Thanks for reporting this issue @TradeViper
I’ve passed your comments along.
Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!
Upcoming Holiday Hours
Christmas
FX, spot gold and silver will be closed on December 24th.
Trading will resume at 22:00 GMT on December 25th.
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FX, spot gold and silver will be closed on December 31st.
Trading will resume at 22:00 GMT on January 1st.
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Our clients outside the US can click below for
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Forex Trading is available 24 hours a day from 22:00 GMT Sunday through 22:00 GMT on Friday, including most U.S. holidays. Please be advised of the potential for illiquid market conditions particularly at the open of the trading week. These conditions may result in wider spreads for some currency pairs based on market liquidity.
Spot Gold and Silver Market Hours
Spot gold and silver trading is available 23 hours a day from 23:00 GMT Sunday through 22:00 GMT Friday. Trading is closed from 22:00 to 23:00 GMT daily. Spot gold and silver trading also follow CME holiday closures.
Market hours and holidays are subject to change. We will keep this information up-to-date on a best efforts basis. Please be advised that on the holiday dates, there may be periods of limited liquidity in some markets.
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Bitcoin (BTC/USD) trading now available with FOREX.com UK
At FOREX.com, we’re committed to offering traders the markets they want to trade. We’re pleased to announce Bitcoin trading is now available with FOREX.com UK*.
Bitcoin is one of the year’s most talked-about markets, starting 2017 priced under $1,000 and steadily rising to break several record highs, hitting $19,783.06 on Sunday, December 17th. The cryptocurrency’s high volatility has traders looking for potential short-term opportunities and you can now take advantage of them at FOREX.com.
Why trade Bitcoin?
- Unlike when purchasing Bitcoin, you can sell/short Bitcoin just as easily as you can buy it
- Tap into the market opportunity without taking ownership of the asset
- Leverage allows you to take a position with less capital. Increased leverage increases your risk
- No need to create or pay for a virtual wallet to store and protect your Bitcoin
How to Trade Bitcoin?
- Join us for a free webinar.
- Choose from either session:
- Thursday, December 21st at 16:30 GMT,
- or Friday, December 22nd at 10:30 GMT.
[REGISTER]
Bitcoin is a highly volatile market. The heightened volatility brings opportunity, but also a greater degree of risk. Make sure you fully understand the risk before you trade.
*Spot Bitcoin Trading is not available in the US at this time, but US residents now have access to Bitcoin Futures Trading.
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Please note: Our forum support will be offline from now until Monday, January 8th, but you can continue to receive customer support from our Client Services team throughout the holiday season via phone and live chat http://on.forex.com/support
Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!
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Hey FX.COM. Could you opine regarding the following statement?
“Despite what the School lessons are teaching, there is no buying or selling of currencies, or currency pairs, in the retail forex business (our tiny corner of the huge, worldwide foreign exchange market).”
"Your broker doesn’t maintain an inventory of foreign currencies to sell to you, and he isn’t in the business of buying currencies from you.
Instead, he is in the business of taking the other side of your trade, whether long or short, at a price which he dictates. This places him in the position of counterparty to your trade, and he remains in this position until your trade is closed."
“So, if your long trade does not involve buying the base currency and selling the quote currency, and if your short trade does not involve selling the base currency and buying the quote currency – as the School lessons incorrectly teach – then what exactly is happening when you place a trade?”
“Your trade is simply a bet on the direction that a particular price will move. And your broker simply holds the other side of your bet.”
The Ever Just Hangin Out VIPER
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Hi @TradeViper,
We could nitpick on terminology, but the biggest criticism we would have of the statements you quoted is they might lead someone to form an unnecessarily negative opinion of retail forex. In any industry, whether it’s cars, clothing, hotels or restaurants, what matters is the quality of your service provider.
What matters when trading forex is the quality of your broker. It’s important to understand that “counterparty” and “market maker” are not negative terms. At FOREX.com, we take great pride in the service we provide to our clients as their counterparty and market maker.
In this post, we explain the value of the service a broker can provide as your counterparty: Who is the counterparty in an exchange?
In this post, we explain the value of the service a broker can provide as your market maker: Simulation - All trades immediately jump to negative
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Holiday Hours for Good Friday and Easter
Forex Market Hours
Forex Trading is available 24 hours a day from 10:00pm GMT Sunday through 10:00pm GMT on Friday, including most U.S. holidays. Please be advised of the potential for illiquid market conditions particularly at the open of the trading week. These conditions may result in wider spreads for some currency pairs based on market liquidity.
