PROS:
✅ Long life span of a broker
✅ Set of solid licences
✅ Proprietary trading platform
CONS:
❌ Not many funding methods
Forex.com Review
Forex.com is a know Forex and CFD broker that was established in 2001. Forex.com is initially a brand of GAIN Capital company, that is listed on the New York Stock Exchange. Forex.com is being regulated by various trusted financial authorities, like the top-tier Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) in the UK and Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) in US.
Being more precise, GAIN Capital Holdings is a corporation that includes City Index, that is as well an online CFD broker and spread betting provider. Daniels Trading is a part of the holding also, being a futures advisory trading firm, that was acquired in February 2020 by StoneX Group Inc.
StoneX Group Inc. is a publicly traded company that is listed on NASDAQ exchange under SNEX ticker that promotes that it connects “clients to the global markets across asset classes through institutional-grade platforms, end-to-end clearing and execution, and high-touch expertise.”
Regulation
Forex.com claims itself as the #1 Forex broker in the United States and this statement is validated by the last report dated by June 2020 from CFTC Retail Forex Obligation that “represents the total amount of funds at an FCM, RFED, or FCMRFD that would be obtained by combining all money, securities and property deposited by a retail forex customer into a retail forex account or accounts, adjusted for the realized and unrealized net profit or loss.”
FOREX.com is a publicly traded, as mentioned above and is authorised by four tier-1 regulators like Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC), Financial Conduct Authority (FCA), Japanese Financial Services Authority (JFSA) and Investment Industry Regulatory Organization of Canada (IIROC).
| Feature | Condition |
|---|---|
| Foundation year | 2007 |
| Publicly Traded on Exchange | ❌ |
| Tier-1 Licenses | CFTC, FCA, JFSA, IIROC |
Instruments
The products and services that will be available to the trader at Forex.com depend on where the trader is located and the entity that holds the account. As an example, CFDs are not available for trading in the United States due to regulation restrictions, while outside Forex.com offers more than 4500 CFDs.
| Feature | Condition |
|---|---|
| Major forex pairs | ✅ |
| Minor forex pairs | ✅ |
| Exotic forex pairs | ✅ |
| Cryptocurrencies | ✅ |
| CFD | |
| Metals | ✅ |
| Energies | ✅ |
| Agricultural | ✅ |
| Shares | |
| UK shares | ✅ |
| US shares | ✅ |
| German shares | ✅ |
| French shares | ✅ |
Trading platforms
Forex.com provides forex traders with a set of trading terminals that allow to choose the most suitable one.
Advanced Trading: Forex.com has a proprietary desktop platform, and is supplied with a charting package with a large list of technical indicators (139 in total), drawing tools, and more than 100 automated strategies. Technical Analysis and research tools are provided by Trading Central. They include Technical Insight, Market Buzz and Analyst Views modules.
Web trading: As well as the Advanced Trading, Forex.com has a proprietary Web Trading platform. It makes easy analyzing markets, making various researches and placing trades. Charts in Web Trading platform are provided by popular TradingView that has built-in 100 indicators, 14 timeframes, and many chart types.
MetaTrader 4/5: Having this platform is vital for being a suitable forex broker. That is why Forex.com is not limited its proprietary platforms but as well have complete MetaTrader suite, including both MT4 and MT5. It’s instruments list consists of 600 instruments on the MetaTrader5 platform, while on Advanced Trading and WebTrading platforms there are more than 4500.
| Feature | Condition |
|---|---|
| MetaTrader 4 | ✅ |
| MetaTrader 5 | ✅ |
| MetaTrader 4/5 iOS/Android | ✅ |
| Proprietary Mobile Application | ✅ |
| Proprietary Web Terminal | ✅ |
| cTrader | ❌ |
Account types and conditions
Forex.com has various account types that depend on the selected platform. Each account type has its pros and cons so below are the features of each account type.
Standard account: The Standard account is the available only for clients that prefer MetaTrader platform. If someone is seeking for the benefits of market-maker execution type (when execution price is guaranteed) and is ready to have higher spread because of this, then Forex.com’s Standard account will be a suitable choice.
DMA account (STP PRO account in the US): Most used and tied to proprietary Advanced Trading platform of Forex.com, the DMA account offers good execution and the biggest benefits at FOREX.com – its tiers. For example, traders that turnover more than $2 billions per month would get spreads of 0.7 pips.
Commission account (US customers only): Tied to Forex.com’s proprietary trading platforms, this account type requires a $10K deposit alongside at least $25 millions in monthly turnover volume. The main benefits of this account type are discounts from Forex.com.
- Five volume tiers with rebates
- Unless the traded volume is less than $50 millions per month, the trading costs are almost the same as the Standard account for US residents
| Feature | Condition |
|---|---|
| Demo account | ✅ |
| Standard account | ✅ |
| DMA account | ✅ |
| Commission account | ✅ |
Commissions and spreads
The spreads depend on the type of account the trader chooses. For example, the EUR/USD spread for US. clients on a Standard account is 1 pip while Commission and STP Pro accounts will allow to trade this pair with spreads of 0.2 and 0.1, respectively. Countries outside the U.S. also offer Direct Market Access (DMA) accounts but the minimum account size is 25,000$ The DMA account has no markup on spreads, though a commission is charged.
In terms of other charged fees, accounts with no trading activity for more than 12 months could be charged for a $15/month inactivity fee. The broker does not have additional fees for deposits or withdrawals.
Deposits and Withdrawals
Once the account at Forex.com is created and it comes to account funding, there are multiple deposit and withdrawal options depending on the country:
- UK: Debit/Credit cards, Bank transfer, Paypal
- US: Debit card, Electronic bank transfer wire, check, eCheck
- Rest of world: Debit/Credit Card, Bank Transfer
There is a lack of other payment system providers that may be used my customers.
| Feature | Condition |
|---|---|
| Bank wire | ✅ |
| Debit/Credit cards | ✅ |
| Skrill | ❌ |
| Neteller | ❌ |
| Paypal | ✅ |
| WebMoney | ❌ |
| China UnionPay | ❌ |
Customer Support
The ways to contact Forex.com are:
- Phone
- Live chat
Phone support is rarely used by the traders though in Forex.com it’s available during business hours and is multi-lingual.
The majority of traders prefer using live chat. In Forex.com it has a chatbot, that can answer some basic questions, like “How can I deposit?” or “How can I open an account?”. If you have a more complex question, you have to call a a real person by typing ‘agent’ in the chat, that leads to connection with a sales member or support agent.
Contacting Forex.com via email usually allows to got answers within 1 working day.
Forex.com’s customer service is available 24 hours a day from Monday till Friday when forex market is opened.
| Feature | Condition |
|---|---|
| Live Chat | ✅ |
| ✅ | |
| Phone | ✅ |
Forex.com Review. Key points
Finally, Forex.com is a very good broker for trading. It has a bunch of solid licences in different legislations including FCA and CFTC.
There are various platforms available for trading so users can choose the most suitable in terms of conditions and built-in software.
All the major funding methods like bank transfers, cards and PayPal are available at Forex.com so it will not be a problem to make a deposit or a withdrawal.
The support service is responsive and fast so customers will not have to wait long to get an answer.