank accounts. This can result in a waiting period of around 20 days once weekends are taken into consideration.

Bonuses & Promotions

We couldn’t find any ongoing bonus opportunities listed on the website, but this doesn’t mean that one shouldn’t expect to see opportunities offered by CodexFX. Under one of their PDF files, the broker goes into detail about conditions on deposits and mentions that these offers will be available from time to time. Be sure to keep an eye out for any updates if you decide to open an account.

Educational & Trading Tools

At first glance, the section of the website titled “Academy” seems promising; however, this section is limited to technical analysis, forex basics, and an FAQ. The technical analysis page and the forex basics page only offer brief explanations and do not go into very much detail. This isn’t what we would expect from an academy training session – instead, we’d like to see video tutorials, e-books, a glossary, and other mediums. Under the FAQ, the company answers a few trading questions and provides some information about their own terms. The website is also lacking any helpful tools, like calculators, an economic calendar, etc. Fortunately, there are multiple trading tools that can be found within the MT4 platform.

Demo Account

While the website doesn’t offer many educational resources, we are happy to report that demo accounts are available. Those that have never traded from a demo before should know that these free accounts offer a super realistic trading experience and allows one to practice using the MT4 platform, use different trading strategies, test the conditions offered by the broker, etc. A demo can be opened quickly by selecting “Register” on the homepage and then clicking over to the demo tab and then filling in the name and email.

Customer Service

One can reach out to support through email, phone, or by filling out a form on the website. The broker is also active on Twitter, Facebook, and Skype, although the links on the website are dead. Sadly, there is no instant contact option and wait times for email responses are generally around 24 hours or longer. Support is active 24 hours a day, Monday through Friday. Contact information has been provided below.

Email: [email protected]
Phone: +44 2080898543
Address: Codexfx Ltd. Trust Company Complex, Ajeltake Road, Ajeltake Island, Majuro, Marshall Islands MH 96960

Countries Accepted

This broker does not list any specific restrictions and claims that it is up to clients to know the regulatory rules for their countries. This simply means that the broker wants to offer service to anyone, regardless of legal limitations. To be sure, we checked out the registration page to see if any obvious options were missing from the sign-up list. The United States, Iran, Japan, and many other options are in fact available, so this could be a plus if you’re located in a country that is often restricted from opening a trading account.

Conclusion

CodexFX has an investment portfolio that is made up of 270+ options, including FX, Commodities, Indices, and Equities. The broker offers 4 separate account types with a maximum leverage limitation of up to 1:50. Spreads are floating from 0.6 pips on ECN accounts and are from 1 to 3 pips on major currency pairs on the remaining account types. Commissions of $7 per Standard Lot are charged on ECN accounts and there are no commissions on the Mini, Standard, Gold, and Platinum accounts.

Accounts can be funded through card or via several electronic payment methods, although many of these options are lesser-known payment providers. Deposits and withdrawals are processed instantly, but the lack of information about fees is not a good sign. Demo accounts are available but other educational resources are limited and trading tools are nonexistent. The broker also appears to offer bonuses from time to time, although there doesn’t seem to be any ongoing bonus at this time.

Customer support is available 24/5 via phone, email, or through a contact form on the broker’s website. The company is willing to accept clients from all locations, which is a positive advantage for those that often find themselves in a blacklisted country. After considering the advantages and disadvantages, it would be up to one to decide if this broker personally suits their trading style.

City Index is a CFD and spreads betting broker and a trademark of GAIN Capital UK Ltd. GAIN Capital Holding is a well known US broker founded in 1999 and went public in 2010 on NYSE. GAIN Capital acquired City Index In October 2014 to gain quick entry into the UK CFD trading market. In 2010 GAIN Capital was fined by the NFA for margin, liquidation and price slippage manipulation that resulted in $$459,000 fine and additional coverage of traders’ losses. Based in London and as a subsidiary of GAIN Capital, City Index is authorized and regulated by the Financial Conduct Authority with a valid license.

The broker has many rewards for having the best platform, best mobile app, best cryptocurrency trading platform and similar. The broker does not use these for promotion on the website aggressively, in fact, it is hidden in the footer of their website. City Index website is packed with quick references and info on a single page like the idea was to put as much material the visitor can digest. It is well developed and interactive with a good mix of marketing and useable information to promote the broker’s advantages or features.

Transparency is good although some trading condition data could be published under one page or document, most of the time you will have to find the page containing the info, even with the help of the website’s search field. Occasionally, City Index will use some figures as their own for marketing, for example, their 35 years of experience in the industry and GAIN Capital’s 150,000 traders pool, NYSE listing and so on. Other domains used by City Index are cityindexasia.com.sg, cityindex.eu, and cityindex.com.au.

While the broker services and the website look very promising, professional, and rich, user ratings among the benchmark sites are alarmingly low. This City Index broker review will cover service areas to point out what is behind the lines that could be the reason for a bad image if justified at all.

Account Types

City Index has 3 account types that are differentiated mostly through leverage directive limits. Still, there are some other benefit differences as stated by the broker. The accounts are called Trader, Premium Trader, and Professional Trader. As many experienced traders may guess, Professional trader is for those that qualify and pass the ESMA requirements. These are:

“Trading volume: Made an average of 10 significantly sized transactions per quarter over the last four quarters”

“Portfolio: Have a financial instrument portfolio, including cash deposits, exceeding €500,000”

“Experience: Worked in a professional position in the financial sector requiring knowledge of trading leveraged products for at least 1+ year(s)”

Meeting two of these criteria is enough to qualify. The main benefit is the increased leverage allowance and everything City Index adds on like client funds segregation, Priority Service, Credit Facility, dedicated broker-assisted dealing, Relationship Manager, Rewards and Premium events, and additional Dataminr tool.

Interestingly, the table also states the MetaTrader 4 and AT Pro proprietary platform as reserved for this account type, but this is just for marketing. Note that as a Professional trader you will also lose some benefits other account types have. You will not have negative balance protection and the 50% margin Stop Out (close out) will not be triggered. FCA protection by the FSCS and the Financial Ombudsman Service remains.

Premium Trader Account is differentiated by having a Priority Service, Dedicated relationship manager, Broker assisted trading, Loyalty rewards, and Hospitality events. Traders using this account type will not have increased leverage and will be under the ESMA limits. According to the broker, this account type is by invitation only. Traders will have to maintain an account balance of £10,000 and be active after they will be invited or may apply for Premium Trader Account.

Trade Account is City Index’s basic account and is promoted with 12,000 markets open for trading, award-winning platform, and technology, 16 chart types with over 80+ indicators, News and analysis, negative balance protection, and ongoing support. Most of these features are not enough to attract experienced traders except the market range. Tools provided for this account type are not explicitly promoted but they are the same as with the Premium Trader. More on this in the Education and Tools section of this review.

Metatrader 4 platform requires a separate CFD trading account. City Index CFD log in details are not valid for the MT4. The offers and features on the Advantage Trading platform are different than what you can expect in the MT4. MT4’s main advantage is the EAs and custom indicators availability while the City Index’s proprietary platform can place multiple modular Stop and Limit orders, research tools integrated, and so on.

This account type requires a minimum deposit, contrary to the Trade Account and others that rely on the Advantage Trading platform. Also, MT4 Account is commission-free while other CFD accounts have a commission on shares otherwise not offered in the MT4.

Platforms

City Index follows the usual steps of large market maker brokers and has their trading platforms. As City Index is a GAIN Capital brand, the platform is similar if not the same as what can be seen on FOREX.com and other GAIN brands. What is common to all of them is the TradingView HTML charting technology. Therefore, City Index offers a web-accessible AT platform, also called Web Trader and the MT4 platform. Advanced Trader or AT Pro and MT4 are all available for mobile devices running on Android and iOS. MT4 and AT Pro desktop versions are available only for Windows.

MT4 is showing two City Index servers Live and Demo, both with 50ms ping. The platform is updated to the latest version, set to the default setting with classic 4 forex charts open. Interestingly, City Index name is under the brackets beside the GAIN Capital UK Ltd in the about window. Also, the welcome mail is from GAIN Capital. There are no additional templates or custom indicators packed with the installation. One-click trading buttons are not visible so traders will have to manually turn it on. Symbols list has a lot of groups for the same asset class, so for Forex currency pairs we have noticed a total of 10 groups without any apparent grouping pattern or practical sense.

For example, ForexPro10 and ForexPro9 group contains 2 major currency pairs while ForexPro 6 has 7 exotics. Similar is done for the Indices. The instrument specification window is not showing information for the swaps or trade sizes. As stated by the broker swap information is presented as separate entries in your account history. Upon further investigation, we have noticed the Company Tab in the Terminal window where swap information is disclosed and updated.

This tab also contains other links to the chat service and so on. Some links are dead making the whole Company Tab dysfunctional so you will have to restart the MT4 client. This is an unusual practice, swaps are not disclosed anywhere on the website. While online for 24 hours the platform signal dropped 2 times. Execution time is 127ms on average with almost no deviation, providing traders consistent experience.

