[B]PAX FOREX[/B]: Been testing this one, and have several things to report.
U.S.-resident clients whether individual or corporate are Welcome.
Platform: MT4
Max leverage: 1:500
Minimum deposit is $10 USD or equivalent for mini account, $400 for a standard account (they call it “standart” and there’s a pun in there I’m sure)
Spreads: For reference’ sake: E/U 1.3-5. G/U 4.9-10.0.
[In standard acct live trading E/U avg is 1.4-5.0, mean figure 2.9 - it tends to cling at 2.9 if the market moves at all during normal trading hours in EU & US sessions outside of major news/events/releases. The charts on their site mislead somewhat both as to minimums and maximums. Never seen .5, and 5.0 only occurs sporadically in the opening half-hour just after the week-end. During data releases it’s still in the immediate vicinity of 2.9, so for news traders it’s not awful. G/J tends to meander along with 4.7-6.0 pip spreads, although they say it may go to 10.0 max; 8.4 seems the popular level during week-opening half-hour.]
Max lot size - None (since it’s MT4 I imagine they meant to say 999). Min. trade size .1, step .1.
Little details that make the big picture:
You can w/d without closing all open positions; you’d be (possibly) surprised how many of these small start-up brokers require squaring all trades beforehand, no matter how small the w/d relative to free equity.
Support is prompt, knowledgeable, courteous and English-enabled.
Wire funding is again exceptionally fast; less than 6 hours. But of course they want 3-5 business days to ‘process’ a withdrawal, and then expect the usual wait & wondering when or whether it will hit one’s bank.
Hedge retains first leg margin, other leg 0 margin; better than those who still take it both ways.
Now to the dark side: One tweak they’ve done, it’s an oldie but goodie: If price approaches within X pips of your stoploss, with X being the Stop Level range for that instrument, your stop is locked immovable unless price moves away out of the StopLevel range or s/l is hit. You can’t modify it, whether to shift it 1000 pips away or remove it altogether - can’t be done. Support confirmed this as policy. Wasn’t easy to get that admission, sad to say.
This applies also to a takeprofit. So take heed. That’s not the end of it though.
You cannot even CLOSE the trade if price is within the Stop Level range of your s/l or t/p. This too was confirmed by Support, most grudgingly.
Many of their less-traded pairs and crosses are on non-fractional pricing and you will find this ‘can’t modify, can’t close’ effect operates one pip both ways (in effect, 2 pips) beyond the stops levels advertised. Small wonder, but there you have it.
This is the kind of tomfoolery we saw so many years back it’s a shock to see it again. The brokers who had attracted some sizeable deposits were successfully pressurised to change their ways, whilst the minor players continued on with minor accounts and were marginalised. How times change, eh? [Temporary end of rant.]
Their London office is an accommodation address (mail/phone forwarding); the “Head Office” is in Tortola, BVI and likely it’s another maildrop sort of place but can’t yet say for certain; they bank in Cyprus and… so it goes.
Back to the meaty bits. They offer a bonus program, chart’s on their site. Bonus becomes withdrawable cash if within 2 months of its posting to the account, trades totalling a number of standard lots equal to or greater than the bonus divided by 5 are executed and closed. So if $1000 is the bonus, it’s minimum total trade volume of 200 standard lots required within 2 months to turn the bonus into capital.
Stops levels are reasonable at 5 for E/U, 8 for G/J.
Stopout begins at 10%.
Execution is quite decent, no more than 2 seconds so far.
Clock keeps up tolerably well with our NIST-sync’d PC time.
There are platform downtimes for 30 seconds-1 minute several times daily, appear random but I’m sure they’re not.
[edited to add: Today during NY session there were a half-dozen downtimes, two of which lasted 4+ minutes.]
There is a term in the Agreement stating leverage will be reduced to 1:100 on trades opened less than three hours prior to Friday close of trading; haven’t yet tested that one!
Depending on your trading style, this one might not be so bad. It’s in the lowest echelon, sort of tops of the bottom, but sometimes that’s where the strawberries grow so it’s worth a look.