FXCM Review 2021 | Top 10 Best

FXCM review at a glance

Is FXCM Safe to trade?

FXCM – one of the world’s best online brokers offers forex, stocks, commodities, index futures, and options trading on 15 international exchanges through a single multi-currency trading account. The company has offices in major financial centers like New York, London, Tokyo, Sydney, and Zurich. It offers a wide range of investment tools such as low-cost forex trading with tight spreads, mobile trading platforms, and market analysis tools.

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FXCM Trading Platform Overview

A brief intro of FXCM trading platform

FXCM is one of the oldest Forex brokers that started offering trading services in 1999. FXCM is owned by Jefferies Financial Group, an NYSE-listed company (previously known as Leucadia). This brokerage firm operates in the majority of countries and financial markets.

For instance, you can trade CFD in Australia or Forex CFDs in Germany; trade a betting portfolio if you trade from the UK & Ireland, and take advantage of both rising and falling markets. Needless to say, you can take control of your portfolio with its strong technical analysis and research tools.

FXCM is regulated in Several Jurisdictions, including FCA in the UK, ASIC in Australia, FSCA in South Africa. Even though FXCM is not publicly listed on any stock exchange, the brokerage company maintains a solid reputation for 20 years. It’s often referred to as one of the best Zero Commission and low-fee trading platforms.

Our trading editorial team have analyzed FXCM and compared it with over 130+ Tier-1 Forex brokers and came to a conclusion to rate FXCM as follows:

Low trading fees broker
Zero Commission forex Broker
Provides solid market research & tools

FXCM provides negative balance protection, which means in case your account balance drops to negative, you will be protected. Traders from Europe can enjoy investor protection of £85,000.

*FXCM can be compensated in several ways, including adding a mark-up to the spreads it receives from its liquidity providers, adding a mark-up to rollover, etc. Commission-based pricing applies to Active Trader account types.

How much is FXCM Trading Fees?

How much is FXCM Commissions

When it comes to online trading, we often receive questions such as:
“Is FXCM a good forex broker for beginners?”
“How much are FXCM fees?”.

Well, it all depends on your trading and investment strategy and the services that you use. Charges for trading Forex are definitely different from algorithmic trading fees.

Let’s have a look at FXCM’s revenue model and how they make money. All different costs that you might be charged when trading with FXCM are as follows:

Spreads or Commissions
Share CFD commission
FX conversion
Margin
Slippage
Volume-based rebates
Overnight fees
Inactivity fees
hedging strategies*

FXCM’s fees for its products are built into spread:

✓ The fees for SPX 500 CFDs & Fx are built into the spread.
✓ For SPX 500 CFD, the fee is 0.45 average spread cost, which is below.
✕ For EURUSD, the fee is 1.4 pips average spread cost, which is not that low.
✓ For GBPUSD, the fee is 2.0 pips average spread cost, which is considered to be below.
✓ There is a $50 inactivity fee that charges after 12 months.

*As per spread cost between April 1, 2020, and June 30, 2020

To help you choose the best CFD broker for you, we will compare 3 top brokers side by side: FXCM, Pepperstone Review, and Fusion Markets review

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One good thing about FXCM is that it operates in most countries with a $360 minimum deposit; if you are from these countries (USA, Japan, Brazil, Turkey, Iran, Cuba, Sudan, Syria, or North Korea), you might want to find another broker from our best forex broker list. At FXCM, you can choose from these 3 base currencies: GBP, EUR, USD.

What is FXCM trading Platform?

Is FXCM Using MT4?

When it comes to trading, apart from commissions and spreads that matters the most, getting your hand on the best online trading platform is a dream.

FXCM broker offers three different trading platforms called: “Trading Station, MetaTrader 4, ZuluTrade”.

Trading Station is an FXCM broker proprietary trading platform that works on MAC and PC. Additionally, you can use the FXCM web platform called Trading Station Web 2.0 platform and trade with your preferred browser.

Since the FXCM web platform also uses MetaTrader 4, you can rely on secure automated trading software to build your own Expert Advisor trading algorithms or go for Scalping strategies in most forex markets.

Whether you use an iPhone trading app or an Android trading app, because meta trader supports the following languages, you can easily customize your trading platform to your preference.

ZuluTrade is FXCM’s Social Auto-trading platform, which allows you to copy other trader’s strategies basically. With this copy trading platform, You can select a Trader of your choice based on their history and ranking.

Or follow ZuluTrade’s Combos to start your trading experience immediately. It is stated that you get a 1-month free Subscription (worth 30 USD^{*), which obviously comes with T&C.}

This is an image of Zulu Trade at a glance.

How to Open Trading Account on FXCM?

What Trading Account should I Open as a Beginner?

You can open a Forex account with FXCM in just a couple of steps shown in the image below.

