FXCM started its broker operations in 1999 and provides forex trading services as well as spread betting for UK residents. The company has offices in the UK, Cyprus, Australia and South Africa. FXCM has a cabinet full of trophies for various awards including Best FX Platform 2021, by Online Personal Wealth Awards, and Best Zero Commission Broker 2022, by International Financial Awards. The broker trades the following assets: forex, commodities, shares and indices.
Low Latency in ExecutionWide Range of PlatformsTop-of-the-Class Trader Support 24/5Top-Tier Regulation
Limited Research2FA Authentication is not supportedFXCM is regulated by the following financial regulating bodies:
The FCA, CySEC and ASIC are 3 tier-1 regulatory authorities that guarantee the highest standards of transparency, financial accountability and trust.
The bid offer spread is where most FX brokers earn their incomes. The “spread” is the difference between the bid price and the ask price measured in pips.
The table below shows the minimum spreads for each of the major forex pairs as listed on the FXCM website and compares them against the industry average.
Note: Spreads are variable and can change depending on the time of day and market conditions. For information purposes only.
FXCM is fairly in line with the industry average on most pairs, and on some, it has slightly better spreads. Although they are still not as low as some other brokers in the major pairs. Having said that FXCM does have a lot of services to offer. They also have an upgraded account FXCM Pro, for professional traders, small hedge funds and institutions.
FXCM has done a great job in offering a wide enough choice of professional standard trading platforms. The choices available to their traders are the following:
MT4 is the well-known retail trading platform from MetaTrader. The platform is available as a download, directly through your browser, or as a mobile app. What has probably made this platform so popular is the fact that you can customise your experience with extra indicators, and tools, or automate your trading.
FXCM also offers a service where you can send your strategies to the broker, and they will write the code for you to automate the strategy on MT4. It was clear from their website if that service comes at a cost or what it may be.
Trade Station is an in-house proprietary platform built with retail traders in mind. The platform is accessible as a web-based app, as a download to your PC, or as a mobile app on your smartphone. The platform contains a multitude of technical indicators and drawing tools that outnumbers those on MT4.
This broker is one of the many now offering their trading services through TradingView. This is a web-based app that allows you to access charts in just about any market. The app has the largest number of technical indicators and drawing tools we have ever seen in one place. It also has many indicators and strategies produced by the community you can use for free.
All 3 platforms have their mobile versions as well. Some limitations in the number of technical indicators or drawing tools apply. However, you will still be able to access all the main functions including receiving quotes from the markets, placing trades and setting alerts.
Benefits of the FXCM mobile app selection include:
Education is a department where FXCM stands out. They have a wide library of articles and videos for beginner and intermediate traders. Under the tab “Learn to Trade” they have various subsections such as What is Forex? Learn Forex Trading and Successful Traders. Each subsection is broken down into various smaller sections with a large number of articles. There are also live open trading classes directly from their website.
The material is well presented, concise and covers all the main subjects a trader needs to learn to get themselves up to speed. The live trading sessions and live educational webinars are also very useful.
Research from FXCM is somewhat limited, however, it covers the main data events such as non-farm payrolls and other topics related to trading the financial markets. You will also find live news feeds on MT4 and TradingView, the latter will filter the main headlines for each asset class.
Customer support from FXCM is 24/5, which we feel could be upgraded to 24/7 as more and more of the top brokers offer this service around the clock all week. From what we could see the service is available in English and various of the main languages such as Spanish, Italian, French and German. Although we were not able to establish the full list of languages available.
You can speak to customer support via:
FXCM offers a service of a high standard which would explain the many awards it keeps winning year after year. They also have a Pro account for institutional and professional traders thanks to their partnerships with trading and investing house Jeffries.
They can also offer one of the fasted trade execution speeds. This allows them to achieve a very high 84% of trade orders that receive zero or positive slippage. This aspect is of particular importance to high-frequency traders. But it also affects discretionary traders, especially if they are day trading with small profit targets.
Overall, there may be cheaper choices for bid offer spread, but we feel that the top-tier choice of platforms, quality educational material with live trading sessions, and low latency in execution make this broker a valid option.
66% of retail investor accounts lose money when trading CFDs with this provider.
