Beware! Zurich Markets 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.
Zurich Markets is one of the many forex brokers you see on the Internet. If you are considering trading via its trading platform, we can help you with your research by looking at some key areas.
Zurich Markets Regulation and safety of funds
The first thing you need to check about a forex broker is its registration and whether it’s regulated. In Switzerland, where the address of the broker is, FINMA, the Swiss Financial Market Supervisory Authority, is the body that regulates forex brokers. We checked the register but did not find any traces of Zurich Markets. Obviously, this broker is not licensed and we have grounds to think that most probably we are dealing with scammers.
If you are new to the forex trade, you must know that only licensed forex brokers from well-established jurisdictions can provide a guarantee for the safety of your funds. It means that provisions are in place to make sure that these brokers are not scammers and that you will get compensated if the broker declares bankruptcy. UK, US, EU and Australia are jurisdictions where measures have been taken to prevent scammers from sneaking in. For example, brokers in UK and EU must have an initial capital of no less than 730,000 EUR and they must contribute a compensation scheme from which in case of bankruptcy the clients of this broker will get compensation. If the broker is regulated by FCA, the compensation is up to 85,000 GBP per client and if it is regulated by CySEC, then the compensation is up to 20,000 EUR per client. Also, to prevent shady deals, brokers from these jurisdictions must report on a daily basis their transactions. In US, brokers must have an initial capital of $20 million. As you can see, licensed forex brokers are the most reliable to trade with, so choose wisely!
Zurich Markets Trading software
To its clients Zurich Markets offers the MetaTrader 4 web trader. However, due to broken links in the company website systems, the registration of an account went only half way through.
What we found out is that the spread for the Classic account is 1.5 pips. This spread is within normal limits. However, on the company’s website we find out that the leverage can go as high as 1:1000 which raises a red alarm. Offering such high leverage is like asking you take a huge risk of losing your money. You may think it’s tempting and can bring you a huge win but if you consider that over 70% of traders lose in transactions, chances are on the losing side. Legitimate brokers won’t offer such high leverage. In fact, in EU there is leverage cap of 1:30 and in the US, it’s 1:50 which are measures to prevent traders running the risk of losing their funds.
We must say that MT4 is one of the best trading platforms in the forex trade. Around 80% of the brokers are using it due to its many excellent trading tools and instrument. This trading platform comes with an excellent range of charting tools and options that provide traders with a wide choice of charts in different designs and technical analysis indicators, such as Bollinger Bands, Fibonacci retracement, moving averages and others which help traders predict to future direction of exchange and gives them the opportunity to make profit. In addition to that, MT4 comes with code base with customs scripts, has an auto trading option, an app market and a financial calendar, as well as many others.
However, what you need to remember is that if the broker is not licensed, it does not matter if it offers the best trading platform. Choosing such broker will put you at risk of losing your funds!
Zurich Markets Deposit/Withdrawal methods and fees
Zurich Markets offers 4 different accounts (screenshot below) – Classic, Silver, Gold and VIP. The minimum initial deposit is $5,000. We must say that this deposit is very high. Licensed brokers will never ask for such high deposit. The minimum initial deposits for the other accounts are $10,000, 25,000 and 50,000 respectively. Obviously, this non-legit broker wants to scam you good!
In the payment options, however, we find information that contradicts the one given in the account types (screenshot below). Here what we see is that the minimum deposit is 250 USD/EUR. We cannot explain why such discrepancy exist on this company’s website except for the fact that no self-respecting licensed broker will put such contradictory information.
As you can see, the deposit and withdrawal methods consist of wire transfer, VISA, MasterCard and Bitcoin. There are no deposit or withdrawal fees and processing time varies from instant (Bitcoin) to up to 15 business days (wire transfer). Is this broker trying to encourage its clients to use Bitcoin as payment methods? Could this have any implications later on? Please read carefully the last section of this review to find out.
In the Terms and Conditions document, we find out that the broker may offer bonuses a.k.a non-deposited funds. What is important to know here is that those non-deposited funds and bonuses are not the client’s but the broker’s and they normally come with hard to fulfill conditions and may affect your withdrawal options. The broker states that the bonuses may be withdrawn only after the client executes a minimum trading volume equal to 30 times the deposit amount plus the bonus. The implications, should you choose to receive a bonus is that you won’t be able to touch your funds until you fulfill this requirement and you may find yourself entangled in a hard to sort out mess.
For your information a legitimate forex broker will never offer bonuses or non-deposited funds which again is a clear indicator that this broker is scam.
How does scam work?
No one wants to be duped by scammers, but it happens all the time because they know how to manipulate people. As they say in one popular song “sweet dreams are made of this” and this is what scammers rely on – creating in people’s mind a sweet dream of being rich! Scams usually start by unsolicited telephone calls or ads on the Internet or social media promising quick and easy profit. It is easy to fall into scammers’ trap and once you make a deposit, you are done for! Scammers won’t let you get away easily even if you realise that you are being scammed. They will try to delay you when you try to withdraw your funds by asking you to provide this document or fill out this form, etc., in order to make you miss the deadline when you can file for chargeback.
What to do if scammed?
You need to act very quickly. First of all, if you have made a deposit using a credit card, you must immediately file for chargeback. Fortunately, VISA and MasterCard allow for 540 day period in which you can file for chargeback. This is the good news. The bad news is that if you have made a deposit using bank wire or Bitcoin, the chances of you getting your funds back are nil!
Another thing you can do is cancel your credit card if the scammers have your CVV code. Check your PC and erase the software that gives scammers access to your personal data.
Be careful, because even doing all that we recommended, your unfortunate experience with scammers may not be over. There are the so-called recovery agents. One of those may approach you offering to recover your funds for a fee. Do not trust them and always check the legitimacy of the recovery agent and the agency.
Also, be aware that some “victims” of scam may post comments after the review, saying how they lost money and how a recovery agent helped them retrieve their funds. They will even put the contact info for this so-called recovery agent. Do not trust them either as it is another case of scam!
