Forex.com Broker Review – How Does This Broker Rank?

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By Theo Madsen

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Forex.com Review

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Forex.com Broker Review

  • Commissions & Fees
  • Investment Offerings
  • Trading Platforms
  • Customer Service
  • Education and Research
  • Trustworthiness
4.2

Summary

In the world of stock trading a good broker is a key component. Forex.com is one of the top brokers that many traders swear by due to its numerous features. Read on and decide for yourself if Forex.com is the broker for your stock trading.

Pros

  • Extensively experienced with almost 20 years in the industry
  • A range of trading and platform options, specified to suit every trader
  • Highly compliant with the most stringent regulatory bodies worldwide
  • 1.5% interest on balances held above $50,000
  • Highly efficient and easy to use desktop and web trading platform

Cons

  • Website is difficult to navigate for new users who may be unsure of what they want
  • Inconvenient that some of the trading accounts are not yet integrated with Metatrader
  • Rudimentary style of the mobile trading platform may put off some users

About Forex.com

Forex.com has been around since 1999 and currently caters to over 200,000 retail and institutional clients. It is publicly traded through its parent company, Gain Capital Holdings, and actively regulated around the world by a variety of financial bodies.

All of these factors combine to make Forex.com one of the world’s dominant forces within the forex market. In 2017 the broker also completed a big acquisition, acquiring the U.S. customer base of rival broker FXCM. This move, along with other acquisitions in recent years, has placed the company at the forefront of the U.S. forex market.

Forex.com Broker Review

Forex.com Account Opening

When opening an account, Forex.com offers a variety of account types to its traders. On the level of standard accounts, new traders can choose between a standard account and a commission account. However, the commission account is only available for use through the Forex.com based trading platform at the current time.

Premium traders who deposit $25,000 or more will automatically qualify for an active traders account and features such as a 15% cash rebate and reimbursement of bank fees on wire transfers.

A demo account can also be opened within only a few minutes and provision of basic information. Here, users can avail of $50,000 virtual trading currency for a limited period of 30-days.

Minimum Deposit

The minimum deposit required to open a standard account is 50 in your chosen base currency, although Forex.com recommend a deposit of 2500 to utilize the full range of features on offer.

The minimum deposit required for an Active Trader account is 25,000 in your chosen base currency.

Availability And Ease Of Opening

Forex.com is available in countries worldwide with no notable restrictions. It is also one of the few forex brokers licensed to operate in the United States, although American traders are restricted from participating in CFDs trading as per regulatory guidelines.

Forex.com Product Offerings

Forex.com offers a vast array of trading products, number more than 300, across a range of markets. These include more than 80 global currency pairs, CFDs trading in 17 international index markets, in excess of 220 shares in both UK and US companies, commodities, and across 8 major cryptocurrency markets, including crypto/currency pairings and trading in Bitcoin futures for UK based customers.

Forex Currency Pairs

Forex.com Commissions And Fees

As previously noted, Forex.com offers users two types of standard accounts. Both of these have a slightly different structure in terms of commissions and market spread.

Spread Only Account

This type of standard account features commission-free trading, although the market spread is slightly high. That said, it is still competitive with other major brokers, averaging between 1.1-1.5 pips on most major currency pairs.

Commission Account

The Forex.com commission account offers a significantly tighter spread, starting as low as 0.2pips on EUR/USD pairing. This is accompanied by a fee of $5 commission per 100,000 traded on forex markets.

Non-Trading Fees

The broker does have a non-activity fee. This is applicable to any trader whose account shows no trading activity or open positions for a period of 12-months or longer. The inactivity fee is 15 per month in your base currency. Accounts with a balance of more than 10,000 base currency are exempt.

Forex.com Platforms And Tools

Forex.com again offers traders a comprehensive variety when it comes to trading platforms. There is something to fit all levels and styles of traders. The broker has integrated the renowned and highly respected Metatrader 4 for desktop, mobile, and web. This provides all users with a platform they know and trust. The company also reports as being the world’s largest MT4 broker based on January 2018 statistics.

Forex.com Trading Platform

The primary focus of the company, though, is to direct traders to use their own Forex.com proprietary platforms, available in all formats.