AT pro platform installation can be standalone or portable. The amount of features exceeds those found with the MT4. Starting with the top frame menu, traders will be intrigued and explore what each section has to offer. Markets tab is all about the market watchlist where traders can use the search and filters to pinpoint their interest. The watchlist can be saved and multiple arranged into a single window, sort instruments per column min/max values, be it % change, volatility, or other criteria.

Charting options are extensive, most interesting are over 100 indicators to insert, chart linking, resizing and movement, Renko chart type, measurement and viewing tools, tick and other non-standard timeframes like 3m, 2m, 10m, H8, and so on. Drawing tools are also very good with all Fibonacci functions, Gann, channels, freehand, shape, and lines drawing. Chart templates can be saved, managed, cloned, and restyled. Research and Analysis tab will hold a great range of services for this purpose.

We have found the Economic calendar integrated, News, City Index market analysis, Trading Central technical analysis link, Fundamentals analysis, Trading Central technical insight (which is the same as the Technical Analysis), Trading Central Market Buzz™, and another Trading Central service – Analyst Views. The Newsfeed is from Reuters and related feed is available next to each instrument or on the chart, while the Economic Calendar is good looking with filters for Country, Category and market impact.

Additional filtering can be set according to the timeframe. Clicking on the event will open the description, link to the source and data figures. Price alerts can be set on the chart context menu with options for GTC or on time, ringtone setting and comments for the alert. Then, there is the My Account tab for all accounts and funds management.

Appearance customization options are also great, you can change the platform skin to dark, light and white, change the menu behavior, language, manage workspaces, windows and so on. Probably the most interesting section is the Automated trading. This platform supports many pre-made algorithms that have descriptions and a range of settings for customization. Traders who are good with coding can also make their own and import them. AT Pro platform has a builder that can be used for indicators building and trading systems.

Custom made systems for this platform are not as available as with MT4 to download. However, City Index forum exists for this and as we have found there are 8 additional systems to download and one indicator. Searching the internet users can probably find more elsewhere. Strategy backtesting is also available for any trading system with a good setting range for finetuning. Ordering panel offers options to set OCO, Entry or Market execution, Stop Limit orders calculated in pips, price or P/L and the trailing type option. Margin calculator is integrated for easier Risk Management.

Partial closing is supported for better scaling in and out, with the ability to use FIFO. Unrealized profits from trading will be used as margin and positive slippage is not filtered. Guaranteed Stop Loss is also offered and the premium for this service is only paid if the order is triggered. Swaps information is available as well as trade sizes and more, yet, execution times are not available to see.

We have manually measured this time and it is roughly 0.3s. AT Pro platform is well made and traders used to MT4 will not need much adaptation, the help section is very useful and structured.

Leverage

City Index adheres to the ESMA regulation and therefore offers the maximum leverage of 1:30 for all trading instruments. These apply for Retail traders that do not qualify for the Professional category. Most major Forex currency pairs are 1:30, the exceptions are NZD/USD and AUD/USD with 1:20 leverage. Minors and crosses mostly have 1:20 while exotics are mostly 1:10 which is the lowest leverage offered for Forex.

For shares, the leverage is from 1:5 while Indexes have 1:20. Gold futures and spot CFDs have 1:20 leverage while other precious metals like Platinum and Palladium have 1:10. Commodity assets all have 1:10 regardless of the contract type. Cryptocurrencies leverage is not published on the website but from the platforms, we have noted 1:2 leverage for all coins. The leverage is dynamic according to the trade size. For the exact margin structure, traders can see in the information window in the Advantage Trader platform.

Professional traders have increased leverage as a result of their proven understanding of the market risks. According to the table, For Forex instruments the leverage is up to 1:400, the same is for Indexes. Shares have 1:33 while cryptocurrencies can have 1:20.

Trade Sizes

MT4 trade sizes are in micro-lots or 0.01 lot. Note that the trade sizing information is not available in the MT4 instrument specification. In the AT Pro platform trade sizes are per CFD unit per pip and can be from 1 CFD to different maximum sizes depending on the instrument. For other types of Forex contracts, trade sizes are in currency units and are from 1000 or 0.01 lots. Minimum order distance varies for each currency pair but is not over 15 pips for the most exotic pairs, most are under acceptable levels that should not influence fast trading strategies.

For Bitcoin/USD the minimum trade size is 0.1 BTC up to 75 BTC maximum. Fore Ethereum/USD the minimum is 1 up to 1600 maximum trade size. There is no minimum required order distance for crypto. Precious metals trade sizes are form 1 to 5000 units. Other trading size variations exist like Gold Mini CFD that has smaller contract value. Taking everything into consideration, these trade sizes are not common for MT4 users and they will need some adaptation.

All accounts have 50% Stop Out level or also called close out by the broker. Margin Call is at 100% but it is not mandatory to notify the trader.

Trading Costs

City Index has commissions only for shares. The commission has a minimum of 10 currency units and 5 AUD for Australian shares as per AT platform market info, also charged per share (1.8 CPS) or in percentage (0.08%). Shares are not available on the MT4 platform, therefore no commission is charged for any tradeable asset. Swaps are not presented in the specification window in the MT4 but are charged. For details, traders can see exact swap rates in the AT platform as these are not published on the website or any documents.

Swaps are under normal levels as seen in the AT Pro platform, calculated in the GBP currency and tripled on Fridays. Swaps are per 10,000 units, for the most traded currency pair, EUR/USD it is -0.70 GBP for long and 0.39 GBP for a short position. GBP/USD short position swap is 0.04 GBP and for long -0.46 GBP, interestingly for USD/JPY there is no swap but over weekend swap is -0.62 for short and 0.28 GBP for long.

Swaps for exotic pairs are low comparing to other brokers. For example, USD/ZAR has -1.53 GBP for long and a positive 0.82 GBP for short, USD/CNH 0.06 GBP short and -0.51 long, or CHF/NOK with 0.9 GBP short and -1.91 GBP long. Most of the times swaps had a positive value on one trade side. There are no swaps for Crypto or Metals CFDs.

Inactivity fee exists and it will be charged in the case of inactivity for 12 months. The fee of £12 will be charged monthly.

Assets

As a part of GAIN Capital Holdings, City Index holds the same great asset range only big brokers can arrange. According to the City Index’s website, over 4000 assets are listed split into more than 10 categories, some of which are unique. Starting with Forex, there are 84 total currency pairs. This extended range mostly comes from many major pair crosses with other exotics. It is rare to see pairs like AUD/CNH, AUD/SGD, CNH/JPY, EUR/CNH, EUR/CZK, GBP/PLN, or EUR/TRY. GBP, EUR, USD, and AUD are used to cross with many other pairs, including the exotics.

Note that we have seen other pairs not available in the AT Pro platform but listed in the MT4. Such currency pairs are USD/RON, USD/ILS, SGD/HKD, AUD/PLN, USD/THB and many more. This forex instrument range is among the top in the industry, if not the best.

Precious metals range is extended as well. Gold, Silver, Platinum, Palladium, and Copper are listed as CFD futures and cash CFDs. There are also variants with Mini contracts for accounts with a lower balance. These assets are also available in the MT4 platform.

According to the website, there are a total of21 Indexes to choose from. These are extended by the presence of future CFDs. Those especially interesting are Wall Street, Volatility Index, US Small Cap 2000, Brexit High and low political Index, US Dollar Index, Switzerland 20, Singapore Index, Netherlands 25, India 50, Hong Kong 50, China A50, and CBOE UK 250. Again, this is one of the best offers in the industry. The MT4 platform has this category listed too.

The broker continues the practice to offer extended and rare assets in the Commodities category too. There are over 25 commodities on the list. UK and US Oil types are standard, traders will have a rare sight into commodities like Robusta Coffe, Lean Hogs, Carbon Emissions, Live Cattle, London or NY Cocoa, Orange Juice, Heating Oil, and many more. The MT4 platform has the Commodities category but with fewer assets listed.

Bonds are offered in the extended range. There are a total of 13 instruments in this category. US Bonds and Notes are offered in multiple due dates and sizing. Other interesting offers are UK Long Gilt, Japanese 10 Year, Euro Schatz, Euro Bund, Euro Bobl, BTP Italian Bonds. MT4 platform does not offer these assets.

Interest Rates CFDs category is giving traders opportunities to experiment. There are a total of 7 instruments listed but most of them are the same with different expiration dates. These are Short Stg 3 months, Eurodollar, and Euribor 3 months futures CFDs. MT4 does not have these assets.

Sector Indices are a unique offer and represent UK industry sector Indexes. There is one index for every sector that makes a total of 14 instruments. Examples are the UK Tech sector Index, UK Finance sector Index, UK Healthcare sector Index, and so on. These are not listed in the MT4.

ETFs range is one of the best with a total of 101 listed instruments not available in the MT4 platform. There are many interesting ETFs in various sectors, 10 are just Gold ETFs like Gold Bull Sec, SPDR Gold Trust, VanEck Gold Miners, Direxion Daily Gold Miners Bear 3X and so on.

