GKFX.com Review

I have opened a live account two months ago with GKFX Polska, I started trading with currency pair (mainly EUR/USD, EUR/PLN) and I haven’t had problems so far.
Broker offers very tight and fixed spreads. MT is a very friendly platform and it hasn’t crushed yet. They customer services are very sufficient and are able to give also personal trainings. In overall I could recommend that broker.

Hi
i have an account with GKFX since May 2012 , i m trading on fx and Index, MT4 works perfectly , deposit and whitd ok and on time.
I m getting full assistance from them with also some educational programs and personal meetings
i will update you if something bad happens :)
cheers

I am trading since 5 months with GKFX and made really good experience. I have never seen broker with this good order execution before. Their spreads are fixed! without increase! So good job guys!

GKFX is a Turkish company. They are ruthless bullies, they manipulate the charts. Their artificial spikes are well known. The regional manager, Serkan Ali does not even know what spikes are. I am sorry there are plenty of these companies around, I would never trust these gangsters with my money again.

I have an account @ GKFX since 2 weeks and i cant complain about anything. The services they provide is very good, especially for dutch people since they open a branch in amsterdam.

The spreads are good compared with other brokers over here. No problems with slippage, what i am reading below...maybe everything is going better these days :D

So at this moment i can only be positive haha :D

regards,

satisfied customer!!

Hello
I guess the old adage that you cannot please all of the people all of the time is as true today as it has always been. The gentleman below has an interesting grasp of the facts.

Firstly I am not the owner of GKFX and I most certainly never gave him that impression.

Secondly we had a very pleasant exchange of emails which were far from being rude.

Calling someone an ‘idiot’ because they politely get in contact with you to discus scalping is somewhat rich. Placing a trade on a latent price and then hedging it practically immediately by placing a trade the other way around (and closing them both later) is scalping whatever way you wish to dress it up…. or try to hide it.

We have some of the tightest fixed spreads available on MT4 in the world, and we have not done so to be taken advantage of. We have thousands of active clients who think the service we provide is fantastic, but that is because they are traders not scalpers.

If someone requests their funds they are usually returned in 3 days, as that is how the banking system works, no matter who they are.

As I said to this gentleman, in one of our friendly emails, we are delighted when clients make money, as long as it is legitimately. In fact one of our clients has recently made so much money he opened his own bar, and I was delighted to go to his opening night.

Regards, Paul (GKFX)

I joined GKFX and my account was managed by someone who used spread betting hedge strategies. This worked very well and my account grew 60% in 2 weeks. After my first withdrawal I start getting nasty e-mails from the owner, Paul, accusing me of breaching their scalping policies. I scrutinised my statements and informed him that at no time was scalping used on my account, -but positions were hedged and kept open for at least 2 minutes up to a few hours. Poor idiot did not understand the difference between scalping and hedging and my explanation fell on deaf ears...Soon afterwards my profits took a dive as my transactions were riddled with requotes and delays. It is obvious to me that GKFX/Paul set up their platform against me. One positive thing about GKFX is that they respond unbelievably fast if a winning accounts is closed and payout requested. Damn...I had my money in 3 days! I guess Paul was so relieved to get rid of someone who doubled his account in 4 weeks...haha! Just goes to show that some brokers are really not your friends and will pull the strings behind the scenes to prevent you from making a profit against them. Stay away from these type of market movers...especially GKFX. Rather use ECN brokers if your trading style allows.

I am remaining anonymous as I still have an account with them and don't plan on closing it just yet. I have been trading with them for a while now and agree with nearly everything written below. I have tried them only in some very specific cases where I knew their would be trouble but wanted to sniff out who I was dealing with.
I now know for sure that they keep their servers in their own office. This was unbelievable to me at first, but basically I work in IT so I did some sniffing around with their IPs and figured out that everything was coming out of a building in central London. I checked further and found that no server farm exists there so I am left to assume that the crashes everyone is reporting is due to a platform sitting on 1 server (no redundancy and no back up).
The good thing about this broker, and their are a number of good things to be honest is their withdrawal policy (no questions - they just send the cash) and the fact that they have Spread Betting on MT4.
They on the other hand do send nasty messages to traders they don't like (scalpers and the like). But they claim to STP all traders and shouldn't care if a customer is a scalper. But they curse them out. Something is definitely off here and it's getting weirder every day. I would certainly warn traders to steer clear. Their are simply better brokers out there. I am staying away from calling them a scam - I don't think they are. I think they are probably just badly managed and have worse infrastructure. Something there isn't right - but they don't seem to be doing everything on purpose. Just reckless I guess. Not sure yet

I have made over 200 trades, I run windows xp virtual machine with four instances of metatrader 4.