Spot Gold and Silver Market Hours
Spot gold and silver trading is available 23 hours a day from 11pm GMT Sunday through 10pm GMT Friday. Trading is closed from 10pm to 11pm GMT daily. Spot gold and silver trading also follow CME holiday closures.
CFD Market Hours
Click here for information on Indices, Commodities, Equities and Cryptocurrencies.*
Market hours and holidays are subject to change. We will keep this information up-to-date on a best efforts basis. Please be advised that on the holiday dates, there may be periods of limited liquidity in some markets.
*Contracts for Difference (CFDs) are not available to US residents.
They just want you to lose or die! CONFLICT OF INTEREST. This broker is just terrible. I live in Mexico but I trade with Forex.com UK because of the high leverage. I’ve been their client since 2011. When I opened my account with them I didn’t know they were Market Makers; which means they take the opposite side of all your trades. In other words they bet against all their retail clients because they know more than 90% of them loose money; so that’s their main source of revenue.
I lost money until 2015 and the service was fantastic back then. But since 2016 I started earning profits and the service become the worst you can imagine. Whenever I try to make a wire withdrawal from my account to my bank account in Mexico they only send the instruction for the transaction but without funds; so I have to try each transfer several times. My average wire withdrawal takes an average of 1 month. I call the customer service line and they always say there is no supervisor available. They hung up the call. They are rude. It’s pathetic.
And the best part; on December 2017 I made a £870.00 debit card withdrawal attempt and the money just never arrived to Mexico. I have an ongoing complaint against them on the FCA through an Ombudsman Service. Being their client without losing money is a 24 hour job, and it’s quite frustrating. STAY AWAY!
Hi @e_castillon,
First, thank you for being a client of ours since 2011, and thank you for this feedback.
We’re glad to know you found our service to be fantastic in the first 5 years you traded with us. It is our goal to always provide you with great service, and if we have fallen short of that since 2016, please accept our apologies. This is something we definitely want to fix for you.
You mentioned that you have been trading profitably since 2016. Congratulations on your achievement! You noted that the timing of the service issues you had with us coincided with you becoming profitable. We can understand how at first glance this can seem suspicious. However, there is a more reasonable explanation than simply concluding that we don’t want you to be a profitable trader.
When you were not trading profitably, it’s unlikely you were making many withdrawals from your trading account. Therefore, your assessment of our service was based on other aspects: live customer support, news and research, platforms and charts.
When you became a profitable trader, and started submitting withdrawal requests, it seems from your description that we had some issues in sending the funds efficiently to your bank in Mexico. These unpleasant experiences with the wire transfers changed your opinion of our service which is completely understandable.
The good news is this is something we can fix. We apologize that it wasn’t addressed for you sooner, but we would be happy to have a specialist in our financial operations team follow up with you and your bank to review the wire transfer instructions we have used in the past to send your funds to your bank account in Mexico from your FOREX.com trading account in the UK. You can send us a private message with your contact details.
We should be able to determine a more efficient process with your bank in Mexico so that as you continue to withdraw more and more profits from your FOREX.com account these funds will arrive quickly and smoothly to your bank account in Mexico. Our desire to address this issue should show you that we want you and all profitable traders to continue trading with FOREX.com. We value your business and want to keep it.
Frankly speaking, we are a bit surprised to hear that you didn’t know FOREX.com is a market maker from the start, because we have never tried to hide this fact. We are proud to be your market maker, because we believe market making is the best way to provide our retail* clients with reliable pricing at retail trade sizes while effectively managing our own risk. We are fully accountable for every execution and don’t outsource that responsibility to a third party.
It’s important to understand that if a particular retail forex broker tells you they are an ECN, that only means they must offset your trades with another firm that is a market maker. That’s because market makers perform a critical service, not only in forex, but in many financial markets, including major stock and futures exchanges.
Consider what the world’s largest stock exchange says about how their market model works:
The cornerstone of the NYSE market model is the Designated Market Maker (DMM). DMMs have obligations to maintain fair and orderly markets for their assigned securities. They operate both manually and electronically to facilitate price discovery during market opens, closes and during periods of trading imbalances or instability. This high touch approach is crucial for offering the best prices, dampening volatility, adding liquidity and enhancing value.
DMMs apply their market experience and judgment of dynamic trading conditions, macroeconomic news and industry-specific intelligence, to inform their decisions. A valuable resource for our listed company community, DMMs offer insights, while making capital commitments, maintaining market integrity, and supporting price discovery.