The only category where the City Index does not offer supreme range is the Cryptocurrencies. What is offered is 9 assets but 4 of those it the Bitcoin quoted in EUR, USD, AUD, and GBP. Also, there is the Mini Bitcoin CFD with a smaller sizing. The rest of the offer is Ripple, Ethereum, Litecoin and Bitcoin Cash. In the MT4 platform only BTC/USD, ETH/USD and XRP/USD are listed.

Spreads

City Index has fixed and variable spreads offered for certain instruments, although most are variable types. City Index offers 1 point fixed spread on the Australia 200, UK 100, Germany 30, France 40 during market hours. The spreads are up to 30 points fixed for the CBOE UK 250 while China A50 has 10 points around the market spread. Hong Kong 50 and Italy 40 have 10 points fixed but Japan 225 and Spain 35 have 8 points.

Forex spreads are floating type and are competitive. The City Index’s website is promoting spreads from 0.5 pips, 0.69 average and we have observed 88 points during the session ending in the MT4.and 78 points in the AT Pro platform. Nest currency pair with the tightest spread is the USD/JPY where the minimum is promoted from 0.6 pips, an average of 0.77 pips and our reading is 125 points in the MT4 and 117 in the AT Pro during the low liquidity, session end time.

AUD/USD has wider spreads as fixed to 15 pips as well as 7 other major currency pairs with the same spread. These have 1.5 pips set as a minimum in the information window in AT Pro. These pairs in the MT4 have a bit tighter or the same spreads as in AT Pro.

Exotics have much wider spreads as expected but the widest is for the GBP/ZAR with 38.2 pips average stated on the website, and 30 pips in the MT4. This currency pair was not available in the AT Pro. USD/CZK pair has the widest spread in AT Pro during the end session and was 800 points, the same as with MT4. According to these measures, we can tell that the MT4 spreads are not the same and in most cases better than in AT Pro, besides, some pairs are not available in City Index’s proprietary platform.

Precious metals spreads are much better than with Forex. Gold has 0.4 and 0.6 pips spread depending on the contract type, the same as in the MT4 platform. Silver has 2.5 pips, Platinum 12 pips in the MT4 and 2.8 pips in the AT Pro, while Palladium has 13.3 pips in AT Pro and 13.3 pips in MT4 during the session end.

Cryptocurrencies have like fixed spreads and are competitive. BTC/USD has 35 pips spread, the same as in the AT Pro while Ripple has 6 pips in MT4 and the same in AT Pro. Ethereum has better spreads in AT Pro at 11 points while MT4 has 20.

Minimum Deposit

The minimum deposit is not set for the AT platforms accounts. MT4 type accounts have the minimum initial deposit of £100.

Deposit Methods & Costs

There are no deposit charges by the broker. The deposit methods are Bank Transfers, PayPal, and debit/credit cards such as Visa or MasterCard.

Withdrawal Methods & Costs

The broker state that no fees exist for withdrawals. The methods available are the save as with deposit and traders can use different methods or cards is the deposit was successful. The minimum withdrawal amount is £50 or the remaining balance of your account. PayPal withdrawals are limited to the total deposit amounts via PayPal.

Withdrawal Processing & Wait Time

Allow 3–5 working days for any card withdrawals. Bank Transfers are done in normally 1–2 working days but can be faster for local banks with fast payments. For PayPal 48 hours are needed although these transactions are usually instant.

Bonuses & Promotions

According to the broker, the £1000 switcher bonus offer is available for a limited time only. This bonus is credited to Professional accounts. At the moment of this City Index review, no other bonuses are offered.

Educational & Trading Tools

City Index has a dedicated Training section for education. This page lists various topics (10) about trading in written form and Video Libary section which contains 9 videos. Trading topics are, for example, “Introduction to Financial Markets” article which contains several chapters covering all the assets categories. The content quality is very good with nice visuals and videos. Other topics are similar in structure and are about CFD trading, Crypto trading, Trading Strategies, Technical and Fundamental Analysis, etc.

These are elementary and do not go deep into the subject, but each goes several pages in length following the chapters. The video library contains videos that are used in these articles. They cover topics like “Guide to Asset classes”, “Planning your trade exit” and numerous spread betting videos.

Tools mentioned in the platform makes the essence of the City Index’s offer. In addition to those, the Market News section on the website contains even more informative material. Webinars are available for free and at the moment of our review, we have noticed the last one about “Trading Uber’s IPO” held in May 2018. Therefore we are not sure if these still run. Popular Topics page covers the US-China Trade War, “Tech Stocks Hub” and the “Brexit Hub”.

Market Analysis section contains fresh info on global topics related to markets. The articles are a mix of news and analysis with good interpretation and graphics. Although they are not deep into the subject, they provide some value to traders. Most of these are made by City Index staff using different sources. This section is very extensive and well made, there are filters with options to select Markets, Authors, Regions, and Article types. Other than that there are also Economic Calendar, Company Reports, and Brexit News tabs.

Customer Service

24/5 support is available and the broker can be contacted by phone, email or via chat service. The chat has a query bot integrated and he will respond to your questions first. Most of the time you can find what you are looking for but we had questions for live agents. They will respond promptly and you do not have to wait for them at all. Some advanced topics are answered fully and making it easy to understand. Although we had the impression that they would like to close the chat once you start asking questions about their image.

Demo Account

The demo account is available for MT4 and also for the AT platforms. The accounts are different so you need to register two demo account if you want to try both. The demos are tile limited to 12 weeks and have 10,000 virtual funds. The demo will reflect actual trading conditions.

Countries Accepted

Different regulations exist for each country. FCA covers Austria, Belgium, Bulgaria, Croatia, Czech Republic, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Gibraltar, Greece, Hungary, Iceland, Ireland, Italy, Latvia, Liechtenstein, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Malta, The Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Slovakia, Slovenia, Spain, Sweden, and UK.

For Australia, New Zealand and South Africa the regulator is ASIC and for Singapore – Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS).

Conclusion

This section of the City Index review will reveal other key information not stated above. Note that 72% of retail investor accounts lose money when trading CFDs with this provider. This is below the average of 79% in the industry. City Index is just a name for a GAIN Capital branch in the UK and other jurisdictions. Other domains may have slightly different assets range, deposit and withdrawal options and so on. As one of the biggest market maker brokers using the Central Counterparty Clearing House model, they offer one of the best asset ranges and proprietary platforms in the industry.

Also, the trading costs are competitive and traders have a plethora of tools and other useful material. On the other hand, bad user ratings have a common problem with the withdrawals on for profitable clients, extreme spread spikes and similar practice described as when the GAIN Capital was fined for by the NFA. Also, none of these user ratings were met with a reply from City Index. From our impression by speaking with the broker staff, they seem not to care much as they are too big to bother and have enough capital any fine cannot make an impact to.

Xero Markets was founded in 2017 and aims to make a splash into the forex world. Their mission is to strengthen the trading line of their clients both domestically and internationally promising low spreads, high leverage, excellent and fast service and taking responsibility for any problems. In this review, we will be looking at the service being offered to see if they live up to those promises and so you can decide if they are the right broker for you.

Account Types

Just two different accounts from Xero Markets, the Regular and ECN accounts, let’s take a look at what the requirements and features of these two accounts are.

Xero Regular: The regular account requires a minimum deposit of $10, this account comes with spreads ranging from 0.1 pips up to 2 pips and there is no added commission on this account. Leverage can go up as high as 1:500 and the minimum trade size is 0.01 lots with 1000 lots as the maximum. The account has swaps however a swap-free version is also available, the margin call is set for 100% and stop-out set at 35%.

Xero ECN: This account has a slightly higher requirement of $100, the account has spread as low as 0 pips but due to this, there is an added commission on the account. Leverage can go up to 1:500 and the minimum trade size os 0.01 lots with the maximum being 1000 lots. The account has swap charges however a swap-free account is also available. The base currency must be USD and the margin call level is at 100% and stop-out level at 35%.

There is also a copy trading service where you can copy the trades of other traders, it is relatively basic but it allows you to trade handsfree by investing in one of the already successful traders.

Platforms

Only the one trading platform on offer which is MetaTrader 4, so let’s see what this platform has to offer.

MetaTrader 4 (MT4) is one of the world’s most popular trading platforms and for good reason. Released in 2005 by MetaQuotes Software, it has been around a while, it is stable customizable and full of features to help with your trading and analysis. MT4 is compatible with hundreds and thousands of different indicators, expert advisors, signal providers and more. Millions of people use MT4 for its interactive charts, multiple timeframes, one-click trading, trade copying and more. In terms of accessibility, MT4 is second to none, available as a desktop download, an app for Android and iOS devices and as a WebTrader where you can trade from within your internet browser. MetaTrader 4 is a great trading solution to have.

Leverage

The leverage that you have available is the same for both accounts and is decided based on the account value, we have listed the options below:

• 1:1 – 1:500 for $10 – $25,000
• 1:1 – 1:200 for $25,001-$100000
• 1:1 – 1:100 for $100,001

Leverage can be selected when opening up an account, should you wish to change it on an already open account you should get in contact with the customer service team.

Trade Sizes

Trade sizes for both accounts start at 0.01 lots which are also known as a micro lot, trades then go up in increments of 0.01 lots so the next available trade would be 0.02 lots and then 0.03 lots.

