Beware! TTS 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.
Everything on the TTS Markets website looks professional and there is abundant information about all aspects of trading with this broker to satisfy the curiosity of even the most demanding potential trader. However, for us, the main question is whether this broker is reliable to trade with or not.
TTS Markets Regulation and safety of funds
We find out that TTS Markets is the trade name of the TTS Business Solutions Private Limited with an address in the UK. As all legit and licensed brokers must be regulated by the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA), the official body that regulates brokers, we check its register. It appears that the name of this company does not exist in the FCA register, as you can see from the screenshot below. This means that TTS Markets is not a legit and licensed broker, therefore, trading with it will put your funds at risk. Furthermore, all the baloney information about the security of your funds that you can see on the company’s website is made void by the fact that this broker is not licensed.
Your first port of call should be finding a licensed broker that can guarantee the safety of your funds. To do so, you can use the links we provide below that will provide you with information about licensed brokers that are reliable to trade with. These brokers are licensed in the well-established jurisdictions of the US, Australia, the EU, the UK and others and there are a lot of benefits for potential traders is they choose to trade with them. For example, all licensed brokers must be well-capitalised which, among other things serves as a barrier against scammers. In the US, licensed brokers must invest at least $20 million in the form of initial capital, in Australia, it’s 1 million AUD and in the EU and the UK, the amount is 730,000 EUR. As you can see scammers will never deposit so much money for the benefit of looking legit. Other measures to protect clients’ funds include keeping their funds separately in tier-1 bank establishments, report transactions on a daily basis for the purpose of transparency, provide protection against negative balance, keep low leverage, etc. In addition to that, in the EU and the UK, licensed brokers must participate in a compensation fund or scheme from which their clients can be reimbursed in case of bankruptcy. Brokers in the UK that are regulated by FCA and deduct funds towards the local Financial Services Compensation Scheme, will be able to guarantee up to 85,000 GBP per person in the form of recompense in case of bankruptcy. Legit brokers regulated by CySec that contribute to the local Investor Compensation Fund will be able to reimburse their clients with up to 20,000 EUR per person in case of insolvency.
As you can see, there are a lot of benefits in trading with licensed brokers and we hope that you’ll be able to find the best one for your trading needs.
TTS Markets Trading software
The trading software for TTS Markets consists of the MetaTrader 5 platform. This is one of the best platforms in forex trade and very popular among forex broker. This platform comes equipped with an auto trading option, VPS, trading signals, code base with customs scripts, an app market, financial calendar, etc. It’s got an excellent package of charting options that offer many charts, time frames, colours, etc., and even the option of creating personalised templates. In addition to that, the technical analysis indicators, such as Fibonacci retracement, Bollinger Bands, moving averages, etc., help traders predict the future direction of exchange rates and make a profit. In 2016, a hedging option was added on the platform which made it even more popular than before.
We did not open a live account as we did not want to provide this shady broker with any personal or financial information. Instead, we opened the demo account for illustrative purposes, so that you can get an idea what the platform looks like (screenshot below).
On the left is the menu with the trading products which in this case shows the forex currency pairs with their bid/ask price. Beneath is the navigator which opens the accounts, indicators, expert advisors, scripts and other services. In the middle is displayed the chart of one of the major currency pairs, EUR/USD, with the fluctuation in its price in a given time frame. The number of charts that are displayed may vary according to the trader’s needs.
However, a platform is as good as its broker is reliable. If we look at how the parameters for spread and leverage are set up, we have a lot of reasons to worry. First of all, if you look at the account types information on the company’s website, you will notice that the spread for some accounts starts from 2 pips. This is above the industry average of 1.5 pips and the implications for the traders are that the cost of transactions will be too high and they won’t be able to make a sustainable profit in the long run. Another extremely worrisome fact is that the leverage can reach 1:1000. First of all, this is another proof that this broker is a scammer as for licensed brokers in the UK and the EU, there is a cap on leverage and it cannot exceed 1:30. High leverage may look very attractive, especially to traders with very little or no experience, as it seems that it amplifies the potential for making a big win. However, if you keep in mind that around 70% of traders lose in transactions, chances are, if your transaction is not successful, you’ll end up suffering a great financial loss. That is why in the EU and the UK leverage is capped so that traders won’t engage in reckless trading exposing their funds to risk of losing them.
TTS Markets Deposit/Withdrawal methods and fees
To its clients, TTS Markets offers 7 trading accounts – Cent, Mini, Classic, Pro, VIP, Fixed Spread and Islamic. The minimum initial deposit for the Cent account is $1. For the Mini, Classic, Fixed Spread and Islamic accounts, the initial deposit is $10. For the Pro accounts, it is $1,000 and for the VIP account, it is $50,000.
The information about the payment methods tends to differ, depending in which section of the website you read it and includes payments via credit card, bank transfer, Skrill, Neteller, Bitcoin, PayPal and WebMoney.
The Deposit and Withdrawal section on the website does not contain information about what the minimum withdrawal amount is or if there are any fees involved.
What you need to be beware is the fact that this broker offers different kinds of bonuses. If you think that bonuses are something like free gifts that your broker gives you, you couldn’t be more wrong! Bonuses are funds belonging to the broker and should you accept any bonuses you will soon realise that the conditions that are attached to these bonuses are not easy to fulfil and that they can seriously mess up your funds and withdrawal options. For example, if you choose to accept a bonus from this broker, you will have to trade as many lots as the amount of the bonus accepted before you are eligible to withdraw the bonus amount. This, as you can see, is not that easy to achieve even if you are more experienced in forex trade. Also, for your information, licensed brokers will never offer you any bonuses and this is the big difference between them and the scammers.
How does scam work?
A lot of people get scammed every day, not because they are naive or stupid, but because scammers are inventive and they are masters of manipulation. Often, as you scroll up and down on the Internet or social media, you come across ads for a quick and easy profit which sometimes sound too tempting not to fall into their traps. So you deposit some money into the account and what happens next is the incessant calls of the scammers. First, they congratulate you for taking the first steps towards becoming rich and next, they try to convince you to invest even more money into their ‘profitable’ business. What you probably don’t know is that your money has just gone as a commission to some scammers. And so, you wait and build the sandcastles of your dreams for a better and ‘richer’ future. And you wait, and you wait, for the money to come. But where is it? Now is your turn to call the scammers and to ask what’s going on. They try to placate you and ask you to be more patient. But have had enough and all you want is to get your money back. The scammers kind of promise, but now they are asking you to provide this document or fill out that form, etc., etc., all done in an attempt to delay you from filing for a chargeback.
What to do if scammed?
If this happens to you, our advice is to act immediately and if you have paid your deposit via credit/debit card, to file for chargeback which is retroactive cancellation and refund of your previous transaction. Visa and MasterCard give you 540 days time limit to file for chargeback which gives you a fighting chance to recover your money.
However, if you have used bitcoin or bank wire for your payment, the chances of you recovering your money are really slim.
Whatever you do to recover your funds, beware of the so-called recovery agents. Please make sure that you are dealing with a genuine one by checking their credentials and company’s information transparency. Otherwise, you may fall victim to another form of scam.
Cancelling your credit/debit card in case you have given the scammers your CVV code may be another good idea. Also, make sure to remove from your PC any software that my give scammers access to your private data stored on your computer.