Spreads are tighter than igindex. Platform has always been stable for me. During an error when usdjpy fell off a lift they refunded my money after a dodgy spike. Overall I am impressed. Best usage is the Swiss army ea which moves to break even when you wish. Happy trading.

Slippage, slippage, everywhere.

Platform always crashing.

Servers often down.

Avoid at all costs. Dreadful. Just dreadful.

SLM are changing their name. We can only hope that they are turning a new leaf too. Here is the message they sent:

Dear Client,
I am writing to inform you that Smart Live Financial Services Ltd will be changing its name in the coming weeks to GKFX Financial Services Ltd.
Our FSA and companies house registration numbers will remain the same.

The reason for this change is cosmetic.
As we have grown globally as a company it has been apparent that some people have been confused by our name, so we have chosen a more generic name which as a brand going forward will be far more easily recognised throughout the world.

We will also be rebranding our logo and website along with this change. But apart from that you will not notice any changes.

Your account with us will automatically change to an account with GKFX Financial Services Ltd with the same terms of business.

We anticipate this change will happen on September 5th 2011.

If you have any questions then please do get in touch with our customer services desk at support@smartlivemarkets.com.

Regards
SLM

Been using them for over a year now, maybe a couple of connectivity issues like others have said, but usually late at night, no longer than an hour at most, certainly nothing thats affected my trading.
Other than that i would say they are excellent. Especially compared to some other brokers ive had.
Good communication when i needed it, fixed small spreads, spreadbetting on MT4, whats not to like. Definately recommended.

Losing connectivity is expected, but the response is what we have an issue with. I expect (although in today's tech market it shouldn't happen) some sort of connectivity issue, but the response and lack of respect they show clients is horrible. I don't expect a lot, but I do expect respect and honesty when dealing with these firms, and this one has shown neither.

Just to balance the negative posts, which appear to be from those who all trade the same breakout GBP bot, and were thus all affected by the loss of connectivity at a cruical time in that bots trading cycle. I have been with smartlive for nearly a year trading live, with excellent profits to date and NO real major issues. If you are a serious professional trader you have to expect the loss of connectivity to your broker and VPS at some stage - it WILL happen and you should be prepared for it. I have always found smartlive to be very responsive and e-mails replied to within hours. I can appreciate smartlives frustration ( and less than curtious replies) when a group of traders all trading the same bot at the same time start bombarding them with e-mails, when their platform temporarily loses connectivity. To put these complaints into perspective, I have made over 500 trades in my 10 months, and not had a single issue with any, in live trading up to £50 per lot. Finally this highlights how misleading these forums can become, when a minority group decide to all post together their experince of trading one bot - very similar to the news traders who really didn't understand the system...

If this broker did not offer spread betting on MT4 and the unique (please tell me otherwise) use of EA's with spread betting, it would be one star and I would not have an account.

Their "issues" with price freezing and trade servers shutting down have been very convenient in my opinion.

The customer service is utterly dire. They basically tell you its your fault and then tell you that if you don't like it then you should close your account.

Its a real shame because the whole concept of spread betting on MT4 was fantastic - now I trade very small amounts with them only.

Pro's,
Consistently tight spreads even throughout the night so EA friendly.
E-mails answered quickly.

The couple of times there has been a problem with the platform they will never admit it is their fault.
Paul is very arrogant and dismissive as are some of the smaller fish workling there.

If it was not for the good points I would have withdrawn my funds already but I keep my EA's running there for now and if they try and cheat me I will close the account.