In the following post, we discuss the three methods retail forex brokers can use to offset your trades in greater detail: Who is the counterparty in an exchange?
*For institutional clients our parent company, GAIN Capital, offers ECN solutions through the GTX marketplace.
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I don’t know how to send you a private message…
So I was looking at reviews for forex.com and It just seems that many people are having issues with this. I come from Binary and one of the good things about it was Nadex wasn’t taking the other side of the trade. So they didn’t care if you won or lost. I also see things like the spreads showing 2 to sometimes 5 pips difference on forex.com. I’m within the US but it appears that it’s very limited as far as broker options… Any suggestions guys? Thanks for taking the time to read my post!
I must make a correction; the service was great from 2011 to 2016. The fact that I lost during the first five years doesn’t mean I didn’t have my moments. I actually ordered many wire withdrawals during my loosing period; I won some battles back then -in 2015 I won £1,000 in one day- and I never had problems, not even once. The real problem begun in 2017; I ordered five wire transfers of which three never arrived and one arrived until the second try.
Hi @e_castillon,
Thanks for responding to our offer to investigate this issue for you further.
It seems you can’t send us a private message, because that ability is not available to brand new members of the forum, and you only recently started posting on BabyPips. Fortunately, we received a forum notification of another post you made a few hours before this one and since deleted which included your email address and phone number.
We were able to use that information to review the details of your case and note that it was investigated in accordance with our complaints procedure and by the UK Financial Ombudsman Service who agreed with FOREX.com and rejected your complaint. Both investigations concluded that the issue you raised regarding wire transfers was a result of a problem with the your bank in Mexico, and not FOREX.com.
Thanks, that’s good to know.
Please notify our customer support team when you want to make your next withdrawal, and we will be happy to reach out to your bank in Mexico to confirm they now know how to receive your funds properly to avoid the problems they had previously.
There is one broker which is not a Market Maker so it doesn’t want you to loose. I’m talking about Fx Pro, “Trade Forex Like a Pro”. With them at least you avoid the conflict of interest. Why in my opinion that matters at all?
The Educational Resources that you will get with a Market Maker Broker will be designed for you not only to lose; but to lose as soon as possible. So they will want you to overtrade because the more often you trade the faster you lose. They actually have a 90 90 90 rule that you can check on Google; it’s really something. And even worst, if you make money you will be an annoying client.
On the other hand, you can have a broker that is not against you because is not taking the other sides of your trades. They just pass your orders to the market. Even if you have to pay higher fees or commissions I think it’s a better deal. At least I’m looking forward to give them a try.
The investigation (Our ref: 20346045) was completed and indeed, apparently Forex.com was not the one to blame on the missing £870.00 that I tried to withdraw in December the 20th 2017. So far I have to agree on that, it’s a shame that my Bank HSBC -The World’s Mobster Bank- is responsible for that, and I will have to sue them.
Nevertheless the investigation concluded; the case (Our ref: 20346045) is alive and well, is still open. It was going to expire on May the 7th 2017 but I called the investigator and we both agreed that there is only one thing which is worth of investigating further, which is the fact that HSBC Mexico insists on that Forex.com have sent wire transfers with no funds, and Forex.com insists on that HSBC is deliberately canceling the wire transfers.
Since I have an open complaint against HSBC here in Mexico they have been forced to provide written evidence of everything they say; and they actually provided a PDF document which is a system search of all the wire transfers attempts received in December 2017, showing 2 results of 2 wire transfers attempts from Forex.com Gain Capital and both of them share the same Rejection Reason and that is because of “Lack of Funds”.
I already translated and sent all that evidence to the investigator and if it’s necessary for an Ombudsman to verify the case we will have to wait for the result.
And just lo let you know on May the 15th 2017 I attempted a £200.00 wire withdrawal and of course, the funds haven’t reached my bank account in Mexico. I really hope you can do something about it. Thanks!
You have brought up several points in your post, so we will address them one by one.
While it may seem that way at first glance, it’s good to know the details before jumping to conclusions. For example, in the case above, both our internal investigation and the ombudsman’s external investigation reached the same conclusion that the problem was with the client’s bank in Mexico, and not FOREX.com.
In regards to other reviews you mentioned, it’s important to keep a couple of things in mind:
-
It’s possible for problems on the receiver’s end to cause delays processing a withdrawal request that are beyond our control. While a client may think the issue was on our end, the example above shows how that may not be the case.