The maximum trade size is 1000 lots which is far too high, we would not recommend trading more than 50 lots in a single trade as it can become increasingly harder for the markets and liquidity providers to execute trades quickly and without any slippage.

Trading Costs

The regular account uses a spread based system and does not have any added commission, the ECN account has an added commission of $5 per round lot trade which is just below the industry standard of $6 per round lot traded.

There are also swap charges on the accounts which are interest charges for holding trades overnight, these can be viewed within the MetaTrader 4 trading platform. If you get an Islamic account then these swap charges are replaced with an administration charge.

Assets

Unfortunately, there is not a breakdown of the different tradable assets. This is surprising because one of the first things that potential clients do when looking at a potential broker is to look at what instruments are available for trading, so not having it is a big blow to potential clients. The website simply states that there are 77 instruments to trade.

Spreads

Unfortunately, we can not give good examples of spreads as they are not mentioned on the website. The regular account can have spread from 0.1 pips up to 2pips as a starting position, the ECN account has spreads starting as low as 0 pips. The spreads are variable which means they move with the markets, when the markets are volatile they will often be seen higher. It is also worth mentioning that different instruments will have different starting spreads, so EURUSD will have a different spread to AUDNZD as an example.

Minimum Deposit

The minimum deposit in order to open up an account is $10 which gets you the regular account, if you want the ECN account you will need to deposit a minimum of $100.

Deposit Methods & Costs

There are a number of different deposit methods available each with slightly different features, we have set out a table;e below to give an easy read of what they are.

• Bank Wire Transfer – USD – No Fee
• Visa Credit / Debit – USD – 2.6% Fee
• MasterCard Visa / Debit – USD – 2.6% Fee
• Neteller – USD – No Fee
• Skrill – USD – No Fee
• Online Banking Malaysia – MYR – RM 4.4 / USD Fee
• Online Banking Indonesia – IDR – No Fee
• Online Banking Thailand – THB – No Fee
• Local Exchange Malaysia – MYR – RM 4.4 / USD

There are no added fees for Bank Wire Transfer but be sure to check with your bank to see if they add any fees of their own.

Withdrawal Methods & Costs

The same methods are available for withdrawing, we have set out a similar table below.

• Bank Wire Transfer – USD – No Fee
• Visa Credit / Debit – USD – 2.6% Fee
• MasterCard Visa / Debit – USD – 2.6% Fee
• Neteller – USD – 2% Fee
• Skrill – USD – 2% Fee
• Online Banking Malaysia – MYR – RM 4.2 / USD Fee
• Online Banking Indonesia – IDR – No Fee
• Online Banking Thailand – THB – No Fee
• Local Exchange Malaysia – MYR – RM 4.2 / USD

There are no added fees for Bank Wire Transfer but be sure to check with your bank to see if they add any fees of their own.

Accounts that have not yet performed a turnover of 200 will have a 10% fee added to any withdrawals.

Withdrawal Processing & Wait Time

There is a little confusion surrounding processing times, the withdrawal policy state that it will take between 4 – 7 business days for Xero Markets to process a withdrawal request, however, the withdrawals page state that Neteller and Skrill are instant withdrawals, Visa and MasterCard withdrawals take 24 hours and Bank Wire Transfers will take between 3 – 7 business days. We will assume that the latter numbers are after the initial processing has been performed, not the overall time required.

Bonuses & Promotions

Promotions change from month to month, so what we have written here may no longer be valid, but can instead be used as an example of the sort of promotions that take place.

Golden Fortune Promotion: The promotion is pretty straight forward, deposit a minimum of $1,000 and trade at least 5 lots you will receive an entry into a prize draw, prizes are different gold (real physical gold). 4 prizes on offer, each member is eligible for one entry into the prize draw.

Educational & Trading Tools

There does not appear to be any educational tools on offer from Xero Markets so there is nothing for us to write here, except that a lot of other brokers are looking to help their traders improve, so it would be nice to see Xero MArkets do a similar thing.

Customer Service

The contact us page is as straight forward as you would expect, there is the standard online submission form where you can fill in your query and then you should receive a reply via email. There is also a physical address and a direct email address along with a phone number to call. The support department is open 24/5 and closes over the weekend at the same time as the markets close.

Demo Account

Xero MArkets offer a demo account, you can click the signup button and fill in the form. When signing up for the account you can only select MetaTrader 4 as a trading platform and USD as the account currency, it uses its own account type called Xero Demo so it does not indicate what the trading conditions actually are. There is also no indication as to how long the account lasts which is quite important as a lot of brokers now put a time limit such as 30 days before they expire.

Countries Accepted

The following statement is on the Xero Markets website: “Xero Capital Markets does not offer its services to the residents of certain jurisdictions such as Afghanistan, Cote d’Ivoire, Cuba, Iran, Libya, Myanmar, North Korea, Sudan, Puerto Rico, USA, Australia, Syria, Japan, and Ecuador.” If you are not sure of your eligibility, we would recommend getting in contact with the customer service team to find out.

Conclusion

The initial look at Xero Markets gave us some good impressions, the accounts looked good and the spreads stated on the account page were ok for noncommission accounts, unfortunately, things then went downhill with a lack of information on the assets and actual spreads for any instruments. Fees being included on deposits and withdrawals is also a little offputting, but there is a nice selection of deposit methods which is good to see. Withdrawal times could be a little long but nothing that will really put us off in that department.

Uniglobe Markets is a foreign exchange broker based in the Marshal Islands and says that they offer safe regulatory environments, lowest spreads, fast execution with no re-quotes, no trading restrictions, swap-free accounts, low minimum deposits, free personalized training, confidentiality, and unrivaled customer service. In this review, we will be looking into the services being offered to see if they live up to the expectations they have put on themselves.

Account Types

There are 5 different accounts available from Uniglobe Markets, each one having a different entry requirement and trading conditions, so let’s see what is on offer.

Micro Account: The minimum requirement to open this account is $100, it has a spread starting from 1.5 pips and there is no added commission. The leverage can be up to 1:500 and trade sizes are starting from 0.01 lots. Hedging, Scalping and Expert Advisors are all allowed and there is an account manager available 24/5. Forex training is also available with this account.

Uniglobe Premium Account: The Uniglobe Premium account increases the minimum deposit up to $1,000, this account comes with a slightly lower spread starting at 1.3 pips and also a slightly reduced leverage as the nex maximum is now 1:300. Trade sizes now start at 0.1 lots and just like the Micro account, Hedging, Scalping, and Expert Advisors are allowed and so is the forex training and 24/5 account manager.

ECN Classic Account: The ECN Classic account sticks with the $1,000 required deposit, spread on this account are as low as 0 pips due to there now being a $10 per lot commission added to the account. Leverage is further reduced and now has a maximum level of 1:200. Trades start from 0.1 lots and just like the other accounts, Hedging, Scalping, and Expert Advisors are allowed along with the 24/5 account manager. Along with the forex training, there are now technical training available as well as free trading signals.

ECN Elite: This account further increases the minimum deposit requirement which now sits at $10,000. Spreads are as low as 0 pips and there is a $7 commission per round lot traded on the account. Leverage is further reduced and now has a maximum value of 1:100. Minimum trade sizes have increased up to 1 lot and all other features remain the same as the ECN Classic account including, the training availability, Hedging, Scalping, Expert Advisors and the account manager being available 24/5.

Uniglobe VIP: This is the top-level account, it requires a minimum deposit of $50,000 which could price out a lot of retail traders. It has spreads as low as 0 pips and a low commission of $2 per round lot traded. Leverage remains at 1:100 as a maximum and trade sizes start from 1 lot. Hedging, Scalping, and Expert Advisors are allowed and now the account manager is available 24/7 instead of 24/5. All training is available along with the free signals, and this account can be used as a corporate account.

Platforms

Uniglobe Markets offer MetaTrader 4 as their only trading platform, so let’s take a look and see what it offers.

MetaTrader 4 (MT4) is one of the world’s most popular trading platforms and for good reason. Released in 2005 by MetaQuotes Software, it has been around a while, it is stable customizable and full of features to help with your trading and analysis. MT4 is compatible with hundreds and thousands of different indicators, expert advisors, signal providers and more. Millions of people use MT4 for its interactive charts, multiple timeframes, one-click trading, trade copying and more. In terms of accessibility, MT4 is second to none, available as a desktop download, an app for Android and iOS devices and as a WebTrader where you can trade from within your internet browser. MetaTrader 4 is a great trading solution to have.

Leverage

The maximum leverage that you can get depends on the account type that you are using, if you are using the Micro account your maximum leverage is 1:500, for the Uniglobe Premium account it is 1:300, the ECN classic has a maximum of 1:200 and the ECN Elite and Uniglobe VIP accounts both have a maximum leverage of 1:100.

You can select the leverage when opening up an account and if you wish to change your leverage once it is already open, we would recommend getting in contact with the customer service team to do so.

