It has taken everything I have in me not to post this post BUT just cannot help myself!!!
Does or has anybody here heard of or used or use GCI Trading (GCI Financial Ltd - Online Forex and CFD Trading)???
Regards,
Dale.
Friend of mine tried, SCAM!!! Avoid this broker
in what way?
Hi,
Sorry rebellion but I really need to know why you say to avoid this broker?
In what way was your friend scammed. I mean to say that is a pretty serious statement to make without backing it up.
I have my live account with them BUT admittedly I have not tried to transfer any money back from them yet.
Please could you post some more information.
Regards,
Dale.
For what it is worth I just did some more investigation myself.
Basically - if I understand the message threads that I found correctly - the general consensus amongst people that have worked with GCI seems to be that they are not very good at opening and closing ‘Limit Orders’ on time especially when the market is very busy and this causes much frustration for the forex trader (this funny enough is the reason that I posted my question about them in the first place).
The other main (and very important) criticism is that their demo is not a true reflection of what happens during live trading i.e. although the software is identical the problem comes in because the demo system instantly accepts and executes buy or sell orders at the your price which does not happen when live trading with them as already described above.
In their defense though - I now have had a good long hard look at some of the advertising rubbish that other brokers have on their sites and they just happen to also tell you in a very nice way that there can be delays and you may have to wait to get your price depending on the volatility of the market and / or currency pair. Does not sound any different to me. Who knows!
Other than that they seem to be known for paying out gains etc. speedily and with no problems.
Anyone interested in seeing user comments about this company just do a Google search for ‘GCI Trading’.
Regards,
Dale.
To: dpaterso
Friend of mine opened real account with GCI and started compaining about them. They always requote, usually 1-3 pips worse than you initially intended to enter market. Exapmle: lets say you’re long and you have stop loss at 1.9650. When the price goes down and ticks from 1.9651straight to 1.9649 platform says something like “There wasn’t price 1.9650, current price is 1.9649, would you like your stop loss order to be executed at this price?” and then system gives you like 5 seconds to respond. If you don’t or by any chance you’re not in front of your computer, you missed your chance and platform will not close your position even at 1.9649. Then if price continues to fall you’re in trouble. This happent under normal market conditions. During news release slippage is tremendous. That’s what I know about GCI. Finally he withdrawed his money back (much less than he initially deposited).
Hi rebellion,
Thanks for clarifying your statement.
This may be a bit strange but I am going to have to contradict my own post.
I was obsessed with trading the USD/ZAR pair and there are very few companies that offer this pair so I eventually opened a live account with GCI.
I started experiencing that same thing - I could NEVER get orders closed when in a good profit situation and was ALWAYS being requoted. Then I decided to take advice from others on this board and trade the USD/JPY and other more popular and stable currencies and found that I had no problem i.e. Market Orders executed immediately with very few or no requotes and positions being closed when profitable almost immediately.
I did start losing money though - my own fault - and decided to get out with what little I had left in my account so I faxed GCI and asked them to transfer my balance to me and close my account. Without a word of a lie within an hour they had transferred my balance back to me not taking a cent of it.
Their trading platform is the only one that makes sense to me. Sure the news feeds don’t work and the market commentaries are not coming up but of all the demo systems that I tried theirs definitely comes out tops. They have not gotten carried away with pretty pictures, cluttered screens, slow application execution etc. etc.
The long and short of it is that it would appear that they are possibly no better or no worse than any of the other firms and a lot of my criticism of them actually stemmed from stuff that I had read on the Internet about them. For example - on Monday this week - the ZAR had strengthened against the USD to the point where I thought I was going to make a real killing. All of a sudden - I could not login to GCI. Because of what I had read I immediately jumped to the conclusion that they saw that I was going to make a killing and shut me down. Turns out that it was my ISP that had the problem and not GCI and this happened twice this week. On the second occasion GCI Technical Support actually had details of the problem (a server in Africa) before my ISP.
Basically the problems that I was having with GCI actually seem to be because of the pair that I was insistent on trading (the ZAR is an ‘exotic’ currency apparantely although I live in South Africa and I can tell you that there is nothing ‘exotic’ about it and it actually pees me off because our economy is in a better state than most others at the moment but that is a whole new discussion) and it would be unfair of me to not post this post after finding this out.
I subsequently asked them to please not close my account and have put back some of the money and am now trying to trade the right way i.e. using indicators and charts etc. etc. and have not had a single problem. Yes - I’m still losing money - but that is not GCI’s fault.
Now I am not recommending them to anyone nor am I telling people not to go with them but it seems that my inital rantings and ravings were unfounded so I think it only fair to post this message at this point. If anything changes I will be sure to update this thread.
Regards,
Dale.
I have an account too at GCI openned about a month ago.
I have no problem with them, truly I ever see about the limit not close at the price I want but so far no problem at all, I just take a few pip for profit and do it many times in a day.
Looks good for me and I start to have profit trade on GCI.
Also I have lower spread at GCI through their IB forexion, higher leverage and also I got rebate from my trading.
I also join their affiliate program to get additional profit from trading at GCI.
I used to trade at normal market condition and not to trade on the news and very volatile market.
That’s how I avoid the problem that I heard happen to some trader when they trade on GCI.
Just do take profit a few pips but do it many times in a day, you can put the limit 1 point from running price (that’s what I like from GCI).
I hope this can be a good information for all traders.
To b1es5ing:
I tried to send you a PM but for some or the other reason I cannot send a PM.
Anyway - I have been trading with GCI for almost three months now - no problems (other than my own mess ups).
