CiscoTrades – Are They a Legit or Scam Broker?

Website URL: https://ciscotrades.com/

Founded: N/A

Regulations: Unregulated

Languages: English and Spanish

Deposit Methods: Electronic wallets, Wire transfer, MasterCard, and VISA

Minimum Deposit:  N/A

Free Demo Account: Yes

Number of Assets: N/A

Types of Assets: Commodities, Forex, Indices, and Stocks

Trading Accounts and Conditions 

CiscoTrades offers four account types to investors. See the details below to know more about each account.

• Silver account: You can deposit up to € 10,000. The cap on leverage varies on every asset. For forex it is 1:2000 and for stocks and crypto are 1:10.
• Gold account: You can deposit up to € 50,000. The leverage for forex is 1:2000 and for stocks and crypto are 1:15.
• VIP account: You can deposit up to € 100,000. The leverage for forex is 1:300 and for stocks and crypto are 1:20.

There’s no information about the spreads in which Ciscotrades offers.

CiscoTrades – Advantages

As much as we’d like to pinpoint an advantage for investing with this broker, we’re afraid we couldn’t. We found several suspicious and misleading information on their website, and we suggest you read the rest of the review to know why we say this broker offers no advantage to traders.

CiscoTrades  – Disadvantages 

Below, you’ll learn why you shouldn’t trust CiscoTrades with your money.

• Unregulated and unknown broker

The first thing we always check when reviewing a broker is its regulation. At first look at its website, we already found a lot of red flags, indicating that it might be a scam broker. For instance, we found that the broker failed to state its company address and phone number despite placing an area for those details. They only placed a bunch of XXX to somehow fill the details. Moreover, we feel like they misspelled the email address for support as it’s only showing [email protected].

When we investigated more, we found out that that owner of the website is LMOST Identical LSRO which has an address in Prague, Czech Republic. But when we checked the register of the Czech National Bank, the name of the institution didn’t show up. What’s more is that a warning has been issued to the public by the ComisiónNacional del Mercado de Valores or CNMV, the authorized regulator in Spain, not to trade with LMOST Identical LSRO since they are not authorized to provide any type of investment services.

Furthermore, the broker claims that their Terms and Conditions are constructed and regulated in accordance with the UK laws. Though we find this implausible, we still checked with the Financial Conduct Authority in the UK. But again, there’s no mention of the broker’s name. With these, we have no choice but to conclude that this broker is UNREGULATED and may even be a scammer.

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• Unfair Terms and Conditions

The Terms and Conditions of the broker are almost only beneficial to them. Majority of the clauses offer a big disadvantage to the traders. For example, one clause states that the company has the discretion to deny service, either temporarily or indefinitely, at any time. This implies that whenever they wish to, they can choose to cease operations and get away with all the money they’ve collected.

We strongly advise that you stay away from trader-unfriendly brokers. Once you agree to their unfair terms and conditions, you’re giving them the power and permission to do whatever they want to do with your money.

• Trader platform is very basic and offers high leverages and spreads

CiscoTrades offers web-based trading software, but its design and functions are very basic. There are NO advanced features and tools that are beneficial for the traders. Moreover, when we tried to use the software to understand the trading conditions better, we were shocked with the levels of spreads and leverages. For the currency pair EUR/USD, the spread is at 4.2 pips while the leverage is at 1:200.

Having a high spread and leverage signifies a great risk to your investment. The wider spread you have, the longer you have to wait to make a profit. In addition, the higher leverage you have, the bigger the profit or the loss will be. Given the conditions of the forex trade, the chances of winning than losing is higher. Hence, if you don’t incorporate risk management in your trading strategy, you’re more likely to lose your capital.

When it comes to trading software, we recommend using MetaTrader 4 and MetaTrader 5. These platforms come with sophisticated tools and instruments for trading. They also have the most advanced charting options that help traders analyse the direction of the exchange rates and make a correct forecast in their bids.

• Unfair bonuses and incentives plus high fees

CiscoTrades offers non-deposited funds in the form of bonuses and incentives. However, bonuses are banned in several countries such as the EU and the UK. Offering this to their traders means that they are not complying with the rules set by authorities, which is a big red flag.

Another thing is that, before you can withdraw these funds, the company policy states that you need to execute a trading volume of at least 30 times the bonus amount you’ll be receiving. This requirement is quite heavy to fulfil and anyone who tries may only end up making wrong trading decisions.

As to CiscoTrades’ deposit and withdrawal methods, the conditions are quite okay. There’s no mention of the minimum deposit amount but the minimum withdrawal is $100. Withdrawal requests are processed within 5 days. Dormant accounts, however, are charged with a high fee of $25 for every month of inactivity. Accounts that remain inactive for 6 months are considered dormant.

Conclusion

CiscoTrades is not legit and a potential scam broker. They don’t have any clear regulation from any country. CNMV even declared their parent company as unauthorized to provide any financial services and issued a warning to the public not to invest with them. Given all the red flags above, we strongly suggest that you don’t invest your money with them. Instead, we recommend choosing brokers that are regulated by authorized regulators such as the FCA in the UK and CySEC in the EU.

CiscoTrades

2.5

User Experience

3.3/10

Payment Options

2.4/10

Security

2.3/10

Support

2.1/10

Reputation

2.2/10

Pros

• None

Cons

• Unregulated and unknown broker
• Unfair Terms and Conditions
• Trader platform is very basic and offers high leverages and spreads
• Unfair bonuses and incentives plus high fees