Trade Sizes

Different accounts have different minimum trade sizes. The Micro account has a minimum trade size of 0.01 (known as micro-lots) lots and goes up in increments of 0.01 lots so the next trade will be 0.02 lots and then 0.03 lots. The Uniglobe Premium and ECN Classic accounts have starting sizes of 0.1 lots (known as mini lots) and go up in increments of 0.1 lots so the next trade would be 0.2 lots and then 0.3 lots. The ECN Elite and Uniglobe VIP have starting trade sizes of 1 lot, it is known what the increment is on these accounts.

There is no mention of what the max trade size of each account is, however, no matter what it is we would not recommend trading trades larger than 50 lots as the bigger the trade becomes the harder it is for the markets and liquidity providers to execute the trades quickly and without any slippage.

Trading Costs

The Micro and Uniglobe accounts use a spread based system that we will look at later in this review and so do not have any added commissions.

The other three accounts have a commission added to them, we have listed them below so you can see which accounts have what commissions.

• ECN Classic: $10 per round turn lot
• ECN Elite: $7 per round turn lot
• Uniglobe VIP: $2 per round turn lot

Swap charges are also present, these are a charge for holding a trade overnight, they can be either positive or negative and can be viewed directly within the MetaTrader 4 trading platform.

Assets

Uniglobe Markets have broken down their assets into five different categories, we have outlined them below with a few examples from each.

Forex: There isn’t a full breakdown of which forex pairs are available, the site simply states that there are major and minor pairs, a couple of examples are EUR/USD, GBP/USD and AUD/USD.

Spot Metals: Just the two metals are available and these are the regular metals of Gold and Silver, tradable against the US Dollar.

Commodities: Commodities are available in the form of energies and also soft commodities, a few examples are Brent Oil, Crude Oil, Coffee, Corn, and Sugar.

Indices: Indices are also available if you are interested in trading them, some examples are FTSE 100, Nikkei 225, Dow Jones and S&P 500.

Shares: The final category offers shares, there is not a full breakdown but they indicate a few of the available shares as Amazon, Google, McDonald’s, eBay, Alibaba, and Facebook.

Spreads

As there is no specific breakdown of assets, there is also not one of the spreads. The account comparison page indicates that the Micro account has spreads starting from 1.5 pips, the Uniglobe Premium account has starting spreads of 1.3 pips and all other accounts can be as low as 0 pips. The spreads are variable (floating) which means they move with the markets when there is a lot of volatility the spreads often widen and will be seen higher than the stated amount.

It should also be noted that the spreads are different for different instruments, so while the starting spread for EUR/USD may be 1.5 pips, for another pair like AUD/NZD it will start slightly higher.

Minimum Deposit

The minimum deposit required to open up an account is $100 which will get you the Micro account, if you want a different account you will need to deposit at least $1,000. Once an account has been opened the minimum deposit for top-ups is reduced down to $50.

Deposit Methods & Costs

We have listed out the deposit methods below along with the minimum / maximum deposit amount.

• Bank Transfer – $250 / Unlimited
• Visa Debit / Credit – $50 / $5,000
• Visa Electron – $50 / $5,000
• MasterCard Debit / Credit – $50 / $5,000
• Maestro – $50 / $5,000
• WebMoney – $50 – $15,000
• Skrill – $50 – $10,000
• Neteller – $50 / Unlimited
• QIWI Wallet – $50 / Unlimited
• Perfect Money – $50 / Unlimited
• OK Pay – $50 / $50
• CashU – $50 – $10,000

The good news is that there are no added fees for any deposit method, however, be sure to check with the processor that you are using to see if they charge any fees of their own.

Withdrawal Methods & Costs

The same methods are available to withdraw with, Bank Wire Transfer has a minimum withdrawal of $150, while all other methods have a minimum withdrawal amount of $10. There are also no withdrawal fees added by Uniglobe Markets, however, just like when depositing be sure to check with the processor that you are using to see if they charge any fees of their own.

Withdrawal Processing & Wait Time

All deposits and withdrawals are processed the same business day between 7:00 am and 5:00 pm GMT. The following are the estimated time it will take to receive your money after processing.

2 – 10 Business Days:
Visa Credit / Debit, Visa Electron, MasterCard Debit / Credit, Maestro, Bank Wire Transfer.

2 – 24 Hour:
WebMoney, Skrill, Neteller, QIWI Wallet, Perfect Money, OK Pay, CashU.

Bonuses & Promotions

There are a number of different bonuses and promotions running, we will outline some basic info on them below:

Welcome Bonus: Get up to $6,000 with this 60% bonus. The bonus funds are not withdrawable and act as an extra margin, any profits made using the bonus can be withdrawn.

Cash Rebate: Receive up to $10 per lot as a cash rebate. The more you trade the more you receive, in order to receive $10 per lot you will need to trade over 700 lots in a month, 1 lot up to 199 lots gets you $4 USD per lot traded.

No Deposit Bonus: You can receive $100 as a no deposit bonus, in order to withdraw you need to trade at least 15 lots and the minimum amount to withdraw is $50, the bonus lasts for one month.

There are a couple of other bonuses but these are Christmas related and so may not be relevant when reading this review.

Educational & Trading Tools

There are a few different things when it comes to learning and trading tools, there is the standard economic calendar which gives you an idea of upcoming news events and which markets they may affect. There is also some basic training, going over very basic areas of trading and to get an understanding of what trading and analysis is, however it never goes into lots of depth. Finally, there is some technical and fundamental analysis which you can view to help you decide what to trade next.

It is nice to have all of this information, however, it is not as in-depth as a lot of other places on the internet.

Customer Service

Should you wish to get in contact with Uniglobe Markets there are a few different ways that you can do it, There is the standard online submission form where you can fill in your query and you should then receive a reply via email. There is also a telephone number should you wish to speak to someone directly. There are also Skype usernames for both Global and Arabic and finally a physical address for the UK and Marshall Islands.

It would have been nice to have an email address available to email directly, but the online webform is as much as we get.

Demo Account

Demo accounts are available from Uniglobe Markets, some benefits of a demo account include no initial payment, real-time conditions, learn to analyze and test new strategies, zero risks, and they are 100% free. When signing up you are able to select leverage up to 1:500 and a deposit between 1,000 and 100,000. There is no indication as to which account conditions it mimics or how long the account lasts for.

Countries Accepted

The following statement is on the Uniglobe Markets website: “Uniglobe Markets does not provide services to citizens of certain regions. It is advisable to check if your region is included in the services provided before entering into any legal agreement” This is not the most helpful statement so we would suggest getting in contact with the customer service team to see if you are eligible for an account or not.

Conclusion

Uniglobe Markets are pretty transparent when it comes to the information they have provided, the trading conditions are competitive and the deposit and withdrawal methods are clearly laid out and with no added fees they are a big plus. The main downside to the Uniglobe Markets website is the lack of information on instruments and assets, this information would be good to have as many potential clients would like to see what they can trade before signing up, it would also be nice to have an email address available to contact. If you are able to look past those two issues then Uniglobe Markets could be a decent broker to use.

Forex Wings is a forex broker situated in St. Vincent and the Grenadines, their goal is to allow traders to become profitable by utilizing powerful trading platforms, access to proprietary straight-through technology, excellent liquidity, world-class customer service and a broad suite of advanced trading tools. In this review, we will be looking into the services being offered to see if they live up to their goals.

Account Types

There are three different accounts available from Forex Wings, these are the Gold, Platinum, and Diamond (Pro) accounts, each having their own entry requirements and trading conditions, so let’s take a look at what they are.

Gold Account: The gold account has an entry requirement of $100, it uses market execution and only has forex pairs available to trade with spreads starting from 2.5 pips. Leverage can be up to 1:500 and the minimum trade size is 0.01 lots and there is no maximum trade size. Trades go up in steps of 0.01 lots and there is no limit to the number of trades you can have open at one time. This account has swap charges for holding trades overnight and there is no added commission. Scalping and Hedging are both allowed and the margin call level is set at 100% and the stop out level is set at 40%.

Platinum Account: The platinum account increases the minimum deposit up to $1,000. Spreads on this account start at 1.5 pips and this account also uses market execution. In terms of products, the account has forex pairs as well as Gold and Silver available to trade. Leverage can be up to 1:300 and the minimum trade size remains at 0.01 lots and goes up in increments of 0.01 lots with there being no maximum trade size or a maximum number of open trades. The account can be in either a normal account with swaps or as a swap-free account. Scalping and Hedging are both allowed and the margin call remains at 100% however the stop out level has reduced down to 35%.

Diamond (Pro) Account: This is the top tier account with Forex Wings, it requires an opening deposit of $10,000 and with this raised deposit the spreads are starting as low as 0.3 pips. The account still uses market execution and has forex pairs as well as gold and silver available to trade. Leverage has been reduced down to 1:200 as a maximum and the trade sizes now start at 0.1 lots and go up in increment so f0.1 lots, there is still no maximum trade size or number of open trades. Due to the lower spreads, this account now has a commission of $7 per round turn lot traded. Scalping and hedging are both allowed the margin call level is not at 50% and the stop out level at 30%. This account can not have a swap-free version and so is charged swap fees.