I am just curious though:
Also I have lower spread at GCI through their IB .:: forexion.com ::., higher leverage and also I got rebate from my trading.
Are you getting a lower spread through Forexion? I had a look at their site but the spread looks identical to GCI’s from what I can see.
Are you getting higher than 200:1 leverage at Forexion?
Regards,
Dale.
The spread is e/u 2 pips, g/u 3 pips, and u/j 2 pips also I get rebate from my trading and I have opportunity to receive affiliate bonus from them.
Just contact their live support, the demo spread is the same with the GCI spread.
I hope this can help you.
Hi dpaterso,
I used GCI trading a couple of years ago when I became interested in trading commodity CFDs. Their product sucked and did nothing but cost me money. Granted, some of it was inexperience on my part, but that was greatly compounded by the poor quality of their product.
It was enough to scare me off leveraged investments for a couple of years (Ive only started looking into forex recently - so far so good using Oanda).
If you want to trade USD/ZAR, Saxobank offers that pair.
OK - well - it would appear now that the cracks are starting to appear - especially now that I have a HUGE balance at GCI (HUGE by my standards anyway).
Yesterday - for most of the day - GCI’s system was ALMOST unuseable i.e. it was SOOO slow and I must have had about ten disconnects over a period (which oddly enough got more frequent around the time of the US Non-farm Payrolls release). Go figure.
Now - I was prepared to swallow this because I figured - well - maybe the system is overloaded at a time like this - you know - end of the month and a lot of economic data coming out BUT just to be sure I contacted their customer support via their Live Chat and they could not (or would not) help me and told me to contact their technical support via email - which I did - twice. I AM STILL WAITING FOR A REPLY (next day already)! I mean - even if they lied to me - it would have been OK - but to just not bother to reply - well - then there is a problem.
What amazed me further (and this is not the first time this has happened) is the fact that the Live Chat person (before telling me to contact technical support) told me that it’s my service provider. The best thing is - the connection to their website and Live Chat and their demo system (yes I checked that first) was lightning fast AND if that’s not enough - they actually have a site that allows you trace your IP route from your node to their server and according to this report the problem was AT THEIR NODE FOR CRYING OUT LOUD! Again - whether this was a genuine problem - or a GCI induced ‘problem’ - I’ll never know.
Then there was the dreaded ‘spike’ just before the US Non-farm Payrolls figure - and - it was a ‘spike’ for sure - happened in a ‘split millisecond’ and a huge movement - just before the data - and - again - I have been putting up with this for the past couple of months - no big deal BUT it’s starting to annoy me from the point of view that the ‘spike’ is ALWAYS in the right direction - isn’t that strange - almost like they know the figures BEFORE the data comes out - impossible???
My problem is that the instruments that I trade are not offered by anybody else (as a whole) AT THE MOMENT so I don’t know what to do at this point (although I do know that my best and favourite broker is bringing ‘my stuff’ on line this month hopefully).
Anway - I’m not outrightly saying that they are a ‘scam’ - that’s a bit strong - but I can tell you that their technical support sucks (sorry - no other word for it) and they definitely are not on YOUR side. In addition to this - every bit of correspondence that I have had with their dealing desk has been a waste of time and their dealers must the rudest people I have ever had the privilege of communicating with. The best thing about them is their platform - and their admin department is top notch would you believe. Their admin department normally cannot do enough to help you out - and there is never a problem getting your money out of them quickly. On the other hand - what good is having a great admin department and being able to source your funds quickly - if it is a constant battle to make money in the first place.
Anwyay - if anybody from GCI stumbles across this message - I wan’t you to know that I’m still waiting for a reply from tech support.
You know what I don’t understand about these brokers (and I know that they are not the only ones so I am referring to brokers in general) is WHY it cannot just be run as an honest business? I mean - if they are making money on the spread - or even if they charge a commission - there is MORE than enough to go around - why try to fk us up the ae for a couple of more bucks and run the risk of having messages like this posted all over the Internet? I don’t get it. I just do not get it!
Again - if anybody from GCI stumbles across this message - please know that I am fair (and I did not lose any money yesterday either so that’s not why I’m posting this message - as a matter of fact - thanks to the (your) spike - I made $1 800 USD - that’s what happens when you try to get too clever) and should I receive a reasonable explanation of what the problems were yesterday I will gladly post your reply and my apologies (if warranted) on this and any other site where I may or may not have posted a copy of this message.
Regards,
Dale.
OK - well - like I said - I am fair - and as quick as I may be to criticize - I’m also very forthcoming with praise when it is due - and I also don’t have a problem admitting when I’m wrong
So - turns out I was wrong about GCI last week - ALTHOUGH I AM STILL WAITING FOR A DECENT ANSWER FROM TECHNICAL SUPPORT!!!
After doing my own digging and tracing it turns out that there was a genuine problem with the Internet pipe between South Africa and the USA at the end of last week, beginning of this week. That was why everything appeared to grind to a halt. So - for blaming GCI for this - I am sorry.
Another thing happened today which I think deserves a compliment:
I placed an order last night and when it was finally executed sometime this morning (while I was watching it) it got executed at a much higher price resulting in an immediate huge loss. I nearly lost it! Anyway - I called the dealing desk and explained the situation and after giving them the ticket number and about a half an hour to investigate I called them back and they could not see any reason for the ‘slippage’ so they immediately changed the order price to what it should have been and this added quite substantially to the profit that the position was already making. Basically - they guarantee ‘zero slippage’ just as long as the stop order is placed more than a minute from the time of execution i.e. don’t try and scalp - and they have lived up to their promise. Thanks.
Like I said - fair is fair - and credit is due.
Regards,
Dale.