XM Review (2020) | Rated by Professional Traders – AskTraders.com
Founded in 2009 XM (operating as Trading Point of Financial Instruments Limited ) is a multi-award-winning, global Forex and CFD broker. Regulated by several leading financial authorities, including the top-tier Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) in the UK, XM provides a safe and secure place to trade. Priding itself on its well-earned fairness and reputability, XM…
Founded in 2009 XM (operating as Trading Point of Financial Instruments Limited ) is a multi-award-winning, global Forex and CFD broker. Regulated by several leading financial authorities, including the top-tier Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) in the UK, XM provides a safe and secure place to trade. Priding itself on its well-earned fairness and reputability, XM strives to provide an industry-leading trading experience.
But is XM the right broker for you? In this XM review, we’ll be taking a look at everything you need to know about this broker, including account types, what fees to expect, regulation, trading platforms on offer and more.
Strengths
Well-regulated across a selection of highly respected bodies
Low minimum deposits
Competitive spreads across all intruments
Wide variety of educational resources
Reliable – 99.35% of trading orders executed in less than 1 second
Weaknesses
Only supports MT4/MT5
Does not offer Cryptocurrency or ETF CDFs
Table of Contents
What can you trade?
£5
Min Deposit
Mid
App Support
XM offers its clients access to a wide variety of currency pairs, including majors, minors, and exotics. In total, there are 57 pairs in total to select from with tight spreads and no re-quotes. Leverage up to 30:1 is available for retail clients, with no hidden charges and the ability to trade 24/5.
Spreads will vary depending on the type of account opened, but XM is well-known for its ultra-low spreads, which it achieves with variable spreads just like the interbank Forex market. Additionally, XM also utilises fractional Pip pricing to get the best prices from its various liquidity providers.
What does this all mean? Well, instead of 4-digit quoting prices, XM clients can benefit from even the smallest price movements by adding a 5th digit, or fraction.
Our review has also found XM to be very transparent when it comes to the cost of trading with them. This applies to two key areas of trading cost. The spread will depend somewhat on the account type you choose from the three that are available. These are the Micro Account, the Standard Account, and the Zero Account. There are no commissions or unexpected trading fees applied across any of these accounts, and you can expect spreads from 0.1pips when trading with major currency pairs.
As a part of our review, we also took into account the leverage available with XM, Within Europe, due to ESMA regulation and requirements, all brokers are restricted to offering a maximum leverage of 1:30. This is also the maximum leverage you can expect to access as a trader based in Europe.
£5
Min Deposit
Mid
App Support
1:30
Max Leverage
XM offers traders a wide variety of contract for differences (CFDs) to choose from, including:
Stock CFDs
Commodity CFDs
Equity Indices CFDs
Precious metals CFDs
Energies CFDs
We did, however, notice that XM does not currently offer ETF or Cryptocurrency CFDs. Depending on the instruments they want to trade, this could be a limitation of the XM platform for many traders. Despite this, the number of CFDs on offer is more than suitable for the majority of traders.
Stock CFDs
XM offers CFDs on over 1,200 stocks with some of the world’ largest companies including Apple and Facebook, and almost everything in between. With such a wide variety of stock CFDs to choose from, there is almost certainly something to suit every trader. This wide selection of stock CFDs is supported by the ability to go long or short depending on market moves, no extra or hidden fees, spreads as low as o.01 (on certain stocks) and leverage up to 20:1 for this instrument. A dedicated Shares account is available for those who wish to focus only on stock trading is also available, although this is only offered if you are trading under the IFSC regulatory umbrella.
We also liked the handy overview that XM provides of each stock. In this example, we can see an overview of Apple (AAPL) stock with key information such as margin requirement, min/max trade size and more. This in-depth overview only adds to the overall experience for traders and is in-line with XM’s beliefs around transparency and education of its clients:
Commodity CFDs
XM breaks its commodity CFDs down into separate instruments: Commdity CFDs, Precious Metals and Energies.
CFD Type
No. Available
Commodities
8
Precious Metals
2
Energies
5
In total, there are 8 Commodities Futures CFDs to select from, including Cocoa, Coffee, Corn, Sugar and more. When it comes to Precious Metals CFDs, XM offers just two to choose from: Gold or Silver.
While many traders will be happy with this, it’s worth noting that XM doesn’t currently offer CFDs on other precious metals such as Platinum and Palladium. Not a deal-breaker by any means, but something worth bearing in mind if you’re looking to trade CFDs on precious metals.
