*Disclaimer: CFDs are complex instruments and come with a high risk of losing money rapidly due to leverage. 63% of retail investor accounts lose money when trading CFDs with this provider. You should consider whether you understand how CFDs work and whether you can afford to take the high risk of losing your money.
FXCM was established in 1999 and its majority owner is the Jefferies Financial Group, which is listed on the New York Stock Exchange and has a background in merchant banking. FXCM is considered safe as it has a long track record, a strong parent company, which is publicly traded, does not operate a bank, and is authorized by three tier-1 regulators (high trust), three tier-2 regulators (average trust), and zero tier-3 regulators (low trust). FXCM is regulated by top-tier financial authorities like the UK's Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) and the Australian Securities and Investments Commission (ASIC). It is also regulated by the Cyprus Securities and Exchange Commission (CySEC) and South Africa’s Financial Sector Conduct Authority (FSCA).
FXCM offers a wide variety of of products, that vary depending on the global entity under the FXCM Group houses your trading account. In addition to a growing selection of nearly 300 CFDs that includes fractional shares and 42 forex pairs, FXCM offers exchange-traded securities across 43 exchanges in Europe, North America, and the Asia-Pacific region.
The broker offers a variety of user friendly platforms and resources to make your trading simple. Besides its proprietary Trading Station, FXCM offers MT4, NinjaTrader, and ZuluTrade. Capitalise AI, its latest addition, allows traders to automate strategies using an intuitive, code-free environment. FXCM also presents six specialty platforms for algorithmic traders and fully supports API trading. FXCM Plus provides clients with quality research, while beginner traders receive valuable educational content.
FXCM provides a respectable variety of market research from a combination of in-house content and third-party materials. Overall, FXCM’s research is a touch above the industry average and will satisfy most forex traders, though it’s not as rich or diverse as what’s offered by the best brokers in this category.
Like most brokers, FXCM takes a fee from the spread, which is the difference between the buy and sell price of an instrument. But their fees are relatively standard, and low enough to make the competitive. As a nice bonus, FXCM are one of very few brokers that claim to have no re-quotes, so you don’t have to worry about slippage (your trades being ordered at a different price to what you executed them at).
Overall, FXCM is one of the most popular, and most competitive brokers on the market. It is both highly reputable and highly regulated, offers a vast menu of instruments & a wide variety of trading interfaces, and charges competitive fees for trading. Whether you're trading Forex, CFDs, or something else in FXCM's diverse catalog, you won't be disappointed.
