I am in the process of opening a live account with an FXCM Competitor. I am in the United States. Two of the questions on the application are “Name of Employer” and “Nature of Work” Does FXCM ask for this information when opening an account? I am a business consultant in my daytime life, and my employer loves it when we work on projects during “off hours” such as nights, weekends, and holidays… I am just concerned as I don’t want a broker contacting my office doing an employment verification… For the purposes of trading I am a self-employed individual.
Did you all have to provide the name of the employer on your application? Did anyone have a situation where their employer was contacted?
The USA PATRIOT act requires us to collect information and take actions necessary to verify your identity. While I’m not authorized to comment on the specifics of this verification process, I can confirm that we do ask account applicants to provide the name of their employer and nature of business. For the details, please review the client agreement in our online application. If you have any questions about the client agreement, you can reach out to our Compliance department at <[email protected]>.
Thanks for the reply. The short answer is that the competitor had tight spreads (not too sure on the spread thing), allowed micro lots and flexibility in trade sizes, and their demo is for an unlimited time and flexible. I worked through the BabyPips school during the summer and tried to use their guidelines for choosing a broker.
I still am not trading live and not doing much on the demo. I will be trading longer time frames and if I can go a year or two without losing money, I will bump up my account size. I am not married to any particular broker, and as part of gaining experience I am open to placing some money with your company. However, my first account is going to be tiny so I need to be able to trade the irregular lot sizes and micro quantities. If my information is faulty I am always open to knowing correct information.
It’s great that you’re taking the time to build your confidence on a demo account. Our research team at DailyFX conducted a series of studies on the traits of successful traders that may interest you.
It’s worth noting that FXCM allows you to demo trade indefinitely. Our demo accounts expire after 30 days of inactivity, but as long as you keep trading on an FXCM demo, you can demo trade with us as long as you like.
When comparing our spreads to those of other brokers, it’s important to keep in mind whether the spreads you see are all inclusive (with no additional commissions) or whether a separate commission is charged on top of the spreads you see.
FXCM lets traders choose between multiple account types.
Our Standard accounts have raw FX spreads with a separate commission. As you can see from this live table, our spreads are very competive, particularly in comparison to other regulated brokers.
Our Mini accounts have all inclusive spreads which means there are no separate commissions charged on top of the spread you see but the total transaction is still comparable with our Standard accounts and therefore very competitive with other brokers.
If you would like to compare, you can set up both an FXCM Mini demo and an FXCM Standard demo from this link.
Both our Standard and Mini accounts let you trade micro lots, but if you’re looking to start with less thank $2000 then the Mini account would be a better fit, since you can start with as little as $50.