FXCM Review

They are terrible in every way. During Brexit, they've arbitrarily changed their margins from 10% requirement to 50% requirement, increased the maintenance margin and increased the spreads.

You must call their desk whenever your maintenance margin goes back into positive.

I would strongly advise you to consider something else. Despite having large sum of money in my account, it is mostly useless as I can't trade with 50% margin. This limit has been placed now for 3 days+ . I question their liquidity if they have to place such high margin limit for a long period of time.

there live chat is very bad they dont want to help you they even did not reply i want to open ECN account with them i tried many time to chat with them i want yo ask same question before open live account but no one answer my question there service is very bad please dont open account with them

also in HAWAII. I AM VERY UPSET. I THOUGHT THEY WERE THE GREATEST BROKER
EVER.....until I got a TERMINATION LETTER! I have been with them as a loser for over 7 years. Recently I was winning finally hoping to get it all back. They refuse to tell me why. It could only be two reasons : either they dont like people like me scalping at all times of days or they dont like me profiting from it. I read some others here who also got terminated. They claim that they would not terminate because we made profit....cause "non dealing desk" well what if thjey earn more with client that loose? ...It make no sense at all .
PLEASE CONTACT ME I AM GOING TO ORGANIZE A CLASS ACTION SUIT AGAINTS THEM...if they terminated for not good reason please contact me ASAP nhoville@aol.com
HOWEVER I want to say the good things...EVERYTHING ELSE IS GREAT WITH THEM....they pay fast., client service is the best and platform I adore.

Since I joined FXCM I had no problems excellent service. Any time I request withdrawal it was in my bank account within 3 days. Well done guys.

The only thing misleading about FOREX trading is the success rate. Its very low. People write about it being a scam or how FXCMs customers are being ripped off, but their not aware of how the game works. I chart with an independent brokerage and their pricing is within 3 ticks of FXCMs.

+Jason.

Sorry..Got it cleared. It was a confusion about my residence. Thanks to Murielle and Mark of FXCM's support that helped. Still angry with Compliance/Ops for the misunderstanding. Murielle esp. deserves a reward. She was very patient, and owned the problem as if it were hers. It is because of people like Murielle and Mark that FXCM continues to thrive!

2016-05-03 1Star
Have no complaints about FXCM Australia. They are pretty good. It is FXCM USA, esp. operations people who are people without sense. CIting stupid excuses from compliance,they can "lock" your account when you are winning. I hope FXCM has some sensible people in their compliance team.

Added by Jason Rogers on 2016-05-06
Hi Shiv,

First, I'm glad you're pleased with your trading account with FXCM Australia. It's worth noting the only difference between an FXCM Australia account, an FXCM UK account and an FXCM US account is the local regulator.

While FXCM Australia is regulated by the Australian Securities and Investments Commission (ASIC), your trade execution and our staff providing your with supportare the same as for FXCM US and FXCM UK accounts.

There seems to be a misunderstanding about why your trading account was locked. I don't know your details beyond what you have posted here, but in my experience, accounts are typically locked from trading due to missing information.

I encourage you to reach out to our Operations team by emailing admin@fxcm.com for clarification on why your account was locked so you can resume trading.


Kind regards,
Jason Rogers
FXCM Ambassador to Online Communities

I agree with Ryan in Maryland. It's a grown ups game FXCM conduct themselves well. Over the past decade I have nothing bad to say about them and much that is good. Like any organisation they will have had their share of staff problems. So you lose a few pips Boo Hoo. Although it's never said the real problem is that traders are trying to do something which in the longer term is very difficult blaming others for their failure. Don't tell anyone but one time a few years ago (not FXCM) I accidentally left a stop order in place after the trade was finished. Taking me into a short trade in access 3 K in profit. Did I ring the broker and tell them it was an accident take your money back what do you think? It takes years to learn and even then (certainly in my case) it's still a challenge. retiring@live.co.uk

Sep 2, 2015 - 5 Stars Update: Decided to try again staying away from ger30 as it can be a bit jumpy; am working spx500 and have to say the Marketscope platform works as smooth as silk. Steady profits to date no further issues, am glad I stuck with it.

2015-08-11 No Rating Have just had a 61 pip slippage loss on GER30 and been told that nothing can be done about it. Have traded many platforms over a decade, been trying this one for little over a week and this happens. Something is not right here. I'm not prepared to take the chance of trading any further with this platform.

Added by Jason Rogers on 2015-08-24
Content: Hi Obediah,

If there's ever an error in our trade execution, then FXCM will make the appropriate correction to your account.

It's important to note that slippage, in and of itself, does not mean there was an error in trade execution. There's no sugar coating this. Slippage is one of the risks you assume when trading in any market whether it's equities, futures, forex or CFDs.

However, unlike with some other brokers, slippage at FXCM works both ways. If you have a limit or take profit order, and the price gaps in favor of your trade, then you will get filled at the more favorable price which is trading in the market. This is called positive slippage or price improvement.

A study of over 43 million orders executed through FXCM over a 12-month period from September 2013 through August 2014 found that 52% of all stop and stop entry orders received negative slippage. However, the same study showed that over 58% of all limit and limit entry orders received positive slippage.

That's due to the momentum of price movement when such order types are triggered. Stop orders are triggered when the price is moving against your trade, while limit orders are triggered when the price is moving in favor of your trade.

The year-long study of trades executed through FXCM also revealed the following:

- 76.2% of all orders had no slippage.
- 13.5% of all orders received positive slippage.
- 10.2% of all orders received negative slippage.

Over the course of that year, FXCM clients benefited from over $21 million in positive slippage: http://bit.ly/P6lUzX

It's worth noting that the Market Range feature on our Trading Station platform and the Enhanced* Maximum Deviation feature on our MT4 platform allow FXCM clients to limit the amount of negative slippage they receive, while still enjoying the full benefits of any positive slippage that's available.

* On the MT4 platforms of some other brokers, the Max Dev feature is unavailable, or if it is available, then it will limit both your negative slippage and your positive slippage equally. By contrast, FXCM enhanced how Max Dev works on our MT4 platform allowing you to limit your negative slippage while still enjoying the full benefits of any positive slippage.

In a trading event, FXCM gave away 250 $ founded accounts. I've made a sustancial gain out of one this accounts, when I wanted to withdraw the money, they told me that account was a demo one. This is a scam, do not trade with them.

I've been trading with FXCM for nearly a decade. While my experience hasn't been without it's bumps in customer service and platform tech, overall, I can't complain. Every issue I've ever had, FXCM has been relatively quick to remedy. Unlike many in the retail spectrum, I don't judge FXCM based on my profitability, I judge them based on the services a brokerage is supposed to provide. I also don't judge the company on a single occurrence or past discrepencies that had no impact on me, I judge them based on my own aggregate experiences.

-Execution is excellent.

-Customer service can, at times, use some work. But is typically satisfactory. It's hard for me to give a "fair" review on customer service since I think, in my time with them, I've only required their services 3 times.

-Platform technology is good. As with most brokers, there's a noticeable lack of basic and meaningful information provided through platforms. Though FXCM's proprietary platform is always being improved and is, from my perspective, far superior to MT4 in terms of information contained therein and user interface flexibility.

-Data feed is steady. I used to experience occasional problems with the MT4 feed but after switching to Trading Station 2, I never have problems.

-Commissions are fair on their NDD execution model and spreads on highly liquid pairs can be anywhere from 0.3-1.5 point during active trading hours - even sometimes negative. As with all brokers, when the market gets thin, the spreads widen a bit but this is easy to trade around.


Bottom Line:
For what a brokerage is supposed to do, FXCM generally excels. Access to liquidity, order execution, trading costs, instruments offered, deposit and withdrawal, customer service, platform choices; all of it generally beats my expectations. If I had any caveats, they would lie in information provision. Though, in fairness, I'd probably have those caveats regardless as to which broker I'm with. There is some information you shouldn't have to code or download an indicator to retrieve but again, this isn't exclusive to FXCM so, I won't subtract from my review for it.

The crummy thing about the retail FX industry is it's geared more towards coders, gamblers, wannabe gurus, and egomaniacs than it is towards traders. Retail volume tends to be more along the lines of cannon fodder and it's observable in brokerage client profitability metrics. Many retail traders blame the brokerages for their failures and in a way, it's true. But not in the sense that they're "being scammed" so much as they're being sent into a war zone where everyone else has high-powered machine guns and retail traders are stuck with broken slingshots.

The environment for retail traders when it comes to understanding the business that they're in is a very toxic mix of ignorance, disillusion, false hope, and ego. Unfortunately, if you want to get past the "McDonald's" aspect of retail FX trading, you must achieve capital levels that most retail traders will never see in their lifetimes. At the end of the day, this isn't the fault of FXCM or any other brokerage, I suppose it's just the nature of the beast. If everyone were on the same level, markets just wouldn't work.

Anyway, based on my experiences, 5 stars.

FXCM are crooks and should be exposed. I'm a trader of 11 years and was with ATC brokers. They are 3rd party and work threw FXCM. I loved ATC but when they went bankrupt my account was forced to FXCM. I've now been with FXCM for a week. This broker is one of if not the largest in the world and they are flat-out stealing from traders. I'm a profitable trader and have been for over 12 months. FXCM have been stealing 2-3 pips from all my profitable positions. I'm trading an ECN account and apparently all my trades need to go 2-3 pips beyond my take profit level before they close out. I have proof and photos that this is happening. Typically trades should be closing out just 0.2-0.5 pips or so beyond the take profit level to cover spread. This is not happening. FXCM is profiting and extra 2-3 pips from me from every profitable trade I make. They should be dealt with!

I'm labeling this broker as a SCAM even though they are the largest Forex broker in the world. I haven't even been here for a week and this is what I get.


From my trading partner with broker knowledge....

"This is pure deception.
FXCM is still probably the biggest by volume Fx brokerage in the world. There is no excuse for them to have inferior infrastructure which would lead to this type of discrepancy. They have good LP relations, and they have enough backing for excellent maintenance of their back of house software.

The ONLY thing that can explain this type of thing, is some kind of last look price manipulation which translates to a delay between the MT4 price feed and the quoted bid/ask prices.

Now, they will always default to saying that MT4 is a limited software, subject to issues, and that their trade station or whatever web based platform is more accurate than Mt4.
You know why they say this? Because any patches they apply for MT4 have to be externally developed, and if MT4 discover them, they will demand the removal.
With their own in house software, you are totally at their mercy in terms of price feed, and because there will be no visible or detectable discrepancy with the prices, you simply won't notice when they are manipulating.

At the core, the reason for this type of manipulation is so that FXCM can make extra, on top of the spreads they're LP charges. So, it's like a double dip in spreads for them. They will keep the difference. Your trade will execute 1 pips lower than the required spread, and FXCM pocket that 1 pips while still paying spreads to their LP.

As I told you before, FXCM have constantly been accused, and prosecuted for exactly this kind of feed manipulation.
While it doesn't surprise me, it shows the culture they have is to fleece their clients...and I would bet that as a former ATC client you are in the front line for issues."


Stay away from FXCM they will take you're money!

Yesterday i put a buy order at 1.1174 in eur-usd.the price went down to 1.1156.but my order was opened at 1.1184,10 points up from my point.there was no news nothing else.it means they are just liers when they say about 1 pip spread.

The good:
Withdrawals and deposits are processed fairly quickly.
Customer service seems to be 24h
Opened an audit for a transaction and it was reviewed within 48h, albeit it was a pretend review.

The bad
Dealing desk accounts. Broker makes money when you lose.
Limit orders regularly do not get filled immediately, have seen delays in minutes.
Audit process on orders is a joke.
Customer service is polite until you challenge them.
Broker almost went under last year.
Limited instruments one can trade
Large spreads

Bottom line: don't waste your time. I opened s small account to participate in the contest but the aggravation is not worth it. There are fantastic brokers out there that offer ECN accounts with blistering execution and superb customer service.

FXCM's customer service don't seems to work I hope you fix that, I've been trading with you for about 3years now, but the service now is bad, I even hava email which was not answered till now for about 1month now.

FXCM is Scam!
Here it is how FXCM robbed me. I opened a buy position in US Oil trading in Feb 2015, when oil price fell to below $50. My strategy was to open additional buy positions in every 250 pips if the price would fall further and close the positions when the price would retrieve 80% of the movement. I had enough money to fund my strategy up to $20 oil price. Theoretically you cannot lose any money with this strategy. But, FXCM makes everything possible. After one month FXCM closed the market for US OIL trade and so all the opened positions. It opened the market several hours later than normal and when it opened the market it made oil price 250 pips higher than it actually was. Such US Oil price did not exist anywhere at that moment. I was discouraged and did not open the positions any more and finished my trading with $13000 loss. There were other factors too that FXCM used to make me finish trading with loss. When the trading is about ten thousands of dollar even minor factor influences your decision.
So be warned! Even if you have excellent strategy FXCM will make you lose because that is how they earn money, although they claim it otherwise.

Overall the broker seems to be fairly reliable with a very good platform (TS2) that I prefer to mt4..
The only reason I left FXCM is because of a bit of shady practice that they did to me.

They switched my account type from a 'classic' account (non-dealing desk) to a 'mini' account (dealing desk). With the mini account, whenever I lose, they earn money. I did not request for them to switch and when I confronted them on the phone, they outright LIED to me and said that it was just their company "labeling" my account as mini on the TS2 platform however it is still a "classic" account.

A few weeks later, they admitted that they switched me to a mini account.

Bare in mind that they also recently got hacked and customer personal information might have been stolen. (2015 around September/October ???)

Also, they are hugely in debt to Leucadia because of swiss franc crash so bear in mind long term, they might not be around.

2015-10-02 2Star
Review: Didn't run with too much trouble with them so I would have gave them 4 or 3 stars however after they changed my account from a standard account to mini WITHOUT telling me, I phoned them to ring that I noticed the connection has been set to mini and I suspected they moved my account but their representative outright LIED to me and said that it was their "label" and that I was in fact still on a standard account.

Mini accounts are dealing desks, while standard account are NDD. They told me that I needed to apply to change it back. I didn't ask to switch in the 1st place.


A few days ago, FXCM had a breach by a hacker apparently concerning sensitive user information so I decided to call them to withdraw my funds but phone support + website portal were down for a few hours.

Also, note that FXCM has HUGE debts because of the CHF crash, their future is not so bright so I would advise you to stay away from them and choose a more financially stable broker.

Added by Jason Rogers on 2015-10-08
Content: Hi DC,

Mini accounts tend to be popular with traders who have smaller balances, since these accounts have lower margin requirements giving you access to higher leverage. That's why we emailed you a notice about switching your account to mini and even included information on how you could opt out if you preferred to keep your standard account. Since you missed that email and want to keep your standard account, please email me at jrogers@fxcm.com so I can follow up with our Operations department on your request.

Here's a link to the announcement we posted about the cybersecurity incident you mentioned: http://ir.fxcm.com/releasedetail.cfm?ReleaseID=934649

That Thursday our live customer support team was answering calls and live chats as always, but there were longer wait times due to high call volume from the incident.

In regards to your comment about the loan we received from Leucadia after the EUR/CHF flash crash, it's important to note that despite the events of January 15th, FXCM's capitalization remains at levels similar to before the SNB event: http://bit.ly/10Pq5FJ

As we mentioned during our last earnings call, our plan is to pay back that loan with proceeds from the sale of non-core assets: http://i.imgur.com/DTfLu3b.jpg

At that time, our CEO Drew Niv said the following: "FXCM is pleased with how our debt reduction plan is proceeding. We are ahead of plan and the results of the FXCM Japan sale exceeded our expectations. With all the increased attention to our other properties, we are expecting robust and competitive auctions for the other non-core assets we have targeted to sell."