Finally we arrive at Energies CFD. The 5 main energy CFDs on offer here include BRENT, GSOIL, NGAS, OIL and OILMn. While we’ve seen more commodity CFDs with other brokers, XM does an excellent job at focusing on some of the most popular and sought-after CFDs. So, unless you’re a trader looking for a particular niche commodity, chances are you’ll find exactly what you’re looking for with XM.
It’s worth noting again at this point that, as XM operates using variable spreads, the spread on offer will vary depending on the commodity you opt for.
What did our traders think after reviewing the key criteria?
This is an area within our review that we feel XM performed consistently well on. only provide for a variable spread throughout all of their market, but this remains highly competitive regardless of your account type, asset traded, or location.
The fees are kept to a minimum and transparent at every step. This includes free deposits and commission-free trading on all except the Zero account. Even at this, the commission here amounts to a very reasonable $7 per round trade on a currency lot.
If you decide to open an account with XB, you will notice that there are three types of accounts available:
Micro Account
Standard Account
XM Zero Account
XM clients are able to multiple trading accounts (up to 8) at any one time. In addition, swap-free Islamic Accounts are available which feature no rollover interest or overnight positions in accordance with the Islamic faith. Let’s take a look at some of the key similarities and differences between these trading accounts:
Micro Account
Standard Account
XM Zero Account
Contract Size
1 Lot = 1,000
1 Lot = 100,000
1 Lot = 100,000
Spread
from 1 pip
from 1 pip
from 0 pips
Commission
❌
❌
✔️
Minimum Deposit
$5
$5
$100
Min. Trade Volume
0.01 Lots (MT4) / 0.1 Lots (MT5)
0.01 Lots
0.01 Lots
Lot Restriction Per Ticket
100 Lots
50 Lots
50 Lots
Max. Open/Pending Orders
200
200
200
Depending on the instrument, XM traders have the flexibility to trade with leverage from 2:1 to 30:1 on all accounts. There are no changes in margin overnight or at weekends as well as the added benefit of negative balance protection, meaning traders cannot lose more than they deposit with XM.
As the name implies, XM’s newest account type, XM Zero, offers access to spreads as low as 0 pips along with a no re-quote execution policy. In addition, hedging and EAs are both allowed on XM Zero accounts, as well as zero fees on deposits and withdrawals.
When it comes to trading platforms, like many brokers XM provides traders with access to both MetaTrader 4 (MT4) and MetaTrader 5 (MT5). Incredibly popular among traders, both MetaTradcer platforms are available to XM clients across desktop, Android & iOS apps for mobile trading on-the-go, tablet and also as a browser-based platform.
While both MT4 and MT5 have rightly drawn praise for their full suite of capabilities, there is an argument to be made that they are not the most user-friendly platforms for beginners. With this in mind, we were disappointed to not find an in-house trading platform catered towards beginners that is offered by some competing brokers. Despite this, we can’t find much to fault with XM’s trading platforms as they are very much in line with what is offered by competing brokers.
Related
Our UK review team was pleased to find the XM homepage to be the same, intuitive, and well-organized site design that is used by XM worldwide. Everything you need or want to do is within very easy with just a few clicks, and both layout and design carry a degree of integrity which exemplifies that of XM themselves.
There are no overly complex menus to navigate, and you can have either an demo account or an live account open within just a few minutes from arriving on the homepage.
When it comes to customer service and support, XM is hands-down one of the industry’s leading brokers and our experts were suitably impressed by XM’s customer-centric approach to trading. XM prides itself on being a ‘human broker’.
What does this translate into? For starters, XM has a strict no re-quote and rejections policy, with 99.35% of trades executed in less than 1 second. This means that your orders will be carried out with practically no delay at the best available market price. For beginners, the ability to trade with smaller lots means lower risk which, combined with low minimum deposits and no fees, makes XM a particularly beginner-friendly trading platform.
Perhaps the most impressive feature offered by XM is its extensive educational material, which is all completely free of charge. This includes:
Forex webinars
Platform tutorials
Forex seminars
Pocasts
XM TV
Access to free market research and trade ideas
Economic calendar
A live educational video on XM Live
XM clients also have access to a personal Account Manager that is available 24 hours a day via live chat, telephone and email in a wide variety of languages. When it comes to customer service, the size of your account does not matter and XM puts its clients front and centre – regardless of the size of their investment.
XM offers traders plenty of payment methods, making deposits and withdrawals an incredibly straightforward and simple process. It offers many of the most popular deposit and withdrawal methods, including bank transfer, Visa and Mastercard. In addition, it also supports e-wallets such as Neteller and Skrill. All of these same payment methods are also available as withdrawal methods when the time comes to transfer some funds in the other direction.