You can expect a step-by-step walk-through and a very smooth process to open your forex trading account with FXCM. What you need is an email or social platform credentials, to begin with.
Your demo account is available instantly, but approving your live account can take 1-3 days.

KYC, also known as know your customer process, comes into play when you decide to move forward as a trader and work with real money. That would be when the FXCM team asks you to provide your passport copy or valid government-issued ID along with proof of residency (something like a utility bill or bank statement).

In brief, follow these 7 steps for account opening at FXCM:

1. Get ready with your email address
2. Select the country of residence & your trading platform
3. Provide basic information about yourself (demographic data and financial history)
4. Choose your account type & base currency.
5. Explain your trading experience and provide employment history
6. Provide identity and residency proof for activation.

When choosing the right broker, you also need to research their customer support. FXCM has plenty of offices in most countries and had assigned a support number to call from a local line. They respond quickly, and representatives are available 24/5, meaning no one can reach during weekends.

Apart from a general email address, they have a decent live web chat in English and short queues.

What Can You Trade with FXCM?

Crypto, Fx, Indices, and more

As one of the best brokers with great history, FXCM offers you the following trading instruments:

Forex
Shares
Indices
Commodities
Cryptocurrencies

Up to 4:1 effective leverage is available for cryptocurrency trading, which allows you to control your position size. You can also use effective leverage to trade 1:1 as well.

When you buy with no leverage (leverage=1), you buy real stocks and not contract for difference. That’s why Non-leveraged buy positions for equities, ETFs, and cryptocurrencies (digital currency) are traded as real assets. (Be aware of the risks of price movements / we have no info at this moment about fiat currencies)
All other positions are a kind of contract for difference (this applies to CFD traders).
An example could be leveraged buy positions and all sell positions of stocks, ETFs, cryptos, and all forex, commodities, and indices positions. Always remember that FX and CFD trading default leverages are high, so don’t gamble.

Leveraged Trading Instruments & Offers:

Currency pairs (#)	40
Stock index CFDs (#)	16
Stock CFDs (#)	48
ETF CFDs (#)	–
Commodity CFDs (#)	10
Bond CFDs (#)	1
Cryptos (#)	7

Does FXCM Broker Offer Training?

Webinar, Analysis, Charting, Training & More…

FXCM education is good for beginners. You can install one of the best investing apps as Beginners by attending their online classes or join their webinars. If you prefer to go solo, you have access to plenty of tutorials and guides about tools and forex trading strategies.

A great feature is FXCM’s video library that offers videos on charting, technical analysis, trading platforms, and more.

Does FXCM offer Fundamental Data? No.

Does FXCM offer Trading Ideas? Yes.

If you are a beginner and looking for many trading videos and articles to learn how to trade, you should pay a visit to our forex trading blog.

FXCM trading platform offers a publicly available economic calendar. This way, all traders can easily track all important economic events that could impact their trading strategy. FXCM Market News is also available and updates regularly.

FXCM’s Forex Charts, Features, And Functionality

One of the essential disciplines of technical analysis is charting. Charting is the study of a security’s relative value through a visual representation of price action. Charts are an integral part of any technical trader’s approach, enabling the overlay of various tools and indicators upon price itself.

FXCM Broker Forex Charts is a handy tool because it enables online traders to set up & customize price charts. When trading with FXCM, your charts can be periodically customized. You can view your trades in the bar, candlestick, Heikin Ashi, and other types.

Conclusion of FXCM Broker Review

Is FXCM Broker Good for Beginners?
 4.5/5

In this FXCM review, we discussed a regulated online broker with 20 years of solid history in financial markets. The brokerage firm has a limited portfolio and focuses mostly on FX and CFD, and also offers Spread betting in the UK.

A very positive point about FXCM is its low trading fees and giving you access to the best trading platforms in 3 forms of FXCM Web trading platform, FXCM trading Apps, and desktop to focus on currency trading with FXCM or follow other traders and become a copy trader.

They managed to provide a good quality new feed; however, if you want to use the research tools, you have to switch to FXCM Plus. When it comes to education, it’s pretty comprehensive.

Not only will you get a demo account, but you will also have access to in-depth articles, webinars, online classes, and lots of videos (about the FXCM web platform and trading tips).

FXCM Broker Alternatives

What is the best FXCM Alternative?
Is FXCM Regulated?

Yes, This brokerage company is well regulated in the majority of jurisdictions including:

Financial Conduct Authority in the UK (FCA)
Australian Securities and Investment Commission in Australia(ASIC)
South Africa (Financial Sector Conduct Authority in South Africa (FSCA)

How to open my trading account?

Follow these steps to learn how to open trading account on FXCM:

1. Get ready with your email address
2. Select the country of residency.
3. Provide demographic data
4. Choose your preferred online trading platform
5. Select your account type & base currency.
6. Explain your trading experience and provide employment history
7. Provide identity and residency proof for activation.

What is the minimum deposit for FXCM?