Summary

CFDs are complex instruments and come with a high risk of losing money rapidly due to leverage. 74.74% of retail investor accounts lose money when trading CFDs with this provider. You should consider whether you understand how CFDs work and whether you can afford to take the high risk of losing your money.

Visit Broker

FXCM, or Forex Capital Markets, is a UK-based broker offering forex and CFDs trading. FXCM was established in 1999 and is a Leucadia Company. Leucadia is the former name of the Jefferies Financial Group, which is listed on the New York Stock Exchange and has a background in investment banking.
- FXCM UK – Known as Forex Capital Markets Limited in the UK, the company is licensed and regulated by the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) with registration number 217689.
- FXCM operates in Australia as FXCM Australia Pty. Limited. It is regulated by the Australian Securities and Investments Commission with Number 309763.
- In Africa, the company operates as FXCM South Africa (PTY) LTD, regulated by the Financial Services Provider. Regulation is provided by Financial Sector Conduct Authority, with registration number 46534.

Overall Rating 8.5

Fees

FXCM offers a 5-digit price quotation system. The last digit is one-tenth of the value of the 4^th digit. So what are the fees and commissions on FXCM?

All trading costs are factored into the spread. Therefore, no commissions* are charged on trades, except for the Active Trader account where a charge for premium service is applied.
At 4** points, spreads for the EURUSD are low and comparable with spreads on other brokerage platforms.

* FXCM can be compensated in several ways, which includes but are not limited to adding a mark-up to the spreads it receives from its liquidity providers, adding a mark-up to

rollover, etc. Commission-based pricing is applicable to Active Trader account types.

** As per FXCM’s spread report (2020 Q3)

Metric	Standard	Active trader
Pricing Model	Spreads Only*	Spreads Only*
Average Spreads	1.4** on EUR/USD	0.3** on EUR/USD
Total Cost	£0.05 per 1K EUR/USD (Or £49 per million)
Spread Betting (available for UK and Ireland residents only), CFDs (indices and commodities)

Widening of spreads during news trades is quite common. The now-defunct US branch of FXCM was accused and proven to have manipulated prices and spreads during news trades, leading to a $14million fine in 2014. Repeat occurrences led to FXCM’s expulsion from the US market.

Deposit and Withdrawal

The following is what traders on FXCM need to know about deposits and withdrawals.

Payment Methods: The payment methods on FXCM include bank wires (SWIFT), credit/debit cards, Neteller and Skrill.
Minimum Deposits: There are minimum deposit requirements for each account type. These are £300 for the Standard account and £25,000 for the Active Trader account.
Minimum Withdrawals: Minimum withdrawals are as low as £100 for card methods and Skrill, and as low as £500 for bank wires.

The deposit methods determine the speed at which the funds are processed. Card transactions and Skrill transactions are processed in one day. Transactions done with bank wires are processed in 2-7 days. UK clients can deposit or withdrawal with local bank methods.

FXCM does not have issues with withdrawals.

Trading Platform

What trading platforms and tools can traders expect to have by using FXCM?

Trading Station: This is FXCM’s proprietary software built with the Lua programming language. It has a desktop version as well as a web-based version. The Trading Station also comes with a mobile app for both iOS and Android devices.
MT4: Traders can get MT4 platforms. These come as a web-based platform, a downloadable client and a mobile app for Android and iOS devices.

Traders can also get access to the native indicators on each platform, as well as the custom indicators built with Lua (Trade Station) and MQL (MT4).

Special tools are available on the FXCM App Store. Some of these tools include custom indicators. Traders can also meet developers on

this platform and place orders for custom apps.

The MT4 is more user-friendly than the Trade Station platform. While both platforms will suit beginners quite well, more time will need to be spent learning to use the Trade Station platform. Both platforms come in several languages.

Is FXCM Mobile Friendly?

FXCM’s website and platforms are all mobile-friendly. To trade on mobile devices, it is advised to download mobile apps via the FXCM website and use them after installation. The mobile apps work very well and carry advanced charting, which can enable some degree of technical analysis.

Markets and Products

FXCM offers the trading of forex and CFDs (indices and commodities) to its clients. Due to its location in the UK market, it is also able to offer spread betting to UK and Ireland residents on financial assets. FXCM offers trading in more than 50 assets, distributed as follows:

Index and commodity CFDs (18)
Forex pairs (39)
Spread bet assets (>50).

Research

As far as research is concerned, traders can access technical and fundamental research using the FXCM Market Scanner, Grid Insight Index, Daily Technical Analysis and Market Data signals.

Customer Service

Customer support on FXCM is available 24/5, except for the Live Chat support which is available 18 hours of the day, 5 days a week. Support is available to all clients irrespective of account type or status. Support channels for FXCM UK are as follows:

Phone: +44(0) 207398 4500 (toll free: 08082348789)
Fax: +44 20 7398 4051
Email: info@fxcm.co.uk

Live chat is accessible from the home page.

Customer support is responsive and they are quite knowledgeable about issues affecting traders on FXCM. Customer support is available in several languages: English, German, French, Spanish, Italian, and Bahasa.

Education

In terms of education, traders can access the resource and educational materials using video lessons, the online classroom, ebooks, articles, webinars and in-person seminars. These are accessible by everyone (account holders and non-account holders). This is a great resource for new traders.

Safety

Here are some noteworthy points for this broker:

FXCM provides a forex VPS service for live account holders who trade with the MT4.
FXCM US was fined $14 million in 2014 by the CFTC (US regulator) for various market infractions which include stop hunting and price manipulations. The same year, FXCM UK was fined £4m by the FCA for issues with payments to clients.
In 2015, FXCM racked up losses accumulated by its clients who were hit by slippage after the de-pegging of the Euro and the Swiss Franc by the Swiss National Bank. FXCM was only able to stave off bankruptcy by an emergency deal which saw the company sell of a substantial stake of its business to Leucadia for $300million.
In 2016, FXCM was expelled from the US market for repeated infractions in the market.
Under Leucadia, FXCM attempted to clean up its act and has rebranded the company to Global Brokerage Inc.
FXCM US transferred all its clients in the US to GAIN Capital Inc (Forex.com).

Bottom Line

FXCM is in the process of an entire rebranding of its services and products. This is to make it more competitive as it attempts to break away from its tainted past. The product offerings have been worked on and suit beginners and advanced traders alike. FXCM cannot be said to be fully legit; its past infractions have put a strain on the firm that will be hard to shake off. Traders should therefore tread cautiously when using FXCM.