After I had a career change at the end of the year 2013 where I got introduced back to the world of retail forex trading through a good friend of mine. What triggered me to get back to this industry was when I went to a seminar on stock trading. The huge initial investment needed for stock trading was a turn off for me since my capital wasn't enough to proceed further. The course alone would burned off my entire savings and that doesn't include the initial capital to fund a trading account. Luckily my good friend referred me to a free forex class conducted by a forex broker which I had used way back in 2006. Strangely, there were only 3 person attended the class including myself so I had the upper hand to learn a lot of inside things from the trainer. I then pursued for close to 4 months before I got the trainer to give me a special excel sheet containing trading formulas. That is where my retail online forex trading activity returned.
Enough about my Forex journey, let's talk about a broker that I've been using which has proven to be a reliable broker for me. I even got paid a couple of hundred of dollar just referring people using them (one of the many ways to make money online). The broker is called XM. Previously known as Trading Point during the time I got introduced to Forex 9-10 years back, in my country Malaysia, I believe XM is one of the top name in retail online forex trading. I've been to their office and a class (also free BTW) in Ara Damansara, their seminar at Sheraton Hotel KL 2 (Oct 2014) and their Gala Dinner at Bukit Tinggi (Dec 2014). They're truly doing a lot of aggressive marketing in this country and their turn out is huge, you can refer to their website for the event they've organized. Who doesn't like MONEY right?
That's the fun stuff, let's dive into XM platform technical stuff and some other benefits provided. Here are the pros and cons in my opinion:
Pros:
- I like it when I make a deposit into my account, the money instantly shows up in my MT4 software. No need for waiting unlike the rest of the competitors. BTW, I use Skrill to do my deposit or withdrawal.
- The minimum deposit is USD5 (or around RM20) which is kind of affordable if you ask me. The cost of doing this trading business is very low. I spend more than RM20 on a single trip to Speedmart..haha..
- The Micro lot account is superb with the maximum leverage of 1:888, it gets even better although if you go for full margin it is not recommended.
- There are all kind of MT4 platform available, I only use MT4 Windows and Android to analyze the charts but I execute my trade using the MT4 Multiterminal. There are quite a number of other brokers doesn't give their client the MT4 Multiterminal.
- There are no additional charge for both deposit and withdrawal. So I save some money on the transaction made.
- Their servers are very responsive, I've compared them with another broker I'm using and it is proven to be quicker and no re-quote.
- XM gives 50% bonus on top of the deposit. So if you deposit USD10, you are given USD5 bonus so you have USD15 of equity to play around. This could be very useful if you are very watchful of the margin level (I rarely leave my account margin level below than 500%, its just to high risk).
- There is also a 'No Deposit Bonus' of USD30 promotion since 2014. I've traded using this credit on one of my account registered under my wife's name and grew it to almost USD60 before I got greedy and emptied the account in just 1 day..hahaha..
Cons:
- There are waiting period for withdrawal which in my experience was less than 24 hours.
- The price quote used is 5 decimals (eg. EURUSD 1.26445) which I find a bit advanced during my beginning of trading forex. I would recommend for beginners to forex trading should start with only 4 decimals (eg. EURUSD 1.2644).
- They deploy floating spread where during busy news announcement can get quite high. However don't be scared of the spread, based on my experience it the least thing I worry about.
So there you have it, my review of XM Forex Broker. Please don't ask me on how to trade forex or can I learn to trade from you or anything, I don't do such thing as I do other stuff for a living. However this online forex trading is something that I can get the hang of it and most probably be one of the things I would do when I decide to retire one day.
So go and check out XM broker by clicking the banner below: