Forex.com Broker Review

Although Malaysian traders will be trading Forex.com’s Cayman-Islands-based subsidiary, which has less regulatory supervision than Forex.com’s companies based in the UK or Australia, it segregates its client funds from company funds and provides all traders with negative balance protection. On this basis, we consider Forex.com a safe broker for Malaysian clients to trade with.

Forex.com’s account-opening process is seamless and hassle-free compared to other market makers.

All Malaysian residents are legible to open a trading account at Forex.com but will have to meet the minimum deposit requirement of 100 USD on the Standard, MT5, and Commission accounts, and 25,000 USD on the DMA account.

The account opening process is fully digital and fast – most traders will have an account open within one day. 

How to open an account at Forex.com:

1. On the front page of the website, traders can click on a button marked “Open an Account”

2. Traders will be directed to a page that requires them to choose their preferred trading account (Standard, MT5, Commission, or DMA Account).

3. Once traders have selected their account, they will be required to enter all their personal data.

4. The next step requires filling in your physical address details, country of residence, tax information, and identity number.

5. Traders will then have to detail their trading experience, including their financial status, and their trading history. Traders can also choose their preferred base currency (EUR, USD, or GBP).

6. Before submitting this information, traders are required to agree with all Forex.com’s Terms and Conditions, and privacy policy.

7. As part of the Know Your Customer (KYC) process, newly registered users are required to provide confirmation of residence (e.g. a valid utility bill dated within the last 6 months), as well as proof of identity such as a valid passport, or another form of officially issued photo ID.

The verification process can take a few days, and you will be notified once your account is verified. You can also follow your verification status on the Forex.com platform. 

Compared to other brokers, Forex.com’s account opening process is fast, fully digital, and hassle-free.

Traders can trade a wide variety of assets, including forex, indices, shares, commodities, cryptocurrencies, and precious metals.

The Standard and MT5 accounts have trading costs included in the spread, while the Commission and DMA accounts offer tighter spreads in exchange for a commission per lot.

orex.com’s fees are average compared to other broker’s on its commission-free accounts, but lower than other brokers on its Commission and DMA Accounts – most other brokers have an average trading cost of 9 USD per lot of EUR/USD traded.

Account Trading Costs:

We opened and tested several of Forex.com’s accounts:

Standard/MT5 Accounts: The Standard and MT5 Accounts have a minimum deposit of 100 USD, variable spreads (as low as 0.70 pips on the EUR/USD, but more typically around 1.3 pips), and no commission. The Standard Account is available on the Forex.com platform and MT4. As the name implies, the MT5 Account is only available on MT5 and gives you trading access to over 90 currency pairs, 8 crypto pairs, and hundreds of equity, index, and commodity CFDs.

Commission Account: The Commission Account also has a minimum deposit of 100 USD and variable spreads, but also charges a commission of 5 USD per lot traded. Spreads on the EUR/USD can be as low as 0.2 pips with this account. The Commission Account is only available on the Forex.com platform.

Direct Market Access Account: The DMA Account is specifically for high-volume traders and requires an account balance of 25,000 USD. This account is commission-based only, with no mark-up on the spread. As the name suggests, this is a market execution account and uses STP execution methods with no broker intervention. This account is only available on the Forex.com trading platform and only allows trading on 58 currency pairs.

Demo Accounts: The Standard, MT5, and Commission Accounts are available as demo accounts, but demo accounts will expire after 30 days and you will be required to open a live account.  The demo account also gives traders a real-time feel for market conditions.  

Like most brokers, Forex.com operates a “return to source policy” meaning that withdrawals can only be returned to the original funding source. 

Unusually for a large broker, Forex.com only accepts deposits and withdrawals via credit/debit card, e-wallets such as Skrill and Neteller, and bank transfers.

See below for a complete list of payment options and withdrawal times:

Forex.com has a very limited number of base currencies compared to other brokers.

At Forex.com, you can only choose from three base currencies: USD, GBP, and EUR. This is extremely limited compared to most other international brokers operating in Malaysia.

However, Forex.com does not support accounts denominated in MYR, which means that traders from Malaysia will have to pay conversion fees on all deposits and withdrawals. Conversion fees can make trading expensive, and affect profitability.

All three of Forex.com’s trading platforms are available on both Android and iOS mobile devices and tablets. Beginner traders should be aware that there is some loss in functionality when compared to the desktop trading platforms, including reduced timeframes and fewer charting options.  

However, the trading platforms are generally user-friendly and well-designed. The MT4 and MT5 mobile apps allow traders to close and modify existing orders, calculate profit and loss in real-time and allow tick chart trading.  

The Forex.com mobile app offers the best features available on the desktop version including the complete range of order types, trade analysis, and watchlists. 

Overall, Forex.com’s mobile apps are user-friendly and well-designed and offer most of the features available on the desktop versions.  

Trading Platform Comparison:

All platforms offer fast trading and advanced charting tools, including Expert Advisors, automated trading support, strategy backtesting, customisable charting, and a number of indicators.