Platforms

Forex Wings offers a singular trading platform which is a shame to take away choice, the good news is that the platform available is MetaTrader 4.

MetaTrader 4 (MT4) is one of the world’s most popular trading platforms and for good reason. Released in 2005 by MetaQuotes Software, it has been around a while, it is stable customizable and full of features to help with your trading and analysis. MT4 is compatible with hundreds and thousands of different indicators, expert advisors, signal providers and more. Millions of people use MT4 for its interactive charts, multiple timeframes, one-click trading, trade copying and more. In terms of accessibility, MT4 is second to none, available as a desktop download, an app for Android and iOS devices and as a WebTrader where you can trade from within your internet browser. MetaTrader 4 is a great trading solution to have.

Leverage

The leverage that you have is dependant on the account that you are using, all accounts have a choice of leverage however the Gold account has a maximum leverage of 1:500, the Platinum account has a maximum leverage of 1:300 and the Diamond (Pro) account has a maximum leverage of 1:200. Leverage can be selected when opening up an account, once an account is open if you wish to change the leverage on it you will need to get in contact with the customer service team.

Trade Sizes

When using the Gold or Platinum account your minimum trade size will be 0.01 lots (also known as a micro lot), they will then go up in increments of 0.01 lots so the next trade would be 0.03 lots and then 0.03 lots. If using the Diamond 9Pro) account then your minimum trade size will be 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.

There is no maximum trade size or a number of open trades, however, we would always recommend sticking to trades under 50 lots as the bigger the trades become the harder it is for liquidity providers and the market to execute the trades quickly and without any slippage.

Trading Costs

The Gold and Platinum accounts do not have any added commissions and only use a spread based structure that we will look at later in this review. The Diamond (Pro) account has an added commission of $7 per round lot traded which is reasonable considering the industry standard seems to be around $6 per lot traded.

There are also swap charges on all accounts, these are charges for holding trades overnight and can be both negative and positive, these can be viewed wither on the Forex Wings website or within MetaTrader 4. If you are not able to receive interested due to your beliefs, then the Platinum account can be made as a swap-free account, however, there will be additional administration fees to counter this,

Assets

Instruments and assets is one of the places where Forex Wings falls short, there is a very limited number of assets, so few that we can list them all for you, it is worth noting that the Gold account only has access to forex pairs while the Platinum and Diamon (Pro) account also have access to both Gold and Silver.

EURUSD, GBPUSD, USDCHF, USDCAD, USDJPY, NZDUSD, AUDUSD, AUSNZD, AUDCHF, AUDJPY, AUDCAD, CHFJPY, EURGBP, EURAUD, EURCHF, EURJPY, EURNZD, GBPCHF, GBPJPY, CADJPY, NZDJPY, EURTRY, USDTRY, Gold, and Silver.

Spreads

Spreads are dependent on a few different factors, the account hat you are using decided what the minimum spread can be, the Gold account has a minimum spread of 2.5 pips,m the Platinum has a minimum spread of 1.5 pips and the Diamond (Pro) account has a minimum spread of 0.3 pips. The reason they are the minimum is due to the fact that they are floating (also known as variable) spreads, this means that they move with the markets when there is more volatility the spreads will be seen higher.

It is also important to note that different instruments will have different starting spreads, for example, EURUSD may have a spread of 2.5 pips, but another pair may be higher and have over 3 pips as their starting spread.

Minimum Deposit

The minimum deposit requirement to open an account is $100 which gets you the Gold account, if you want a different account you will need to deposit £1,000 for the Platinum account and $10,000 for the Diamon (Pro) account. Once an account is open, any further deposits to top up the account has a minimum of $100 for all account types.

Deposit Methods & Costs

The deposit methods page on the website only mentions Bank Wire Transfers, however on the main page there are images of Visa, MasterCard, Neteller, and Bank Wire Transfers, so it is not completely clear which methods are actually available to use. There is also no mention of any fees when on the deposit page so we can not comment on this, we can advise you to check with your p[rocessor though to be sure they are not adding any fees of their own.

Withdrawal Methods & Costs

On the withdrawals page, there is the only mention of Bank Wire Transfers and not any others. You must withdraw to the method that you have used to deposit and the minimum withdrawal amount is $100, there is, unfortunately, a withdrawal processing fee of £25 – $30. Many brokers are getting rid of withdrawal fees so it would be nice to see Forex Wings do the same thing.

Withdrawal Processing & Wait Time

As the only method of withdrawal mentioned on the site is Bank Wire Transfer, this is normally processed within 1 – 5 business days. Requests are processed in around 1 hour of receipt, however, the office hours are 09:00 – 19:P00 GMT+2, if your request is outside that time then the request will be processed the next working day.

Bonuses & Promotions

There are three different bonuses and promotions available to use, we will outline the basic information about them below:

$10 Live Welcome Bonus: You can receive a $10 bonus to start trading live, this is deposited straight into your account, the account being used must have a leverage of 1:300 and minimum trade size of 0.01 lots, one account per person. You can withdraw any profits made from the $10 account without any restrictions.

50% Deposit Bonus: You can receive up to 50% bonus on top of your deposits, if you deposit between $100 and $3,000 you will receive a 50% bonus, between $4,000 and $10,000 40% bonus and any more, you will have a max bonus of $5,000. Applied to first deposit only and is deposited within 24 hours. In order to withdraw the funds, you must trade 0.1 lots for every $1 of bonus funds, so if you have a $1,000 bonus, you will need to trade 100 lots to withdraw it, this rollover must happen within 6 months, this is an achievable target.

FW Markets Champion DEMO Contest: You can enter a demo account competition in order to try and win real prizes, 1st prize is 500 USD, 2nd is 300 USD and 3rd is 100 USD, the person coming last also gets 100 USD. Prize money is paid into the winner’s real account and can be fully withdrawn.

Educational & Trading Tools

Not much when it comes to educational or trading tools, there is an economic calendar which outlines upcoming news events and which markets they may affect, this is not Forex Wings own calendar, instead, they have embedded one from another site., There is an analysis section of the website however this is currently giving off a PHP error and so it’s not loading and we can not comment on it.

Customer Service

Forex Wings don’t offer too much in the way of contacting their support team, the contact us page is just a simple web form, fill it in and you should get a reply via email. There is also a phone number at the top of the page. We did not get to test the support team at this stage of the review.

Demo Account

There is mention of the demo accounts in the demo contest page however nowhere else on the site are they mentioned, this leads us to believe that the demo accounts may only be available during the contests, this would be a strange move for Forex Wings to make. Demo accounts are important to both new and existing clients as new clients may want to test out the trading environment and existing clients may want to test out new strategies without risking their capital, this is an area that Forex Wings should be looking at improving.

Countries Accepted

Information about which countries are accepted and which are not is not present on the website, so if you are interested in signing up with Forex Wings be sure to get in contact with their customer service team to see if you are eligible for an account or not.

Conclusion

The Forex Wings site is riddled with PHP errors which means there is something wrong with the site or its databases. Putting that aside, the trading conditions are ok for what is being offered, but far better conditions can be found elsewhere, the lack of deposit and withdrawals information is the biggest worry as Forex Wings will be holding onto our money, this information is vital to help clients understand and be confident with how Forex Wings deals with their money, for these reasons it is currency hard for us to recommend Forex Wings as a broke to use.

IFX Brokers is a foreign exchange broker that is looking to offer their commitment to delivering their promises of client satisfaction, transparency to show their honesty and to build trust in order to gain long term relationships with their clients. In this review, we will be looking at the services being offered so you can decide if they are the right broker for you.

Account Types

There are three different account types to choose from the IFX standard, IFS Raw and IFX Islamic. Here is what they offer.

Standard Account: This account has a minimum deposit requirement of $100, it has spread as low as 0.8 pips and has no added commissions. The account uses MetaTrader 4 as its trading g platform and has access to all the instruments/assets that IFX offers. It has a minimum trade size of 0.01 lots and a maximum of 100 lots. The account has swap fees and the base currency can be in USD, ZAR, GBP or EUR.

Raw Account: The Raw account slightly increases the minimum deposit up to $250, it uses the MetaTrader 4 platform and has access to all currencies, as well as Gold and Silver to trade. Trade sizes start at 0.01 lots and go up to 100 lots, spreads are starting from 0.3 pips and there is a $3 commission one way. The account has swap fees and can only be in USD.

Islamic Account: The Islamic account is for those that can not accept interest due to their beliefs, so this account does not have swap fees. Its minimum deposit is $100 and it has spread starting from 0.8 pips with no added commissions. It uses MetaTrader 4 and has access to all instruments to trace, minimum trade sizes are 0.01 lots and the maximum is 100 lots, as mentioned there are no swap fees and the base currency must be in USD.

Platforms

IFX Brokers offer a singular trading platform in the form of MetaTrader 4 which is a fantastic piece of software, this is what it offers:

MetaTrader 4 (MT4) is one of the world’s most popular trading platforms and for good reason. Released in 2005 by MetaQuotes Software, it has been around a while, it is stable customizable and full of features to help with your trading and analysis. MT4 is compatible with hundreds and thousands of different indicators, expert advisors, signal providers and more. Millions of people use MT4 for its interactive charts, multiple timeframes, one-click trading, trade copying and more. In terms of accessibility, MT4 is second to none, available as a desktop download, an app for Android and iOS devices and as a WebTrader where you can trade from within your internet browser. MetaTrader 4 is a great trading solution to have.

