2Bull Forex Blog

ACM is a Swiss company founded in 2002. The company’s headquarters are located in Geneva, Switzerland, with offices around the world in Dubai, Uruguay and in the future in the USA in New York. It is one of the leading brokerage companies, as managing director Nicholas Bang says “the company’s site is the second most popular place to trade currency on the net”.

ACM provides a reliable and simple trading platform for 27 currency pairs and for gold and silver. Spread are on average 3 pips for the major pairs in standard account, and are 4 pips and over for mini account. The leverage is 100:1 for all types of accounts. The minimum deposit for mini accounts is $2,000 and for standard accounts $5,000. ACM also offers institutional accounts, in which the minimum deposit is $50,000. Demo accounts, offering real time prices and trading conditions for a period of 30 days.

Registration process is quite long, and requires filling in personal details, employment status and financial. You are also required to submit your bank details, passport number, a photocopy of your passport and a copy of a utility bill.

Deposits into your account can be made in the following currencies: USD, EUR, CHF, GBP & JPY.

ACM offers 4 trading platforms, the “Advanced Trader” which is a professional trading software,the “Advanced Web Trader” which can be used from any Web connection without any download, the “Advanced Flash Trader” which offers high performances with Flash Technology, and the “Advanced Mobile Trader” allowing to place trades and monitor your account from any wap enabled mobile phone. All platforms are accessible with the same username and password. ACM website and trading platforms are offered in a wide range of languages (14), including: English, French, German, Spanish, Dutch, Portuguese, Arabic, Farsi, Chinese, Japanese, Turkish, Greek and Russian.

The trading platforms are user-friendly, intuitive and customizable. Charting tools are available on all platforms, and news, analysis reports and financial calendars are accessible on the platforms and in an external web site.

ACM offers a service they call “What you click is what you get”, meaning that when a customer clicks on a price, that price is “captured” as the execution price. Therefore if the market moves, the customer still gets the price he chose, erasing slippage from trading activities.

Quick, efficient and polite customer service is available 24 during market hours. Professional staff is available in real time by Phone, Chat, E-mail and Return call. Support is provided in English, French, Spanish, Italian, German, Greek, Farsi and Russian.

ACM provides educational material, such as an introduction to FOREX trading, a FOREX trading glossary, a telephone deals glossary, trading examples, and more. ACM is also partnered with the Online Trading Academy, offering training for FOREX Newbie’s.

Users’ experience with this firm is controversial. Being one of the largest FOREX companies definitely helps attract new clients, and during the first months of trading, users are generally happy with their services and user friendly platform. However, the larger the deals get, the more dissatisfied the trader become. ACM’s spreads are not fixed so they do vary widely during major market changes. This become significant due to the fact that the minimum lot for each trade is large, therefore the losses can be grave.

Compared to the many other FOREX sites that are racing to grab a share of the online business, Finotec runs with the middle of the pack. Although boasting the best trading platform and support services of any FOREX site, its offerings are similar to those of a number of other companies. It does have is a more consumer look and feel than many larger commercial sites and seems inviting to the beginner.

Other sites may be more adept at helping the user gain speed on the learning curve, but Finotec helps remove the barriers to market entry. It offers both a demo account, which showcases the company’s Standard platform, and a $200 mini account, which has its own platform. Both of these let the newcomer experience some of the trading action and get acquainted with market conventions, while committing little or no money.

The demo account uses Finotec’s Standard platform, which ordinarily would require an investment of $10,000 in euros, US dollars, British pounds, or yen. Here, the user is given $100,000 in virtual currency with which to trade.

The demo platform is a Web-based Java application; the regular Standard platform is available as both a Web-based Java application and as a downloadable Windows XP application. The Mini-Trading platform is a Web-based Java application

Finotec’s demo account is a real-time introduction to the FOREX market. Bankrolled with virtual currency, the neophyte is encouraged to hone his skills. But be forewarned: There is no instruction manual to explain how to use the platform, and the response time for the online 24-hour chat assistant may be delayed.

Seven video tutorials are in the kit of starter tools in Finotec’s e-learning center. The not-quite four-minute free introductory video took anywhere from 15 minutes to over half an hour to download on a DSL line. This video plus the one highlighted on the home page are bland and generalized to the point of communicating little information, hardly worth the download time.

If Finotec’s demo software is indeed a mirror of the Standard platform, its interface is serviceable but lacks many of the bells and whistles of competitors. While the data is charted in real time, there are none of the nifty graphs or personalized analyses automatically displayed within the platform. However, pull down menus link to a whole host of technical information. These include Japanese candlelight, RSI, and trend signals.

