ForexTB Review: Brokerage Pros and Cons
Once we choose a brokerage, this is necessary to be aware of the full list of pros and cons of the broker that can potentially influence our decision. ForexTB is not an exception. Like any other company, this one has got its own advantages and disadvantages, so it’s better to know ahead what to be ready for. We will do a ForexTB review based on the official website and some independent sources as well.
ForexTB review of regulations and licenses
What a broker says about its credibility on the official website is not always true, unfortunately.
When the broker does not have any notes on its licenses and registration in the footer of the official website — this is the first sign that shows you can be deceived. The second sign of a scam is an image that includes vague information on broker’s licenses and regulations. Plain text that can be easily found by search engines, so scam brokers post the license numbers as an image to trick the web crawlers. For example, they can claim to be regulated by reputable regulatory bodies such as SEC or FCA but want these organizations to be unaware of this.
Once FCA or some other regulatory body finds out some financial institution claims to have their license while, in fact, it has never applied for it — they issue an official scam warning. Let’s see if ForexTB falls under any of such suspicions.
The footer of the ForexTB site and the About Us page contain info on the company’s legal status. It is plain text, not an image, so all is fine in this regard. No ForexTB reviews with scam warnings have also been noted on the internet.
The company claims to be operated by Forex TB Limited, which is a Cyprus firm. They also have been authorized by the Cyprus Securities and Exchange Commission and work under license #272/15. Let’s see what the Cyprus regulator thinks about this information.
It appears that this European regulator has no objections in regard to the information provided on the official ForexTB website. They have licensed this company to provide investment and ancillary services in 2015. Now the broker works across the European Economic Area and Switzerland.
Speaking of the disadvantages of ForextTB regulations and licenses, the list of the countries where the service of this broker is available is rather limited. The US residents and the residents of some other countries such as Belgium can’t trade with ForexTB. In case you are not sure whether your country is on the list of served countries, this will be easy to find out this information on the registration page. The broker will simply not allow you to fill out the registration form in case your IP comes from a country they don’t support.
ForexTB review of the fees
The approach of the brokerage to fees is rather simple and very similar to what CFD brokers with variable spreads offer most of the time. Spreads is what a broker’s main income comes from, and therefore, this is necessary to carefully pay attention to these fees.
Here is the table that you can find on the broker’s website. It demonstrates the spreads for the offered assets in real-time.
The attentive reader will note that the spreads are not very low. Around 2 pips for EURUSD is the industry standard, which is exactly what we see in this table. The screenshot above has been taken at 10 AM Chicago time when this is possible to expect the highest market liquidity. Therefore the spreads at this time are likely to be the lowest. At the time of news releases and at the time of the market opening, the difference between the bid and ask price will spread further, increasing the expected spread up to 4–5 pips during these hours.
Let’s see what real customers write in their ForexTB reviews about the company’s spreads. Having a careful look at all these reviews from different websites such as FPA, Trustpilot and others, one can notice that the ForexTB customers often mention they use the company for mid to long-term trading. Most people won’t find the spreads here to be tight enough for scalping. Moreover, most of these customers say they chose to trade with the broker due to some other features and benefits. Here is an example of a ForexTB review that can illustrate the well-spread opinion on the brokerage:
One may agree or disagree if the tight spreads are suspicious, but there is something else a trader must consider when comparing different broker’s trading fees. Many CFD brokers really offer better spreads and you have probably seen some of those offers of ‘starting from zero’ spreads. There are two details you have to pay attention to in this regard.
Firstly, the brokers with extremely tight spreads always have extra commission per round that can reach up to 5 dollars. Opening and closing a trade takes two rounds. So here is the one extra pip on average that you pay with brokers that practice the spread + commission approach to trading fees.
Secondly, this is important to note that the cost per trade will also depend on the quality of executions. In case the broker allows a slippage of several pips on every second market order or keeps feeding the customer with continuous requotes that result in missed opportunities — in this case, wider spreads at ForexTB stop seeming to be a big deal.
The above ForexTB review is a classic thought that occurs to traders who had to face poor executions with their broker.
ForexTB assets list
The list of the assets that you can trade with ForexTB covers five different categories:
- stocks
- currencies
- cryptocurrencies
- indices
- ETFs
The list is pretty standard. There are no exotics here, but there are some valuable stocks and ETFs that not many CFD brokers offer. Customer reviews also indicate the appreciation of this circumstance:
Once again in a ForexTB review, the trader appreciates the opportunity to take advantage of trading interesting stocks, having fair quotes, and broker’s reliability over favorable spreads that don’t matter much for long-term trades.
ForexTB review of trading analytics and additional services
The company hasn’t got many of educational opportunities. The articles available on the website aim at basic level customers and can’t be considered a good source of inspiration and ideas for professional traders seriously. Nevertheless, ForexTB offers Trading Central addon to MT4 to its customers, which many traders find extremely helpful in their daily tasks.
Trading Central is a mix of human and AI analytics that gives insights on up-to-date market trends, news sentiment, fundamental and technical analysis. It doesn’t force traders to use any but at the same time gives the opportunity to get all the important signals and news in one place without leaving the trading platform.
Here is the ForexTB review of the customer that appreciates such an opportunity above other ones that the broker can give:
Summing it all up, it becomes clear that ForexTB is one of those brokers that don’t tend to create one-in-all service. It focuses on serving EEA customers under the regulation of CySEC, which implies some limits on leverage and bonus promotions. The availability of useful tools like Trading Central for careful analysis creates an opportunity to trade stocks and other CFDs with a competitive advantage of an up-to-date news feed and deep analytics. Excellent executions and broker’s reliability are the other advantages that ForexTB reviews note to be important for real customers.