Much better companies out there if you want an STP broker, unfortunately SLM have the monopoly on Spreadbetting with MT4 at the moment.

I agree with previous posters so far. SLM have come up with the best thing since sliced bread for spread bettors in the uk, in the form of an MT4 platform for spread betting.

However it is flaky and has failed completely twice since I have used it live (3 months). I still use them with small stakes, but every morning I still get errors connecting. They insist it is an EA at fault, but that doesn't explain why people trading manually have the same problems. I have worked in IT for over 30 years and I can smell BS from a mile away when it comes to making excuses for faulty software.

I have some patience with them as they are new, and I think could be promising, so continue with small amounts of money, but I have to agree their PR is apalling. They seem to be abrupt to the point of rudeness.

My summary:

NOT TRUSTWORTHY & UNRELIABLE.


My experience:

Although, initially, the customer service appeared informative, this soon deteriorated when I began to have problems. The MT4 platform froze, trades, using a reliable, proven EA, were executed late or not at all; candles appeared to open late.

I tried my best to remain calm, interested and non-blaming and initially got responses that appeared helpful from Paul, a director. However, his advice to re-install the platform and check the EA was not at fault, was weak. When I reported that these, obvious, measures had not improved things I did not even get a response.

There is more..... but what is the point in going on? IF YOU ARE NOT 100% HAPPY, CONFIDENT AND TRUSTING OF YOUR BROKER.....GET RID! There are enough risks in forex without paying people to help you lose.

I have closed my accounts with SLM and recommend that others do the same.

There is a bad smell emanating from this broker.... Stay clear.

Two Stars from me: (FPA definition: Bad - Performance is significantly below expectations. Major problems encountered) because although there was no problem withdrawing my small investment and they honoured their cash-loss-refund. I think there is something underhand going on with them and crucially, they have done nothing to allay my fears.

This afternoon (Friday, May 20) at 17:55 hrs UK I lost connection with the SmartLiveMarkets servers. I called them thinking it maybe a problem on my PC and was told their systems had crashed. Their web site also went down. I asked if senior management was aware of this catastrophe and was told they had gone home.

Fortunately, this occurred when hopefully most clients would have already closed their positions and, of course, it was still possible to close positions by phone. As I write this 45 minutes later their systems are still down, which is surely indicative of a lack of redundancy in their systems.

I shall be closing my account, which is a shame because this is the only spread betting company I've found that offers the MT4 platform.

I echo Podberry's experience. SLM's greatest asset is the fact that they are (currently) the only UK Spreadbetting firm that offers the MT4 platform. As so many EA's are built for MT4 they have a significant captive market in the UK.

I have traded for two months with SLM and in the first month their charts froze during a key trading time. This caused me and many others to lose money. I later established that I was the first of many to complain and they offered me a refund provided I didn't mention it to anyone else! I now realise that this was because many, many others were to get nothing!

The mantra since then within SLM is, if you use and EA it's your fault not theirs. Ironic as the only reason most traders come to them in the first place is to use EAs!

In the second month I and 16 others (that I know of) started getting slow execution of orders. Typically 68 seconds late, this lasted 8 days before I left them but I believe it is still an ongoing problem. Again at key trading times, this delay was unacceptable. Also inexcusable considering I was using a very reputable VPS just around the corner from SLM! After many calls during the first problem day I was left in no doubt that I was in a 'them and us' relationship with SLM. I have kept a series of emails from Paul at SLM that were frankly rude and at no point entertained the idea that SLM could possibly be at fault. This despite the fact that many of us were using the same EA at the same time with other brokers without difficulty?

SLM are in total denial of any blame despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary. I have stopped trading with them because of their defensive/aggressive manner to customer services. I have also heard that if you are successful with them they put you into a different pool and work harder to ensure that your wins are limited. I do not however have first hand experience of this. In summary I was left in no doubt that customers are a real inconvenience to Paul at SLM, shame really when he works as Director of Trading!

SLM has had a few issues of late with regards to their platform taking over a minute to execute trades, Their customer service is shocking to say the least, the director of trading (Paul) is the main instigator blaming everything else but their platform and server.