The platforms are free to use and can be downloaded to your PC and all have web versions of the platform. They are also available on mobile Android and iOS devices.

The benefit of Forex.com offering third-party platforms such as MT4 and MT5 is that traders can take their customised versions of these platforms with them should they choose to migrate to another broker.  See below for more details on forex.com’s trading platforms:

Forex.com Platform: The most powerful version of the Forex.com platform is the downloadable desktop client which offers professional analytics tools, over 100 predefined indicators, 15 time frames, and trading directly on charts. It also allows 6 order types, including Market Order, Entry Order, Stop Order, Limit Order, One Cancels Other, and Guaranteed Stop Loss Orders. The desktop version of the platform is better suited to more experienced traders. The Forex.com platform is also available in your browser, with slightly decreased functionality, sacrificing customisability for simplicity.

MetaTrader 4: The MT4 trading platform is the most widely used Forex trading platform and can also be used to trade other instruments like commodities, cryptocurrency, stock index, and stock CFDs. Though it is now showing its age, MT4 is still very popular for its auto trading features that enable algorithmic trading and strategy backtesting with expert advisors (trading robots).

Unlike most standard MetaTrader 4 platforms you will find at other brokers, Forex.com’s MT4 comes with fully integrated Reuters news, Forex.com’s research and analysis, and Trading Central.

MetaTrader 5: The MT5 trading platform is being adopted by more Forex brokers all the time, it has a more modern interface, allows for an unlimited number of charts to be used, shows Depth of Market, and has a built-in Economic Calendar. It also has a larger number of pending order types than MT4 and features an embedded chat system. In addition, the MQL5 scripting language is more efficient than its precursor and MT5 has more advanced charting tools than MT4.

VPS

For traders with a minimum 5000 USD balance, Forex.com supplies free VPS hosting, allowing for a more complete automated trading strategy. It allows traders to run automated algorithmic strategies, including expert advisors 24 hours a day 7 days a week on a virtual machine. VPS services have the advantage of never suffering connectivity issues and have extremely low latency due to their proximity to major international exchanges. 

Trading Central

Trading Central is available to clients who register a live account.  A third-party tool, Trading Central’s professional analysts use the most advanced technical analysis tools in the industry to curate relevant information. This tool essentially supports traders without the technical know-how in making trading decisions.  Trading Central is one of the most popular trading tools available and provides excellent market analysis, and Forex.com does well to offer this service to its clients.

Autochartist

Autochartist is an award-winning automated technical analysis tool that plugs into MT4, MT5, and the Forex.com platform and scans all available CFD markets for trading opportunities. Autochartist monitors 250+ CFDs 24 hours a day and automatically alerts traders on key trading opportunities and forms trends with the highest probability of hitting the forecast price.  Some of Autochartist’s key features are:

• Chart pattern recognition
• Fibonacci pattern recognition
• Key level analysis
• Pattern quality indication

The market scanner provides statistically significant market movements and identifies important price levels that are catalysts for market movements.

Trading View

Forex.com recently added TradingView to its arsenal of trading tools.  TradingView is free of charge for traders who open a live account.  It is an excellent tool for researching, charting, and screening any instrument.  Additional features of Forex.com’s TradingView tool include:

• 50+ intelligent charting tools
• Over 100,000 custom user-built indicators and scripts
• Synchronised layout for multiple charts
• Advanced drawing tools
• Ten chart types.

SMART Signals

Forex.com offers SMART Signals, a technical analysis tool that provides live trade ideas by harnessing the power of trading algorithms. It also allows traders to see how SMART Signals have performed in the past so that they can decide how they may perform in the future.

Trading Tools Overview:

Forex.com’s analysis materials are some of the best in the Forex trading space.

Forex.com has one of the best market research and analysis sections we have seen. Posts by the in-house research team and detailed and cover all aspects of the financial markets. Full of trading opportunities and insightful analysis, it is no surprise that the Forex.com Twitter feed has over 170k followers.

Posts can be filtered by author, market, theme, or trending topics, and the site is updated multiple times a day.

Also in the analytical section, you can find a good economic calendar and a very helpful pivot point calculator, very useful for on-the-fly technical analysis.

The education section at Forex.com has obviously been designed by an experienced team of Forex educators. It is intended to slowly build confidence and help beginners learn how to trade forex with a wealth of educational tools and online resources.

The first thing new traders will find is a Trade Type Quiz, which will help beginners identify what trading strategies will best suit their personality. From here you can link off to three different sections of educational material: Beginner, Intermediate and Advanced. You can also check out individual themes, such as technical analysis and risk management.

Each section is clear, concise, and carefully tailored to the experience level of the trader. All the educational resources are free to all visitors of Forex.com’s site.

Education comparison:

Like most brokers, customer support is available 24/5 (from 10 am Sunday to 5 pm Friday) via phone, email, and live chat. While English is Forex.com’s main support language, support is also available in Arabic, Ukrainian, Polish, Russian, and Chinese, depending on the availability. You can also interact with the Forex.com teams via Facebook and Twitter. 

For the purposes of this review, we found the customer support responsive and well-informed.