PCMTrades.com – Is it a Scam?

Website URL: https://pcmtrades.com/

Founded: 2014

Regulations: Unregulated

Languages: English, Russian, Italian, German, Spanish, Polish, Arabic, Japanese

Deposit Methods: Credit/Debit Card, Bitcoin, Neteller, Wire Transfer

Minimum Deposit: N/A

Free Demo Account: Yes

Number of Assets: 200+

Types of Assets: Currency Pairs, CFDs on precious metals, bonds, stocks, indices, commodities, cryptocurrencies.

Trading Accounts and Conditions

PCMTrades offers its users 5 different account types with which to trade:

• Basic
• Bronze
• Silver
• Gold
• Platinum

When you open any one of these accounts, you get a Welcome Bonus. For the Basic and Bronze accounts, you get a 40% bonus, for the Silver you get a 60% bonus, for the Gold you get an 80% bonus and for the Platinum you get a 100% Welcome Bonus.

Other benefits you get with these accounts are 24/7 Customer Support, Daily Market Overview, access to the Education Center and Live Trading Webinars. You also get a daily analysis video and price alerts.

From the Bronze level onwards, you are also assigned an account manager, and for the Gold and Platinum members, you get extra benefits such as personalized trading strategies and trading signals from the trading center. Platinum members also get one-on-one training.

This all sounds excellent, however, there is no mention of how much the minimum deposit amount is, or what the leverage levels are or even what the spread is, which are the conditions of trade that one needs to know.

PCMTrades – Advantages

So, while this website looks really good (it seems packed with tons of information and seems to offer customers everything they need to make a successful trade), lets look at the reality of the situation. First the good points:

• Range of Assets for Trading

PCMTrades seems to offer a wide range of assets to trade with, ranging from currency pairs to CFDs on stocks, indices, commodities, precious metals and cryptocurrencies.

PCMTrades – Disadvantages

When there are too many anomalies in a Forex broker, they need to be highlighted so that traders are protected from being scammed by such unscrupulous parties. Here is the long list of cons that we found with PCMTrades:

• Lack of Regulation

PCMTrades claims that it is headquartered in London, in the UK. There is an address given, as well as a contact number and an email ID. You would expect that if a broker is based out of the UK it would be regulated under the UK FCA.

A regulated broker will give details of its license number on its website. With PCMTrades, we cannot find any such information. Added to that, on checking, the broker’s name doesn’t appear in any of the financial agencies’ lists of regulated brokers.

This can only lead us to the conclusion that PCMTrades is an unregulated broker that is operating illegally.

Plus500

$100

Minimum Deposit

Start Trading

Read Review

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.

 

AvaTrade

$100

Minimum Deposit

Start Trading

Read Review

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.

• Account Types on Offer

On the surface of it, the number and types of accounts offered by PCMTrades looks really good. However, upon closer inspection, you see that the broker is offering a bonus.

Bonuses are not offered by legitimate brokers as they are hugely controversial and considered unethical. In fact, most regulated markets have forbidden the use of bonuses. This is because bonuses come with a lot of strings attached, such as seriously high trading volume requirements before you are allowed to withdraw your funds.

Bonuses usually end up working against traders, since they never really get to withdraw their money as they are unable to reach the ridiculously high targets set by brokers as a condition to funds withdrawal.

• Lack of Clarity on Conditions of Trade

Despite the fact that the account types look really good on the PCMTrades website, when you analyze the information given more closely, you realize that there is no clarity with regard to conditions of trade.

There are no leverage levels mentioned, there are no spreads discussed, and there aren’t any details about transaction fees (such as withdrawal fees, trading fees, deposit fees, etc.). It’s all very pretty, but there is very substance on this website.

• Demo Account

While PCMTrades has a demo account, what we discovered was that it was rigged. A demo account is supposed to accurately reflect market movements. However, this broker’s demo account had us making successful trades 97% of the time, which is realistically impossible.

Doctoring accounts in this way to set unrealistic expectations is a typical trick that is used by scammers.

• Fake Testimonials

This site has posted a number of testimonials for people who are supposedly customers. However, there is no proof that they are actually customers since there is no way to trace them. Only their first names are given and each of the testimonials are generic rather than specific with regard to what they like about PCMTrades.

• Fake Awards

When you go to the PCMTrades home page, you get to see a list of awards that they have won. The problem is that these aren’t real awards – they are fake badges. A real award would have details about the organization giving out the award, and there would be links to prove the broker actually won that award.

• Lack of Security

The PCMTrades platform is not protected from cyber threats with SSL and DDoS encryption layers, which means that your funds and your personal information is not safe with this broker.

Conclusion

After going through the PCMTrades website in detail, we have concluded that this is not a trustworthy broker to trade with. There are too many anomalies – a lack of regulation, vague account types, bonuses, no clarity on the conditions of trade, and false testimonials and awards to attract the inexperienced and gullible trader.

With all the evidence on the table, there is no doubt that PCMTrades is not a reliable or legitimate broker and it would be in your best interests to avoid trading on it.

PCMTrades

3

User Experience

3.5/10

Payment Options

3.0/10

Security

3.0/10

Support

2.8/10

Reputation

2.5/10

Pros

• Range of Tradeable Assets

Cons

• Not Regulated
• Bonuses on Account Types
• Doctored Demo Account
• Fake Testimonials
• Fake Awards