There are a variety of great bonuses available. Not in the financial sense, but in terms of enhancing your trading knowledge through the solid and very extensive educational infrastructure that XM provides.
Here you can access a range of educational material including articles, video tutorials, and research tools such as a comprehensive economic calendar to help you build and plan your trading journey with XM.
Although an deposit bonus os up to 50% is available in some parts of the world, this was not the case with our UK review where XM prioritises regulatory compliance.
A useful and easy to access demo account is also widely available to all traders to try out the real-life XMtrading situation without any risk to your funds.
XB is authorised and regulated by three of the world’s leading financial regulatory bodies, ensuring a safe trading experience for its clients. This includes:
These regulators require XB to fully segregate traders’ accounts from company funds, adhere to strict anti-money laundering and capital requirements, comply with ‘know your client’ procedures, as well as a host of other stringent measures designed to protect traders.
In addition, XB has secured registrations for outwards passporting with the regulators of the following countries:
XM is a highly-decorated broker that has won numerous prestigious awards over the years. This includes recent accolades such as:
Most Reliable Broker – CFI.co 2020
Most Transparent Broker – CFI.co 2020
Best Online CFD & FX Trading Broker – Global Business Awards 2020
Best Customer Service Experience – Global Business Awards 2020
Global Forex Broker of the Year – Global Forex Awards
It goes without saying that XB is clearly a well-respected and customer-centric broker that you can trust. This is highlighted in two key awards in 2020 for Transparency and Customer Service Experience.
XM FAQs
Yes. XM is a reputed broker, operating since 2009. Besides the 1000 + CFD products covering a range of asset classes, and regulators including the CySEC, FCA, ASIC, IFSC, and DFSA, you can open an account with a minimum deposit of $£5. The award-winning broker also offers a combination of low spread- high leverage, MT4/MT5 platforms, multiple funding methods, and 24/5 customer support.
XM provides a choice of several deposit methods. These include Visa/MasterCard, wire transfer and eWallets such as Neteller and Skrill. WhilE XMdoes not charge a fee to fund your trading account, your bank or the payment processor could levy a fee. It would be advisable to check the fund transfer charges with them before funding your account.
XM.com processes all withdrawal requests within 24 hours. Fund withdrawals via eWallets are generally credited to your account the same day. However, if you choose bank wire transfers or cards, it could take 2-5 days to receive the credit. XM does not charge for processing withdrawals, but your bank or payment processor could levy a fee.
Traders registering with XM have the choice of three account types- The Micro, Standard and the Zero Account. While the trading conditions like the number of base currencies, contract size, and the spread are a factor of the account type, the CFD broker does not charge commissions. The only costs are the spread, which starts at 0.1 pip for the major FX pairs and the swap for holding overnight positions.
CFDs are complex instruments and come with a high risk of losing money rapidly due to leverage. 75% 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.
These new pairs have been available since July 1st, 2019 and provide an excellent opportunity to diversify your clients’ portfolios and increase their exposure to this vibrant 24/7 market.
Asset
Typical Spread
Leverage
Margin
Min Nominal Trade Size
NEOUSD
1.5% Over-market
2:01
50%
10
EOSUSD
2% Over-market
2:01
50%
10
MIOTAUSD
1.5% Over-market
2:01
50%
10
To unify their cryptocurrency instrument labels, They are relabeling their existing Ethereum, Ripple & Litecoin instruments, by replacing the existing instruments with new USD labelled ones:
Asset
Old Symbol
New Symbol
RIPPLE
XRP
XRPUSD
ETHEREUM
ETH
ETHUSD
LITECOIN
LTC_Mini
LTCUSD
These new pairs have also been available since July 1st,
The trading conditions for each one is identical to those of the older respective assets they replace.
Effective immediately, new positions are only available on the new pairs.
Avatrade Clients will not be able to open new positions on the old assets, but those already open will remain unaffected until July 29th.
Existing positions on XRP, ETH and Litecoin-mini that remain open on July 29th will be automatically replaced with corresponding positions on the new pairs, , at the same opening price and at no cost to clients.
as any broker that values their clients would do , Avatrade makes sure that the clients will not be affected by the change.
Neteller one of the most known Digital fiat currency wallet provider , has started allowing its users to buy, sell, and hold cryptocurrencies including BTC, BCH, ETH, ETC, and LTC.