-
One challenge on the internet is that no one verifies whether the people posting broker reviews are real clients:
What’s to stop some obscure broker from trying to fake a reputation by having its employees post positive reviews for itself and negative reviews against its better known competitors? Have you ever wondered why some little known brokers seem to get great reviews online while more established brokers with clients around the world get poor reviews?
Your comments about “taking the other side of the trade” reveal some misconceptions about the forex market we would like to address. It’s worth noting that for institutional traders, our parent company, GAIN Capital, offers ECN solutions through the GTX marketplace, where we do not take the other side of the trade.
However, for retail traders, FOREX.com is a market maker, because we believe market making is the best way to provide our retail clients with reliable pricing at retail trade sizes while effectively managing our own risk. We are fully accountable for every execution and don’t outsource that responsibility to a third party.
It’s important to understand that if a particular retail forex broker tells you they are not taking the other side of the trade, that only means they must offset your trades with another firm that is a market maker. That’s because market makers perform a vital service, not only in forex, but in many financial markets, including major stock and futures exchanges.
Consider what the world’s largest stock exchange says about how their market model works:
The cornerstone of the NYSE market model is the Designated Market Maker (DMM). DMMs have obligations to maintain fair and orderly markets for their assigned securities. They operate both manually and electronically to facilitate price discovery during market opens, closes and during periods of trading imbalances or instability. This high touch approach is crucial for offering the best prices, dampening volatility, adding liquidity and enhancing value.
DMMs apply their market experience and judgment of dynamic trading conditions, macroeconomic news and industry-specific intelligence, to inform their decisions. A valuable resource for our listed company community, DMMs offer insights, while making capital commitments, maintaining market integrity, and supporting price discovery.
In the following post, we discuss the three methods retail forex brokers can use to offset your trades in greater detail: Who is the counterparty in an exchange?
The key point to take away from all of this is that FOREX.com welcomes profitable traders. We even offer volume-based rebates to attract more of them.
Without more details, it’s impossible to tell whether such spread variation is normal or out of the ordinary. You mentioned in a previous post, you are still new to the market, so it’s important to consider the following:
-
Is it possible you were looking at tenths of a pip (the fifth digit to the right of the decimal point) instead of full pips (the fourth digit)? Spread variations from 0.2 to 0.5 pips are quite common even in normal market conditions.
-
Which currency pair were you looking at, and at what time? Spread variations from 2 to 5 pips are quite common with exotic currency pairs in normal market conditions and with major currency pairs in illiquid market conditions.
On the contrary, the reason only four firms are currently approved as forex dealer members as of the latest data from the CFTC is precisely because the standards for US regulated forex brokers are so rigorous both in terms of financial transparency and accountability regarding the price where each customer transaction is executed.
Particularly noteworthy are the requirements for financial transparency and trade execution accountability. Below is an excerpt from the CFTC site:
The final rules include financial requirements designed to ensure the financial integrity of firms engaging in retail forex transactions and robust customer protections. For example, FCMs [futures commission merchants] and RFEDs [retail foreign exchange dealers] are required to maintain net capital of $20 million plus 5 percent of the amount, if any, by which liabilities to retail forex customers exceed $10 million. Leverage in retail forex customer accounts will be subject to a security deposit requirement to be set by the National Futures Association within limits provided by the Commission. All retail forex counterparties and intermediaries are required to distribute forex-specific risk disclosure statements to customers and comply with comprehensive recordkeeping and reporting requirements.
For example, the CFTC and NFA set the requirements a broker must meet in order to offer forex trading to US residents. Though not an exhaustive list, this membership application will give you an idea of some of those requirements: Compliance Requirements for Retail Foreign Exchange Dealer (RFED) Applicants | NFA
It’s our pleasure to help you. Focusing on brokers that are regulated by reputable government authorities where you live can go a long way to addressing these concerns. Key advantages of trading with a well-regulated broker are:
- minimum financial and trading standards they must meet,
- ongoing monitoring by the regulators to ensure compliance,
- a framework for handling complaints from customers, and the
- power to enforce actions against regulated brokers for violations.
Hi @e_castillon,
Google is a great search engine, but you still have to check the quality of the sources it finds for you. Your comments remind me of the following quote:
The point is you can’t believe everything you see on the internet. Where did you hear of this so-called “90 90 90 rule”? Was it from a company that’s in business of selling its own educational resources?
If you want real numbers, it will interest you to know that US-regulated forex brokers are required to provide client profitability data to the CFTC and in the risk disclosure statement given to all account applicants. The text below is from the latest version of FOREX.com’s US customer agreement.
