SmartFX – Are They Secure Enough to Trade With?
Stop! It’s a Scam! Your money is not safe if you are trading with this unregulated, off-shore broker.
SmartFX - DO NOT TRADE WITH THIS PROVIDER
2.3/10
$100
Minimum Depositupdated 2020
SmartFX is a dodgy broker with an offshore license, who claims to be based in Vanuatu. According to this broker, it is owned and operated by Smart Securities and Commodities Limited which is an offshore enterprise regulated under the Vanuatu Financial Services Commission (VFSC) who is responsible for regulating the forex market sector of Vanuatu nation. It is not that the offshore license does not have any value but in actuality, even it is not confirmed that SmartFX is actually licensed by VFSC or not because when the authorized financial dealer’s list was checked in the database of VFSC, a company was found with the name of Smart Securities and Commodities Limited.
Try these regulated brokers if you want to start trading cryptocurrencies
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://smartfx.com/
Founded: 2020
Regulations: Unregulated
Languages: English, Arabic, and Japanese
Deposit Methods: Visa and Master cards, Skrill, Neteller, and Wire Transfer
Minimum Deposit: No information given on the website
Free Demo Account: Yes
Number of Assets: 73 + Trading instruments
Types of Assets: Forex, CFD-Indices, Futures, CFD-Equities, UK Brent Oil, US Crude Oil, US Natural Gas, Indices, and Stocks
Trading Accounts and Conditions
SmartFX offers only one type of account with a free demo account facility:
- Smart Account: maximum leverage is 1:400 with competitive spreads and 73+ trading instruments.
SmartFX – Advantages
There are no incentive bonuses or advantages that SmartFX offers to the customers.
SmartFX – Disadvantages
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An Unregulated Enterprise
SmartFX is a dodgy broker with an offshore license, who claims to be based in Vanuatu. According to this broker, it is owned and operated by Smart Securities and Commodities Limited which is an offshore enterprise regulated under the Vanuatu Financial Services Commission (VFSC) who is responsible for regulating the forex market sector of Vanuatu nation. It is not that the offshore license does not have any value but in actuality, even it is not confirmed that SmartFX is actually licensed by VFSC or not because when the authorized financial dealer’s list was checked in the database of VFSC, a company was found with the name of Smart Securities and Commodities Limited. Here it is not sure that it is the same company as the name does not match because of the “and” word. In addition to this, the regulator VFSC also does not provide any information related to the domain names of their forex brokers. So, it is not confirmed if SmartFX is the same company found in the database of VFSC or not.
Along with it, Vanuatu is an offshore area located in the middle of the South Pacific Ocean, a thousand miles faraway from the coast of New Zealand. Hence, even if SmartFX was licensed with the VFSC, it would have meant nothing because Vanuatu is one of the remote located offshore zones having no capacity and resources to overlook the internationally operating forex brokers like SmartFX.
Further, the regulatory requirements of VFSC cannot be compared with those of reputable and renowned financial institutions like FCA in the UK and CySEC in Cyprus. Whereas, VFSC has the only requirement from brokers to hold a security bond of $50,000with the local registrar of the Supreme Court in the country. On the other hand, all the brokers regulated in the EU have to maintain a minimum capital of not less than 730,000 EUR. Hence, the regulatory standards of VFSC cannot be matched in any way with those of EU regulators.
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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Inadequate and misleading information
The website of SmartFX does not state any details related to the trading conditions such as spread levels. There is only mentioned an unfulfilling spread value of 3 pips in the demo account for the EUR/USD currency pair. Despite that, this does not reflect the actual cost of trade for which you will have to open a live account and execute the trading activity. It means you will just have to hang on the hope. This is a common practice followed by the mistrustful brokers to provide inadequate information for hiding their real identities.
In addition to the inadequate information, dubious brokers also mislead investors by giving them different details at different sections of the website for the same service. For example, the demo MT5 account offered by SmartFX is showing only one type of trading asset while at the same time the website is showing several types of trading assets. This is only a way used by fraudsters to mislead the consumers.
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Risky Spread Levels
Talking about the trading conditions especially the spread levels, when you will open the SmartFX trading platform it will show you a benchmark spread floated over 1.7 pips for the most common currency pair EUR/USD that is not an attractive figure for the traders. Nevertheless, things start getting worse when you will execute a trading activity by opening a position, and suddenly you will come to know that SmartFX charges a commission of $20 per standard lot traded by the client. Hence, if calculated, this will yield an actual spread of 3.7 pips for the EUR/USD currency pair, which is simply unacceptable and highly risky to trade with.
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False Withdrawal Time Claims
SmartFX offers the same methods for withdrawals that are used for depositing the funds. Even though the broker falsely claims the process of withdrawal requests to be 3 hours, which is hard to believe because most of the legit brokers require a day or more to process the withdrawal requests.
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Inadequate Information
Like other deceivers, SmartFX is also trying to hide their real profile by giving inadequate and misleading information. The broker has not mentioned any details about the most common and important question asked by the traders that is the initial minimum deposit amount. Unfortunately, neither the website nor the FAQ section covered this important topic of minimum funding requirement. Hence, you can only guess that this information is only available to the verified users of the SmartFX.
Conclusion
SmartFX claims to be a properly regulated and licensed forex broker that is offering hundreds of trading assets with a single type of account and attractive leverage caps on the MT5 trading platform. Yet, this seems an attractive offer but unfortunately, SmartFX is one of those brokers that are all talk but no walk. It is in actuality an offshore forex broker with an offshore license, zero credibility, and many fraud-warning signs. It is, therefore, suggested to choose the brokers which are supervised by most well-known and reputable financial authorities. This is because these authorities have imposed many rules and regulations, and customer protection measures to ensure the safety of investor’s funds.
SmartFX
Pros
- None
Cons
- An unregulated enterprise
- Inadequate and misleading information
- Risky spread levels
- False withdrawal time claims
- Inadequate information
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.
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