Elite Strategies – Are They Safe Brokers?
Stop! It’s a Scam! Your money is not safe if you are trading with this unregulated, off-shore broker.
Elite Strategies - DO NOT TRADE WITH THIS PROVIDER
2.6/10
$100
Minimum Depositupdated 2020
According to the information available on Elite Strategies’ Website, the broker offers the following account types:
- Standard Account: The minimum deposit you are required to make for this type of account is $100, and the spreads begin at 1 pip.
- Swap Free Account: There is no information on the minimum deposit requirement for this account type, but the spreads begin at 2 pips.
- ECN Account: For this account, there is also no information about the minimum deposits, but the broker offers spreads starting at 0 pips.
Elite Strategies offers leverages of 1:500 for forex trading, 1:100 for Indices and 1:100 for Commodities. For the Standard and the Swap Free Account, there are commissions applied, but for the ECN Account, there is a $10 commission per lot.
82% of retail investor accounts lose money when trading CFDs with this provider. You should consider whether you can afford to take the high risk of losing your money
Plus500 is a FTSE 250 listed brokerage providing online trading services in CFDs, across 2,000+ securities and multiple asset classes.
Website URL: https://www.elifx.com
Founded: 2013 – 2020
Regulations: Unregulated
Languages: English, German, Japanese, Chinese (Mandarin & Cantonese), Vietnamese
Deposit Methods: Credit Cards, Bank Wires, Neteller, Skrill, Bitcoin
Minimum Deposit: $100
Free Demo Account: Yes
Number of Assets: N/A
Types of Assets: Forex, Metals, Indices, Commodities
Trading Accounts and Conditions
According to the information available on Elite Strategies’ Website, the broker offers the following account types:
- Standard Account: The minimum deposit you are required to make for this type of account is $100, and the spreads begin at 1 pip.
- Swap Free Account: There is no information on the minimum deposit requirement for this account type, but the spreads begin at 2 pips.
- ECN Account: For this account, there is also no information about the minimum deposits, but the broker offers spreads starting at 0 pips.
Elite Strategies offers leverages of 1:500 for forex trading, 1:100 for Indices and 1:100 for Commodities. For the Standard and the Swap Free Account, there are commissions applied, but for the ECN Account, there is a $10 commission per lot.
Elite Strategies – Advantages
Here are the advantages of trading with Elite Strategies:
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Solid Leverage Offered
This broker offers a maximum leverage of 1:500 for forex trading, which is quite a solid leverage, since traders can employ a wider range of trading strategies.
However, we would also like to warn our readers that taking on higher leverages mean taking on correspondingly higher financial risks. Because of the massive financial losses traders have suffered, most financial authorities have put a cap on how much of a leverage can be offered. Most authorities now allow brokers to offer between 1:30 and 1:50 leverage ratios for individual traders.
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MetaTrader 4 Available
Elite Strategies offer their clients the MetaTrader 4 platform, which we feel is a huge plus. The MT4 platform, as it is popular called, is the most popular trading software in the world because of its simple interface and its many features. You get charting and market and technical analysis tools, as well as Expert Advisors – trading robots that allow you to carry out automatic trading. All of these tools are customizable.
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Demo Account Available
Another plus is that this broker offers their clients the use of free demo account. This means that you get a chance to verify the trading conditions for yourself, which is also a big plus.
Elite Strategies – Disadvantages
Despite the many strong advantages this broker seems to have, we would recommend that you read to the end of our review to find out why we would not recommend Elite Strategies:
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Chaotic Corporate Information
The first sign that things are not right with this broker is their corporate information.
First, in their Terms and Conditions, the broker states that they are owned by Elite Strategies Corporation Pty Ltd. This company is supposedly based in Adelaide, Australia. But, on their homepage, the broker states they are Authorized Representatives of a company by the name of RS Finance (Aust) Pty Ltd. This company has the exact same address as Elite Strategies Corporation Pty Ltd.
The confusion is even greater, because this broker also claims to be based in Colorado in the United States, as well as in London, in the UK.
Furthermore, this broker states that their payments are all processed by a company by the name of Offshore Tech & Intermediary Services – which is located in Malaysia.
And finally, the broker also states that their services are not directed at any particular country outside of St. Vincent and the Grenadines!
Such massive confusion about their corporate identity indicates that there is something wrong with this broker.
82% of retail investor accounts lose money when trading CFDs with this provider. You should consider whether you can afford to take the high risk of losing your money
Plus500 is a FTSE 250 listed brokerage providing online trading services in CFDs, across 2,000+ securities and multiple asset classes.
The company was created as a combined effort of financial professionals and experts in web-commerce with the goal of perfecting the online experience for retail traders.
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Unregulated, Possibly Clone Firm
To be operating in so many countries, Elite Strategies would need to be licensed by financial authorities in the US, the UK, Australia, and even Malaysia.
So, we checked the online registers of all these countries, and this is what we found. This broker is not regulated in the UK, the US or Malaysia. We did find a company called Elite Strategies Corporation Pty Ltd registered with the Australian Securities and Investments Commission (ASIC), but the domain name www.elifx.com doesn’t seem to belong to this company.
This means that this broker has potentially used a regulated company’s information and has tried to pass it off as their own. A broker that does this is known as a clone firm, and is a scammer.
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Trading Bonuses Offered
Another worrisome sign about this broker is that they offer trading bonuses.
Trading bonuses are usually a trap used by scammers to get traders to invest money with them, which is then never given back to them. The scam goes like this – you are offered a very attractive trading bonus through which you are promised you will make a lot of money. However, in the terms and conditions, the broker states that you will not be able to withdraw your funds until you meet their trading volume target. But that target is so impossibly high that you never achieve it, which means that you will never be able to get your money back!
So, the fact that Elite Strategies offers trading bonuses tips the scales against them, and increases our suspicions that this broker is a scammer.
Conclusion
Elite Strategies’ trading conditions look really good – a low minimum deposit, high leverages and low spreads. You also get to use the MT4 platform and you can test the conditions on a demo account. However, the facts that the broker’s corporate information is so messy, and – more importantly – that the broker seems to have taken another company’s corporate information are huge red flags that there is something seriously wrong with this broker. Not to mention the extremely controversial trading bonuses being offered.
Therefore, we would not recommend you trade with this broker.
Do not trade with unregulated brokers that will steal your funds - try these regulated brokers:
82% of retail investor accounts lose money when trading CFDs with this provider. You should consider whether you can afford to take the high risk of losing your money
Plus500 is a FTSE 250 listed brokerage providing online trading services in CFDs, across 2,000+ securities and multiple asset classes.
The company was created as a combined effort of financial professionals and experts in web-commerce with the goal of perfecting the online experience for retail traders.
eToro is a multi-asset platform which offers CFD and non CFD products. 74% of retail investor accounts lose money when trading CFDs with this provider. You should consider whether you can afford to take the high risk of losing your money.