Leverage

IFX offers leverage up to 1:500 which is quickly becoming the industry standard. Leverage can be selected when opening up ana account and if you wish to change it after an account is already opened you will need to get in contact with the customer service team.

Trade Sizes

Trade sizes start from 0.01 lots (also known as micro-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 100 lots which we feel is too high. We would not trade over 50 lots at a time as it can become harder for the markets and liquidity providers to execute trades quickly the without slippage the bigger they are, but it is nice to have the options none the less.

Trading Costs

The Standard and Islamic accounts do not have any added commissions and instead use a spread based system that we will look at later in this review. The Raw account has an added commission of $3 one way, so a total round lot will have a commission of $6 which is matching the current industry standard.

Apart from the Islamic account, there are swap fees that are charged for holding trades overnight and can be both negative or positive. These charges can be viewed from within the MetaTrader 4 trading platform.

Assets

The assets and instruments available from IFX Brokers have been broken down into 4 different categories. Forex pairs are available, there isn’t a full breakdown but some examples are given are EURUSD, GBPUSD, and USDCHF. Indices are also available however there is no information regarding which ones, Commodities is the next section with examples of Corn, Soybeans, Coffee, and Wheat. The final category is CFDs, however, there is no breakdown or example of these assets so we could only speculate what they could be.

Spreads

Spreads on the Standard and Islamic account start from 0.8 pips, the spreads start from 0.3 pips on the Raw account. These spreads are variable which means they move with the markets and when there is a lot of volatility the spreads will often be larger. It should also be noted that different instruments will have different starting and natural spreads, EURUSD may have a starting spread of 0.8 pips, while GBPUSd may have a starting spread of 1.2 pips.

Minimum Deposit

The minimum deposit amount is $100, this will get you the Standard account, if you wanted a Raw account you will need to deposit at least $250. Subsequent deposits once an account is open have a minimum amount of $100.

Deposit Methods & Costs

There are a few different methods available to fund your account, you can use Wire Transfers which has a minimum deposit amount of $250, you can also use Local Electronic Fund transfers, the minimum for this method is $100 or ZAR 1500, Credit and Debit cards, both Visa and MasterCard can be used, the minimum for this method is $100 or ZAR 1500. You can then use PayFast, iPay, and PayU to deposit into your account, the minimums for this method is also $100 or ZAR 1500. You can also use broker-to-broker transfers to deposit directly from another brokers’ account, as long as they are participating in the scheme.

There are no added fees from IFX, but be sure to check with your bank and processor to see if they add any fees of their own.

Withdrawal Methods & Costs

You can use the same methods to withdraw, for clarification these are Bank Wire Transfer, Local ElectronicFund Transfer, Credit and Debit Card, both Visa and MasterCard, PayFast, iPay, PayU and broker to broker transfers. Withdrawals must be made to accounts in your name and you can only withdraw to Credit / Debit cards the amount that you originally deposited, any more and it will need to go to a different method.

There are no added withdrawal fees but just like with the deposits be sure to check with your bank and processor to see if they add any fees of their own.

Withdrawal Processing & Wait Time

IFX Brokers aims to process withdrawals immediately and on the same working day, once a withdrawal request has been processed it can take up to 5 working days for you to receive your funds, dependant on the method you used to withdraw with.

Bonuses & Promotions

The only promotion on offer is something called IFX Evolve, this allows you to qualify to receive a funded account where you then receive 50% of the profits. In order to qualify you need to have an account with at least $500 in, you then need to trade successfully for 6 months before consideration.

Educational & Trading Tools

The IFX Academy holds all of the educational tools that IFX has to offer, initially, there is a free forex workshop to sign up to, this is where you will be taught about all the basics of trading and how it all works. Once you are signed up you receive full access to the educational material, there are full courses designed to give you the edge, teaching you about different assets, analysis techniques and other aspects of trading like risk management. It seems to be pretty in-depth and so if you are a part of IFX we would highly recommend utilizing this feature of the broker.

Customer Service

The customer service departments can be contacted in a number of different ways, the first option is a phone number to give them a call and chat about whatever queries you may have. Next up are email addresses for various departments including Customer Support, Education, Compliance & Regulatory Affairs, Partners, Complaints and, Marketing & Sales. Finally, there is an online form to submit where you fill out your query and you should then get a reply via email.

The customer support department is open 24 hours a day Monday to Friday, while all other departments are open between 08:00 and 16:00 GMT Monday to Friday.

Demo Account

Demo accounts are available, simply fill in the application and away you go, you can select to have the demo account is USD, EUR, GBP or ZAR. The other features of the demo account are not specified such has which account it mimics or how long the accounts last for, this information would have been good to have so you can tell what the trading conditions of the demo account will be like.

Countries Accepted

Information regarding which countries are accepted is not obvious on the website, so if you are interested in signing up with IFX Brokers we would recommend getting in contact with the customer service team to see if you are eligible for an account or not.

Conclusion

IFX Brokers seem to be running a pretty tight ship, their trading conditions are competitive, leverage is good along with decent spreads for non-commission accounts. Demo accounts are available and the customer support team is accessible, the education section of the site seems to be going way above what most brokers do which is great as it is always good to see brokers helping their clients become better. It would be nice to see more methods for depositing and withdrawing but the fact that there are no added fees for the current methods is a big plus.

IKON Atlantic was established in 1999 and specializing in online trading, offering forex at the highest speeds of execution, superior client services, high-quality market information, and a strong support team. That is what they say on the website, so let’s take a look at the services being offered to see if they live up to the expectations they have put on themselves.

Account Types

There is no account page to give us an overview of different account shower when signing up there are a few different options, you can choose lot sizes, either mini (1,000) or micro (10,000) and the trading platform. Leverage is the other option up to 1:500 for both accounts, apart from that there doesn’t seem to be any information about the accounts, the review will look into trading conditions in more detail to give a better image of the accounts and trading conditions.

Platforms

There are two different trading platforms on offer, so let’s take a look at what they are and the features that they give us.

MT4: MetaTrader 4 (MT4) is one of the world’s most popular trading platforms and for good reason. Released in 2005 by MetaQuotes Software, it has been around a while, it is stable customizable and full of features to help with your trading and analysis. MT4 is compatible with hundreds and thousands of different indicators, expert advisors, signal providers and more. Millions of people use MT4 for its interactive charts, multiple timeframes, one-click trading, trade copying and more. In terms of accessibility, MT4 is second to none, available as a desktop download, an app for Android and iOS devices and as a WebTrader where you can trade from within your internet browser. MetaTrader 4 is a great trading solution to have.

Prodigy: IKON Atlantic is proud to launch its in-house developed trading platform Prodigy which combines FX Spot with FX Options trading in a single, fully integrated online platform. Prodigy was developed with more than 20 years of experience in the FX market place and was constructed based on thousand of inputs from worldwide retail and institutional customers. Their first-class Forex trading platform provides state-of-the-art charting tools, real-time account information, customizable user interface and live news & reports designed to enhance your trading experience.

Leverage

When signing up for an account you can select leverage out of 1:100, 1:200, 1:300, 1:400 or 1:500. Once an account is open, if you wish to change the leverage you will need to get in contact with the customer service team.

Trade Sizes

Regardless of the account type you chose, the smallest trade size available is 0.01 lots (also known as a micro lot) they then go 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 the maximum trade size however whatever it is we would not recommend trading over 50 lots in a single trade as it can become harder for the markets and liquidity providers to execute larger trades quickly and without any slippage.

Trading Costs

The account uses a spread based system and so there is no added commission on either of the accounts, both accounts are subject to swap charges which are an interest for holding trades overnight, these can be viewed from within the trading platform of choice.

Assets

IKON Atlantic have broken down their instruments into two different categories, forex and metals, let’s see what is in each one.

Forex: AUDCAD, AUDCHF, AUDJPY, AUDNZD, AUDUSD, CADCHF, CADJPY, CHFJPY, EURAUD, EURCAD, EURCHF, EURGBP, EURJPY, EURNXD, EURUSD, GBPAUD, GBPCAD, GBPCHF, GBPJPY, GBPNZD, GPBUSD, NZDCAD, NZDJPY, NZXDUSD, USDCAD, USDCHF, USDJPY, EURTRY, USDTRY, NZDCHF.

Metals: XAUUSD (gold ounce), XAGUAS (silver ounce), GAUUSD (gold gram), GAUTRY (gold gram).

Spreads

Spreads on both accounts seem to be the same, they start from 1 pip which his great for a non-commission account. The spreads are variable which means they move when the markets do and when there is a lot of volatility, they generally widen and become larger. Different instruments also have different starting spreads, so while EURUSD may have astarting spread fro 1 pip, EURNZD as an example has a starting spread of 3.1 pips.