They do this on the large scale with a pilot in 10 countries and soon another 50 countries to join . They understand that if you do this effort it will only succeed if you can do this on a global scale.
founded in 1999, Paysafe Financial Services entered the market with the mission to provide an online alternative to the known traditional payment methods.
Most of the traders aiming us now neteller as one of the companies through which we made our deposits and if we had any profits also our withdrawals. A couple of years ago they left the Forex and Binary industry behind since the charge-back issue became just too expensive.
But as any companies knows, if you do not adept you die. The binary option market is all but dead and the Forex industry has moved also into the directions of the cryptocurrencies. thus, neteller understands that this is where the future is.
So Lasts week they announced that they are now offering a wallet with buy and sell cryptocurrency options.
As of today, Neteller users can buy, hold and sell cryptocurrencies via a recognized cryptocurrency exchange including bitcoin, bitcoin cash, ethereum, ethereum classic and litecoin, purchased using any one of 28 fiat currencies available in the Neteller wallet.
It may not seem so exciting but for many users that love this service it actually is. More and more currencies will be added making them an true exchange in the near future.
Now one is able to fund their neteller account through many different means (Mobile, Epay, Paysafecard, local bank deposits, and bitcoin)
We think that will make the threshold for many people, who would want to buy or sell cryptocurrencies, lower. This in return is a good thing for the overall acceptance of the cryptocurrencies in the mainstream of every day life.
The rates offered are somewhat in the lower middle of the current market making them go for the save route. The average market rates on the major cryptocurrency exchanges differ all in all not that much anyways, as this is not the main reason to choose to buy Bitcoin through Neteller
The minimum cryptocurrency purchase or sale amount is “approximately equal to 10 EUR,” the firm clarified, adding that the maximum amount depends on the transaction limits associated with each account.
When You open an account with Neteller you have to choose your default currency. This is of course for most people in accordance on their geographical locations, people in Britain will go for the pound most Europeans go for the euro and pretty much the rest of the work goes for the US Dollar, thou other currencies are available
The fee is 1.5 percent for purchasing and selling cryptocurrencies from wallets with EUR or USD as the default currency.
The fee rises to 3 percent for wallets with other default currencies.
Neteller | Why is this a good move for neteller and one that we should expect from other online Payment providers as well ?
At this moment till last week Neteller users can pay, get paid on thousands of sites, and send money around the world through their system.
The company claims to have “millions of point-of-sale, ATM and online locations” for users to withdraw or spend their cash.
Last July 25, Paysafe ( which as you remember is the company that owns Neteller and Skrill) announced that another digital wallet provider in its group, Skrill ( formerly known as moneybookers), started allowing customers to “instantly buy and sell cryptocurrencies, including bitcoin, bitcoin cash, ether and litecoin, using any one of the 40+ fiat currencies available in the Skrill wallet.”
We could now see that this was like their test run on this concept.
We do not know the numbers that Skrill produced since they offered this service but it must have been encouraging enough for Paysafe to include their flagship brand in this endevour.
We will see where this leads but we are hopeful that this is the next step in global acceptance to the cryptocurrency revolution. Let me know what you think
The currency trading industry and now also the cryptocurrency trading industry have gone through enormous volatile times the last couple of years. Now with trump and its trade wars. The fast rise and somewhat recline of the cryptocurrencies and the fast pace of international politics and economies that create high rises and steep fall of the currencies.
So what does it all mean and what can you do before start to trade on these news headlines.
Good brokers like LegacyFX and UBCFX provide the traders with the latest market news and updates on a continuous basis but if you are new to trading you still have no idea what to do with this.
You start by understanding that the involves a high degree of risk, including the risk of losing you hard earned money. Besides the ones that were lucky enough to have bought Bitcoin a couple of years back and cashed in in the end of 2017, most people don’t get rich overnight.
You have to understand that you only trade with money that you are able to lose, going hungry because you want to open a trade is not the right wy to go about it.
So, What is Forex?
You should by now understand that the value of currencies goes up and down every day.
This in general becomes apparent the moment you go on vacation and what you bought last year with your money now is not the same amount you get today at the exchange.
This is on a large scale, what a lot of people do not know is that there is a foreign exchange market – or ‘Forex’ for short – or “FX” for even shorter, where you can potentially make a profit from the movement of these currencies.
The most known Trader is George Soros who made a billion dollars in a day by trading currencies. This is of course on a scale that we are not able to reach and you need a huge amount of money to begin with. Still he made a billion in one day!!