Finotec makes its money by “charging” up to 3 pips on the spread, a “commission” rate that bests some companies and is on par with some others. On the leverage side, the pricing is equally generous. A trader may borrow up to 1:200 on a Standard account, although 1:100 may be more typical. All transactions are in 100,000 units with trade amounts ranging from $50,000 up to $10 million across 21 currency pairs.

For the diversified trader looking for one-stop shopping, Finotec also offers options trading, CFD trading, oil, and gold. The Standard platform permits access to all resources and markets, and registration is in just three quick and easy steps.

Registering for the Demo account is quick and easy. You provide your name, address, e-mail address, and telephone number, and Finotec will provide the user name and password. That’s all you’ll need to begin your virtual trades.

The Mini account requires a bit more information, including a passport ID or a social security number. You’ll also have to agree to a lengthy client user agreement, which includes these words: “The Company shall be permitted, and at its discretion may perform, on its own account, financial transactions of any kind whatsoever, including the performance of opposite transactions to those of the Client.” Still, there are the promised three simple steps. After you input this information, you can either fund the account (step 2) or go directly to the confirmation panel (step 3). Either way, you’ll have to wait for a confirming e-mail before you can begin your activities. The account may be funded via credit card, wire transfer, or PayPal.

When you click on “Open a Standard Account,” the live chat window may open with an offer of assistance. Otherwise you may register by either completing an online form or by faxing one in. The form is five pages long; three of these are agreements and legal disclaimers. The actual application is but a page, asking for the same information as requested in the Mini account plus banking information and level of trading experience. The application also includes a withdrawal form. The Standard account requires a minimum deposit of $10,000.

According to its company profile, Finotec has been in business since 1998 and has been marketing its online trading platform since 2001. The company is not associated with any large financial institution, and its trading software has been developed in house. Scant information is given about the company on its site.

Finally, for native English speakers, the Finotec site can be rough going. The company lists a New York address and one in Cyprus, but the number of grammatical errors and inappropriate word choices would indicate that it is based in the latter. The translation errors may be eliminated when Finotec is approved to offer trading to U.S. customers.

For now, Finotec welcomes traders, skilled and not so skilled, to enter the exciting and fast-paced FOREX world in Arabic, French, Japanese, Turkish, Polish, Vietnamese, Hebrew, Spanish, and Rumanian (in addition to English).

Finexo has been in the retail forex broker business since 2003 and a white label of Saxo Bank since 2004. Simplicity and ease-of-use are the themes for this broker, and they state on their website that they want to make entry into the foreign exchange market easy for the beginner. But easy is not always a good thing, and dig a little deeper and some disturbing red flags are revealed.

Finexo does offer some nice features to the retail forex trader. Registration is extremely easy and if you fund your live account by credit card you can be trading in just a few minutes. If you do not wish to use a credit card, they do accept several ways to fund an account, including Paypal, MoneyBookers, e-Bullion or via bank wire transfer. Their website is very easy to navigate, albeit minimal in information and rudimentary for the experienced trader. A 24-hour live chat is available, as well as customer service via telephone and email.

The web-based trading platform is very user-friendly and suited to both beginners and experienced traders. One-click trading is offered, along with typical market, limit and stop orders, and trailing stops. As with most web-based platforms the charting capabilities are very basic and do not offer many features. But the mobile phone trading is good with this web-based application. Traders are not charged trading commissions or fees with this service. Like other retail brokers Finexo takes a fixed spread on each currency pair, varying from 3 pips to 14 pips. They are a dealing desk retail broker, and as such they take the other side of all of your trades. The platform is not customizable, but all the features a trader needs is right on the front page. Account reports can be viewed and printed from this application as well.

Some very basic amenities are offered to support Finexo’s traders. They do provide a daily market update, via email and via the trading platform which includes mostly fundamental trading points and some broad based trade ideas. They also offer a daily economic events calendar that includes expectations of those events. They do not, however, provide any sort of training, user forums, webinars, or forex news services.

Here are the points where this broker’s services raise some red flags. Finexo does not offer a demo account, so you cannot try out their platform without sending them money. Yes, the registration and deposit process is very easy and quick (as easy as opening an account with an online poker site), but the withdrawal process is a bit longer and harder. Yes, they offer many methods to contact them, but when this reviewer attempted to ask questions and open a live account with them, it was difficult to get appropriate responses or answers. If they are not willing to answer questions of a potential new client, how good is their service going to be afterwards? Also, for a broker to be targeting the beginner forex trader as much as Finexo does, it is surprising that they offer no training, or forums, or other help to get new traders started properly with their service. And finally, read the Terms and Conditions before signing anything. There is actually a clause stating that they do not like “sniping” trades, which are scalping trades, and can and will remove any profits that are deemed to be made in this fashion. This clause actually makes it legal for them to take away your profits if they want to!

Overall, this retail forex broker receives a low rating of 1 star.