Beware! DBFX Trades is an offshore broker! Your investment may be at risk.
RECOMMENDED FOREX BROKERS
Don’t put all your eggs in one basket. Open trading accounts with at least two brokers.
In this review we look at a brokerage company called DBFX Trades which trades in forex, commodities, stocks, indices, CFD and rating trading. Please note that in the Terms and Condition section, it is mentioned that DBFX does not provide investment services in EU, USA, Canada, UK and some other countries.
From the screenshot below, you will notice that the company offers 7 accounts ranging from basic (starting at $200) to VIP+ (starting at $ 50,000) offering free eBook, free training, personal account manager, trading insider, once click trading, pup up alerts for all types of accounts and some price and rollover discounts for some of the pricier accounts.
Sign up consists of providing name, family name, email, country and phone number. You need to verify your account via your email before you are given an account number and a password.
You can use a selection of payment methods to fund your account, such as credit cards, PayPal, Sofort, as well Paysafe card, Neteller and Skrill. The liquidity providers are Deutsche Bank and Bank of America. Funding methods are mostly instant to one business day.
DBFX Trades Regulations and safety of funds
From the screenshots below, you will notice that the company is registered in Vanuatu. The phone number, however, starts with +44 which is for UK. The company is included in the register of the Vanuatu Financial Services Commission and its status is active. Several years ago, in Vanuatu there was no minimum capital requirement for obtaining a forex license. Now the requirement is for $50,000 which helped to reduce the number of registered companies from 500+ to about 145. Nevertheless, compared to some of the numerous brokerage companies regulated by FCA or CySec that should have a minimum capital of 730,000 euros, it may signal some need for caution when choosing to trade via this company. Also, please bear in mind that Vanuatu is an offshore zone and although the company is legitimately registered as a brokerage, it does not compare with the well-established jurisdictions of the EU, USA, UK, Australia and others.
Another issue that we want to comment on as it may have future implications is the fact that in Term and Conditions, DBFX Ltd is mentioned as a subsidiary of Blight Capital Group, a Cyprus Investment firm licensed and regulated by CySec. It may look like something positive, some type of assurance that the brokerage company we want to trade with is regulated by such an impressive authority as CySec. But we did not stop here. We checked the licenses number. It was suspended! So, we urge you to exercise caution, caution and more caution when choosing your brokers!
Please familiarise yourself with the guidelines of the top regulating agencies for licensing forex brokers, such as the Financial Conduct Authority in the UK and the Cyprus Securities and Exchange Commission (CySEC) if you want some guarantee for the financial stability of the company and the security of traders’ funds. Here is a link as well to EU forex brokers with proven legitimacy
DBFX Trades Trading software
As you open the dashboard after registration and look at the menu on the left hand, you will notice that there are a lot of tools available to help you start your trading. If you are a beginner trader, you can watch videos and tutorials to learn about crypto currency, trading tools, commodities and futures contracts, CDFs and stocks. The features of the dashboard also contain an economic calendar, Bloomberg live TV, trading signals, trading central, analytics platform, etc. It is interactive and easy to use.
Interestingly enough, DBFX offers 2 trading platforms – ACTIV8 and SIRIX. Below you’ll see screenshots of ACTIV8. It is visible at first sight that it is actually quite basic with only a few instruments to help you trade. If you click on any of the forex options, you will see that there is market analysis available. However, when you click on the button it doesn’t open, so forget about it. We notice a spread of 1 pip for the AUDUSD which is in line with what regulated brokers would offer. The leverage is 1:50 same as what the USA leverage cap is for non-professional traders. There is also a multiple timeframe option which is helpful in watching and analyzing the forex market.
The second platform, SIRIX, is one of the more popular as it contains more instruments compared to the first one but on the other hand is also cheap to buy for brokers. It also contains a feature loved by scammers – social streaming feed which is there to entice the new inexperienced traders to deposit money and start trading. Fact is that neither of these two platforms offers a demo account which aims is to help beginner traders get used to forex transactions and gain some experience before engaging in real trade, thus lowering the risk which plunging straightaway into trade represents for the inexperienced. That is why, these two platforms do not compare to well-established platforms preferred by legitimate and regulated brokerages, such as MetaTrader 4 and MetaTrader 5 that offer multiple timeframes, indicators, expert advice, auto trading, VPS, an app market and many more.
DBFX Trades Deposit and fees/trading conditions
We already mentioned that the minimum initial deposit is $200.
To start trading, you need to sign the Terms and Conditions document and enter your passport or other ID. It’s a rather lengthy document with a lot of stipulation and no matter how tedious it is to read it, please do so for your own financial safety. So, let’s examine this document and see if there are any pitfalls for the inexperienced trader.
We already mentioned the discrepancy between the licensed number provided and the fact that the license itself is suspended.
The document makes it very clear that potential traders without knowledge or experience should not use the system. It is stated in a warning written in capital letters. The document also very clearly states that DBFX will not take responsibility for any financial loss due to insufficient knowledge and/or experience nor shall it be responsible for the accuracy of the information published on its Web site and urges the potential clients to check and confirm information through independent information sources. This is a very strong disclaimer which at the same time cautions the client and removes any responsibility from this brokerage.
Let’s look at the bonus policy mentioned in this document as it often is an indicator of scamming traps. According to it, the company offers a number of bonuses as an attractive reward feature for its clients. They, however, cannot be withdrawn until the end of Term of Period which varies from asset to asset. Careful reading now may save you a lot of headache in the future, so before you accept any bonus, please read carefully what conditions are involved, e.g., you can withdraw a bonus amount if you have transacted a turnover of 5,000 times, yes, five-thousand times, the combined value of your initial deposit amount and bonus amount. The example provided in the document shows that if your deposit is $1,000 and your bonus is $250, you have to have a total turnover of $6,250,000 before being eligible to withdraw your $250 bonus amount. Good luck with that!
The withdrawal policy contains the stipulation that to withdraw you need to do it in writing with a prior notice to the company of at least 7 business days. How does this compare to the instant deposits or 1 business day deposits?
How does the scam work?
People fall for the scammers machinations because they sometimes lack understanding or experience in how the forex trade works or sometimes they are blinded by desire for a quick and easy profit that seasoned scammers offer sometimes as an ad on Internet to lure people unaware of the risks they will be taking. So, if you are tempted to deposit some amount in such scamming traps, a ‘broker’ will contact you and will start urging you to pour in more money. Scammers are smooth talkers and they will try to persuade you that there is no better time like now to invest more money and make this biiig profit! If you do so, you are more likely to lose the money because this is the name of the game after all. If you smell rat and decide to get out fast, you may realise that it is too late. The scammer first will try to dissuade you from withdrawing and then will try to delay complying with your chargeback request until it is too late and you lose your chance to get your money back.
What to do if scammed?
If you fall pray to a scammer, immediately file for a chargeback if you have used a credit card to make a deposit. There is a good chance that you will be able to get your money back as MasterCard and Visa give you 540 day in which you can file your request.
If you have used bitcoin, however, the chances are not that optimistic and you may not be able to recover your funds. Also, a word of caution when approached by so-called ‘recovery agents’ who may trick you into another scam instead of helping you to get your funds back.