For the calendar quarter ending December 31, 2017, there were 33,885 active non-discretionary trading accounts of which 33% were profitable and 67% unprofitable.
For the calendar quarter ending September 30, 2017, there were 34,138 active non-discretionary trading accounts of which 32% were profitable and 68% unprofitable.
For the calendar quarter ending June 30, 2017, there were 34,911 active non-discretionary trading accounts of which 31% were profitable and 69% unprofitable.
For the calendar quarter ending March 31, 2017, there were 33,636 active non-discretionary trading accounts of which 36% were profitable and 64% unprofitable.
PAST PERFORMANCE IS NOT NECESSARILY INDICATIVE OF FUTURE RESULTS.
We won’t speak for other brokers, but FOREX.com welcomes profitable traders like you. As you mentioned yourself, you have been able to withdraw profits from your trading account with us in the past without any issues. Furthermore, with the particular case you brought up above, both our internal investigation and the ombudsman’s external investigation reached the same conclusion that the problem was with your bank in Mexico, and not FOREX.com.
Well, as a matter of fact the first place where I learned about this rule is in a You Tube Chanel called InstituteofTrading, here’s the link:
This guy has worked in the financial industry so I think he knows what he’s talking about.
As I already explained; my experience with Forex UK is that when I was losing the customer service was fantastic and I never had any problems withdrawing money. But as soon I begun earning profits the customer service change for the worse and withdrawing funds became a nightmare. This is my objective description of the experience.
On 2017 I ordered 5 wire withdrawals and of them only 1 arrived on the first try.
In principle I would not give a dam if my broker takes the other side of my positions as long they don’t get in the way whenever I start earning profits. And is a real pain in the ass to trade at your top level if you cannot be certain that your funds, your investing capital, will arrive promptly whenever you order a withdraw. I don’t know if would go that far to call this sabotage but what is certain is that I no longer trust them.
And yes, I can sense a Conflict of Interest here.
My advice to any all novice traders would be to start your trading experience with a practice account, and stick to practice accounts until you have 3 months at least of profits. If you decide to open a real account take very small positions, learn how to trade real money loosing small. Use most of your real money to take courses and buy books that will give you a real edge on the markets. Finally, get a mentor who is already a profitable trader. I had to learn everything by myself and it wasn’t easy.
Now regarding the missing withdrawal; six months have passed since the missing £870.00 debit card withdrawal.
The Financial Ombudsman Service investigation (Our ref: 20346045) is still open. On the 8th of June I got an email from the investigator Dan Mason stating he had been in touch with Gain and asked them to send him further information. They’ve gone back to their technical team to explain in more detail the payment process, he hopes this will shed more on the transaction and where the funds have gone. I’m still waiting for Mr. Mason to contact me again with the outcome.
I’m not letting these funds go. I earned them legally on the markets and I already have a legal team in Britain and in Mexico in case the situation doesn’t get resolved. I don’t know where the mistake was made but will be a matter of time to find out.
I’d like to shut down my Forex UK account as soon this gets resolved, on the meantime I will leave 1 GBP balance. I’m already trading with another broker.
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Hello Forex.com!
So I created an account about two weeks ago. Sent in the documents. It said I would hear back in two business days. I didn’t hear back in a week. So I contacted the support and I was told that my address document was an image file and not a PDF so it was rejected. I never got any correspondence telling me that and I had to contact myself to find out the status. I uploaded an image file because your system was only accepting PNG and not PDF. Anyways. So then I sent the PDF in an e-mail as support told me to do that. I did that. I was told I will hear back in two business days. Been a week again and still no response. To be very honest, this whole experience is making me wary of using Forex.com as my broker. If I am having this much trouble just to get my account active, I wonder what’s going to happen later on if I run into actual issues.
Also, if possible, please do tell why you do not advertise the Commission account as much as the Standard account? All pricing and fees advertised on the website is for the Standard account. There is almost zero information available on the website for Commission accounts, like what spreads I can expect on the Commission account and I have to create a LIVE account just to check the spreads (can’t even see that on a demo account).
It would be really helpful if you can just show me the spreads for the Commission account like every other Commission account broker does.
Thank you very much!
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A touch alarming that MOST Brokers will not use Live spreads / feed data inside their Demo accounts… Unfortunately Forex.com is not the only Broker influencing this way…
Sort of defeats the purpose of the “Demo Account” experience… doesn’t it…