As a further update last month, we announced the completion of our sale of FXCM Hong Kong to Rakuten Securities for a total consideration of approximately $38 million: http://ir.fxcm.com/releasedetail.cfm?ReleaseID=931388

- Jason Rogers, FXCM Ambassador to Online Communities

I have had an account with FXCM for over 9 years. I had some issues with them prior till 2009 and even received reparations ordered by the NFA...FXCM changed after 2009 for the better ... For the last 6 years from 2009 till 2015 I would highly recommend FXCM. Alex Findlay

They do not have the best spread out there but their platform is one of the best in my opinion.

- Pinoy Trader

Customer service is terrible FXCM doesn't like to reply their client email. I sent email to admin@fxcm.co.uk 2 weeks ago and forward it info@fxcm.co.uk until now there is no reply from FXCM. Live chat is always offline and doesn't respond email I wonder how they connect their customers solve their problem. My account is not big enough just micro, maybe they don't like to serve traders who have micro account like me. Totally disappointed

2014-11-24 2Star FXCM's customer service is so bad. Live charts is always offline. I am trying to open account with FXCM. So I'd like to know whether they approve my documentation and sent email about it to admin@fxcm.co.uk several times. Within 4 days there was no reply from FXCM.
I totally wonder that the live chart is offline, they don't reply email. How do FXCM communicate with costumers. Just for opening account. Maybe FXCM don't like to accept small traders like me :(

Utter chagrin at fxcm, they took over my IBFX acct then after a few months they now renig and are going to not allow EAs on small accts under $1,500 and if you wish to continue with small acct its $10 monthly fee and only manual! So in chagrin I departed and found nice treating Belforfx in NZ which allows me 1 micro trading on auto and allow USA client! Very nice helpful support too!
If you wish to give them a short tell them Jerry B referred you, ok? You will be surprised at the pleasant service, fxcm was a crock.

FxCm has a dozen of services providers to provide prices to FxCm. FxCm has own software team and build own distribution server, which selects prices from the providers. However due to the limitations of their servers, hardware and software, which cause the process responses very slow, especially at news time or the price at top or at bottom, more people do trades. Therefore it comes out re-quotes, off-quotes, and invalid price very often, regardless how much deviation you have put. When I have used 450 pips or at the quite time, the errors still come. At top or at bottom of the price the spreads go widen and very hard to execute an order. I have lost lots of money due to the errors. You have to execute the order half dozen of time. The re-quotes error is horrible, MT4 comes a pop-up window, it request you to confirm New price is ok or not. It is quite often the pop-up window goes back of the main window, so that the system has locked. You cannot bring the pop-up window to the front. You cannot do any thing at main window but you can watch the price change. With so many re-quotes, off-quotes, and invalid price errors, it is not reliable to trade.

Recently, FXCM automatically changed all their accounts under a certain deposit size to their new Mini account. They advertise in an email to their clients that this new account will have "up to 400:1 leverage".

What they don't tell you is that they will be changing your account's leverage to 400:1, AND they will be taking away your ability to change back to your prior account leverage settings from their web portal.

If you want a broker that will, "at their absolute discretion", transform themselves into a casino and mess around with your risk profile, then FXCM is perfect for you. If you are looking for a broker that you can trust with your money, then FXCM isn't it.

This broker is the worst have traded with.They froze their platform on my account times without number.

after 4 successful trades my platform freezes i have opened a new trade. It is frozen all trade that is more than 20 hours. Surprisingly in the demo version it works perfectly and this happens only in the pair that I am trading. Curious right? after closing the running trade i will never ever trade this broker.

Slippage Slippage Slipage..
Alot of trades closed after my stop loss .
TOTALLY BAD

Be careful with any apps they offer you and make sure you test them thoroughly! Especially their close-all-orders app (https://www.fxcmapps.com/apps/close-all-orders/). I had this app fail on my automated account and I lost everything.