The internet has played a huge part in making trading in currencies accessible for the masses. You also do not need huge amounts of money to actually do this. Now keep in mind that if you make 10% profit on your investment but the investment was just $50 you basically just end up with $55. still no bank will give you 10% interest on your money.
Many people and I am talking millions are now trading every day, most do this on the side and don’t do this as a full-time job, but there are today enough people that are full time traders and making enough money to live comfortably.
Retail forex market needed Brokers
The Forex market for the retail market was born, it started around 15 years ago to become more serious as technologies advanced and the stream of information became almost instant, this is important for trading as one second can make the difference between profit or loss.
So, the moment the technology was there the people that wanted to trade were there all that was needed were the Forex brokers that offered the platform for trading.
There are latterly hundreds of companies of not thousands that offer this service and there are good ones like LegacyFX and there are scams (these tend to not last long)
Forex explained in short
The Forex market is the largest financial market on the planet and has been for many years now.
Its average daily trading volume is more than $4 trillion. (just let that number sink in for a second). Of this total amount around 5% is the retail market meaning traders like you and me. Still 5% of 4 Trillion is still a number with a lot of zeros behind it.
If you compare that with the New York Stock Exchange, which only has an average daily trading volume of $55 billion. You truly see the size.
To give you another example:
if you were to put ALL of the world’s equity and futures markets together, their combined trading volume would still only equal a 25% of the daily Forex market. Insane right?
Why does this even matter?
It matters because there are so many buyers and sellers that transaction prices are kept low. To explain how trading the Forex market is different than trading stocks, here are a few major benefits.
Most Brokers don’t charge commissions – you pay only the bid/ask spreads.
There’s 24hour trading – you decide when to trade and how to trade.
You can focus on your currencies and become experts in only those pairs that you follow instead of following and selecting out of 5000 stocks
You can trade on leverage, (something to be very aware of as it can magnify potential gains but also your losses).
Forex is accessible for almost everyone– you don’t need a lot of money to get started
In the Forex market you can trade on Demo accounts to learn before you commit your money
How is Forex traded?
The mechanics of a trade are virtually identical to those in other markets. The only difference is that you’re buying one currency and selling another at the same time.
This is also the reason as to why the currencies are quoted in pairs, like EUR/USD or USD/GBP.
The exchange rate represents the purchase price between the two currencies.
Example:
The EUR/GBP rate represents the number of GBP one EUR can buy (relevant now with all the Brexit issues going on) . If you think the Euro will increase in value against the British Pound, you buy Euros with British Pounds. If the exchange rate rises, you sell the Euros back, and you cash in your profit.
Now the same works for strading Bitcoin, ethereum, Litecoin or other cryptocurrencies. this has become an entire new market and has introduced many people to Forex . you should here be also aware that trading cryptocurrencies is like regular trading so you will be able to lose great sums of money.
the Best thing i found about trading cryptocurrencies is that the Leverage by default tends to be very low which makes the risk of losing it all much smaller.
Sounds simply enough?
Why does not everyone Trade.
The same could be asked as to why not everyone plays poker, you can make money. The comparison between the 2 is actually closer than you might think.
All traders that are successful will tell you that 80% of successful trading is psychology and the other 20% is research. It takes time to get the research down, but it can take a lifetime to master the psychology.
People tend to do things differently when real money is on the line and are accepting losses in the hope that the trend will reverse or taking out profit too early because they don’t want to lose what they just have gained. In short, the psychology is the hard part.
One should be aware that you can loose real money and a lot of it very fast if you don’t know what you are doing.
Now most Good Forex brokers offer some educational tools, some more than others that will teach you how to trade. There is also something that is called social trading that will allow you to follow other traders and see what they are doing in order for you to learn and make money at the same time.
So here are some ground rules for those that look to start trading
Get involved in the market, watch read and listen to the news to understand what is happening
Go through a trading course ( a good one is here)
Open a demo account and trade at least a month (my advice to do this even longer)only on this before you even think about trading with real money.
Check out social trading, there are some options for this, this broker offers this also.
Try with an amount that you are able to afford losing. See this as your tuition money.
Take it slow, don’t become greedy and follow the basic rules
Basic Rules (there are many more but start with these)
The trend is your friend
Don’t add money to a losing position
Don’t trade on too many different currency pairs
Trade only with a good broker
Don’t open to many positions (no one needs 100 positions a day)
Develop your strategy and stick to it.
Know that NO ONE is 100% of the times right, everyone loses some.
Last but not least, don’t trade with money you cannot afford to lose.