Desktop Platform

Forex.com Advanced Trader is the broker’s desktop platform. The desktop platform, although adopting a visually minimalist style, is packed full of charting options and technical indicators. With over 130 technical indicators available to add to your charts at the click of a button, it really does excel in terms of convenience. This is most certainly more than the number of indicators usually offered by rival platforms.

Forex.com Charts

Forex.com Technical Indicators

The platform is also clear in its layout and highly customizable in terms of which windows you wish to display. This makes it easy to navigate for new and experienced traders alike. In terms of news and research, this also has a window with all the days’ latest news, which can be updated swiftly with one-click. An informative economic calendar is also easily available and displays detailed information as it happens, right next to the news tab.

The order window is also kept simple and effective, with what the company report to be one of the fastest transaction times in the industry. Traders can choose an instant execution or a market execution, and a drop down window also displays stop-loss possibilities concisely.

Forex.com Order Entry

Overall, it is fair to say that the Advanced Trader platform caters effectively to all levels of trader and performs in a highly efficient and informative manner. This is certainly helpful in the case of new traders, where the Forex.com desktop platform will definitely reduce the learning curve.

Web Trading Platform

Web Trader is the Forex.com web trading platform. Although visually a little more basic even than the already minimalist desktop platform, the platform still provides all the key services and information in an easy to understand format for the traders.

The platform is certainly on the no-frills side. Still, it allows a customizable range of windows and a plethora of technical indicators, as well as access to the most up to date news feed from Reuters and access to your economic calendar. One-click trading is also available, and additional customer support and account related tabs.

Forex.com Web Trading

The only slightly negative aspect of the Web Trader is the tab system, whilst allowing for maximum efficiency with working in multiple windows, can seem cluttered and confusing on occasion.  

Mobile Trading Platform

The Forex.com mobile app platform is in the same visually basic design, which still manages to flow well on both operating systems and allows for easy implementation of more than 20 technical indicators. Alongside this is the full-range of live quotes, regularly updated news, and fully functional trading capability on the go.

Forex.com Differentiators

First off, Forex.com is leaps and bounds ahead of many industry competitors in terms of experience within the industry. This is reflective in its overall offering to an extent.

The visually basic yet highly performance efficient nature of all the recently updated platforms from the broker shows that they have keen insight into the desires of their traders. Performance is of paramount importance to Forex.com, and this is something they have proven over the years.

Having such a large trader base is something that has allowed Forex.com to really specialize its offerings to the individual trader in ways which many others simply cannot do.

Forex.com Customer Service

Forex.com offers an extensive number of options both in contact method and location when it comes to customer support. Customer support centers are located in the UK, Canada, Japan, Australia, and the USA. Local phone-based support is offered through these locations on a 24/5 basis from 9am-5pm EST. This service is available in Arabic, English, Japanese, and Russian.  

Other customer support contact methods include the company website via live chat and email. Customer support feedback has been consistently positive, with speedy phone answering time and fast response to email queries.

Trustworthiness

With almost two decades in the industry and has amassed hundreds of thousands of clients, transacting huge amounts on a daily basis, it is safe to say that Forex.com is an extremely trustworthy broker. All of the broker’s business practices are highly transparent, and fees, spreads, and commissions are clearly set out in the comprehensive FAQ section on the company website.

Added to this, Gain Capital is a publicly-traded company on the New York Stock Exchange. This adds tremendous credibility to the conduct and trustworthiness of the broker when compared with some competitors.

Finally, Forex.com are regulated by and fully compliant with the following financial bodies:

These are all highly respected regulatory bodies in the financial world, and it is rare to see a broker who is registered and fully compliant with such a high number of global regulators, in the most positive sense for traders.

Conclusion: Forex.com

With almost two decades of experience in the sector, Forex.com has shown that they still possess not only the ability to adapt to changing market conditions and keep pace with competitors but, in many areas, set the standard. This is clearly exemplified through their focus on fast and efficient trading, which is heavy on objective information such as technical indicators and news, but light on unnecessary visuals and self-promotion.

These are factors obviously appreciated by the loyal trader base as Forex.com still trends among the busiest brokers in the world on a daily basis.  

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Theo Madsen

Theo has been actively trading the forex markets since 2013. Over the past five years, he has gained experience trading currencies, stocks, options, and futures. Theo's trading experience led him to test out over one hundred different trading services and he shares his insights in reviews to help other traders.

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