Minimum Deposit

The minimum deposit is not mentioned on the website so we are unable to confirm what it is at this point in time.

Deposit Methods & Costs

The only method of depositing displayed on the website is Bank Wire Transfers, there is a payment system page but it is currently under construction. In terms of fees, there are none stated, just a message that you should contact your bank to see if they charge any fees themselves, this leads us to believe that there may be no fees for depositing.

Withdrawal Methods & Costs

Bank Wire Transfer is also available for withdrawing, the deposits and withdrawal policy does not indicate any fees which his good to see. Other payment processors are mentioned but not indicated what they are.

Withdrawal Processing & Wait Time

Withdrawal requests received before 11 am GMT +3 will be processed the same working day, any requests after this time will be processed on the next working day. The timings may vary though so please allow up to 48 hours. Once the withdrawal is processed, Bank Wire Transfers normally take between 2 – 5 business days to clear into your bank account.

Bonuses & Promotions

There does not appear to be any bonuses or promotions active at the time of writing this review, if you are interested in them you could get in touch with the customer service team to ask about any potential upcoming promotions.

Educational & Trading Tools

There are no education pages on the website which is a shame as many brokers are now trying to help improve the trading of their clients, IKON Atlantic does not appear to be following this trend.

Customer Service

The customer service page is quite simple, there is an online submission form where you can fill in your query and you should then get a reply via email. There is also a general support email address that you could use, that is all there is though, no phone numbers or live chat which is disappointing to see.

Demo Account

Demo accounts are available, you can select a demo account in either of the trading platforms, however, that is all the information there is, no information on the trading conditions although we expect them to be similar to everything we have written above, one bit of information that would have been nice is to know how long the accounts last for and if they expire after a certain period of time.

Countries Accepted

No information regarding which countries are eligible for accounts and who is not, so if you want to join IKNO Atlantic, please get in contact with the customer service team to find out if you are eligible for an account or not.

Conclusion

IKON Atlantic has been around for a long time, however, they don’t seem to be adapting to the changing markets, their leverage remains good and their spreads are very competitive, but in an age of information, there is a lot of it missing. There needs to be more information on deposit and withdrawal methods, along with more ways to get in contact with the customer service team. If you are able to look past those flaws, then the trading conditions are very competitive and good value for money.

Skilling is a Scandinavian owned forex broker based in Cyprus and licensed by the Cyprus Securities and Exchange Commission. Their mission is to create a unique trading platform designed to cater to traders of all levels, from beginners who have never traded to seasoned pros. They want to create a platform that connects everybody to the world’s financial markets and showcases its potential to them. In this review, we will be looking at the services being offered to see if they live up their mission or if they fall short.

Account Types

Two different accounts are available to choose from depending on your opening deposit amount and features that you prefer, let’s have a look at what is on offer.

Standard Account: The standard account requires a deposit of at least €100, It has spread starting from 0.7 pips and has no added commissions. It can use both available trading platforms (see next section of the review) and for retail customers, it has a leverage of 1:30 and a maximum of 1:200 for professional traders. Trading starts from 0.01 lots and there are 73 currency pairs, 10 cryptos, 17 indices, 5 commodities and over 700 equities to trade. The stop-out level is set at 50%, scalping is allowed and there is negative balance protection. This account is subject to swap charges.

Premium Account: The premium account increases the amount required to €5,000, this account has spreads starting from 0.01 pips but now has a commission of $35 / million, which is $3.5 per lot. The account can use both available trading platforms and retail traders can have leverage up to 1:30 while professional traders can have leverage up to 1:200. Trading starts from 0.01 lots and there are 73 currency pairs, 10 cryptos, 17 indices, 5 commodities and over 700 equities to trade. Stop out level remains at 50%, scalping is allowed and there is negative balance protection on this account, spreads are also present when using this account.

Platforms

There are two different platforms on offer, so let’s see what they are.

Skilling Trader: The SkillingTrader is Skilling’s own trading platform, offering user-friendly and intuitive display, full web and mobile support, skilling trade assistant, multiple chart displays, ultrafast order execution, drawing tools, economic calendar built-in, 800+ instruments and more.

cTrader: cTrader is a leading multi-asset Forex and CFD trading platform, offering rich charting tools, advanced order types, level II pricing, and fast entry and execution. With a stunning user interface, it’s connected to the most sophisticated backend technology, and made available on multiple devices.

Leverage

Leverage depends on a number of different factors, if you are classed as a professional trader then you can have leverage up to 1:200, however, if you are classed as a retail trader then you will need to adhere to the ESMA rules on leverage, we have outlined them below.

• Forex Majors – 1:30
• FX Minors – 1:20
• Index Majors – 1:20
• Index Minors – 1:10
• Precious Metals – 1:10
• Equities – 1:50
• Commodities – 1:10

Trade Sizes

Trading sizes start from 0.01 lots also known as micro-lots, 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. There isn’t a mention of the maximum trade size but we would not recommend trading more than 50 lots in a single trade as it can become increasingly harder for the markets and liquidity providers to execute trades effectively without any slippage.

Trading Costs

The standard account uses a spread based system that we will look at later in this review. The premium account has an added commission of $35 per million traded or $3.5 per lot traded. Swap charges are also present which is an interest in holding trades overnight, these can be viewed within the trading platform of choice or from within the Skilling website.

Assets

Skilling has broken down its assets into a number of different categories. There are 73 different Forex pairs including EURUSD, GBPUSD, USDJPY, USDCAD, and EURGBP. 715 different shares including the likes of Amazon, Microsoft, Facebook, Apple, and Google. 17 Indices including S&P 500, NASDAQ 100, Dow Jones 30, Germany 30 and UK 100. 5 different Commodities which are Oil WTI, Oil Brent, Gold, Silver and Natural Gas. Finally, there are 10 cryptocurrencies, including Bitcoin, Bitcoin Cash, Ehtereum, Litecoin, and Ripple.

Spreads

The spreads that you get depend on a few different factors, if you have the standard account then the spreads will be starting at 0.7 pips and if you have the premium account they will start from 0.1 pips. The spreads are variable which means they move with the markets and so when the markets are volatile they will be seen a lot higher. Different instruments also have different natural starting spreads, so while EURUSD may start at 0.7 pips, other pairs such as AUDNZD will always start a little higher.

Minimum Deposit

The minimum amount required in order to open an account is 100 EUR, this gets you the standard account, if you want a premium account you will need to deposit at least 5,000 EUR. The minimum fo 100 EUR is the same for any subsequent top-up deposits on either account.

Deposit Methods & Costs

There are a few different available methods for depositing, they all have a 100 EUR minimum deposit and can be used to deposit in USD, EUR, GBP, SEK, and NOK. The methods available are Visa, Visa Electron, MasterCard, Neteller, Skrill, and Trustly (for bank transfers). There are no added fees from Skilling, but be sure to check with your bank or processor to see if they add any fees of their own.

Withdrawal Methods & Costs

The same methods are available for withdrawal, for clarification, these are Visa, Visa Electron, MasterCard, Neteller, Skrill, and Trustly (for bank transfers). The good news is that once again there are no fees added to withdrawals, but as usual, be sure to check with your bank or processor to see if they add any fees of their own.

Withdrawal Processing & Wait Time

Skilling aims to process your withdrawal request as quickly as possible, they have outlined the following processing times.

• Trustly – 0 – 3 working days
• Credit / Debit Card – 1 working day
• Skrill – 1 working day
• Neteller – 1 working day

Bonuses & Promotions

There does not appear to be any bonuses or promotions active at the time of writing this review, if you are looking for bonuses, either check back regularly just in case one comes up or get in contact with the customer service team to ask if there are any upcoming promotions.

Educational & Trading Tools

We could not see or locate any information regarding training or trading tools so it does not appear that there are any which is a shame as a lot of brokers are now trying to improve the trading of their clients so it would be nice to see Skilling follow suite.

Customer Service

Skilling has tried to make getting in touch with them as easy as possible, they have done this by providing a number of different ways to get in touch. Initially, there is a phone number available to call, there are actually a number of different phone numbers, one for the UK, Sweden, Norway, Germany and a global one. There is also a live chat feature and an email to use should you wish to email them directly.

Phone support is open between 08:00 and 17:00 CET Monday to Friday, live chat is available from 08:00 to 21:00 CET Monday to Friday and you should expect an email reply within 24 hours.

Demo Account

Strangely there does not appear to be a demo account available, this is a shame as it is important for new clients to be able to test the servers and trading conditions and also important for existing clients to be able to test new strategies without risking their capital, so this is an area Skilling should look to improve.

Countries Accepted

There isn’t any specific information about countries being eligible or not, so if you are looking to sign up, we would recommend getting in touch with the customer service team to see if you are eligible or not.

Conclusion

It is clear that Skilling is working hard to be a great broker, they are offering very competitive trading environments with good costings. Plenty of assets to choose from so there will always be something to trade and their deposit and withdrawal methods are completely free which is always a bonus. The only downside is the lack of demo account, however, this is only a negative for new clients as they cant test the servers or conditions, at least existing clients can use another demo account from another broker to test their strategies. The decision to use them though is up to you.