Beware! Capital Invest 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.
If you are interested in what Capital Invest offers to potential traders, better brush up your French as part of the information on its interface is in French. We check to see if this broker is reliable to trade with.
Capital Invest Regulation and safety of funds
The website is operated by Capital Investment Ltd with an address in London, UK. We checked the register of the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA), the official body that regulates forex brokers in the UK. The name of this company, however, did not appear to be in the register of FCA. This means that Capital Invest is non-registered and non-licensed and as such, trading with it will present a risk for your funds.
Forex brokers in the UK are strictly regulated and they must jump through many hoops in order to get their license. For example, they must register an initial capital of no less than 730,000 EUR. Such a high amount plays the role of a barrier against scammers as they will never invest so much money for the benefit of looking legit. Other measures against scammers and for guaranteeing the safety of clients’ funds include keeping those funds segregated with tier-1 bank establishments, providing protection against negative balance, reporting transactions on a daily basis for the sake of transparency, etc. One of the biggest perks in trading with licensed brokers from the UK consists of the fact that they must deduct funds towards the local Financial Services Compensation Scheme which has the role of reimbursing the clients of brokers who have gone bankrupt. The maximum amount the compensation can reach is 85,000 GBP per client.
Licensed forex brokers in the rest of Europe that are regulated by CySec also offer similar conditions to the potential clients. The difference is that the forex brokers regulated by CySec contribute to the local Investor Compensation Fund which can repay up to 20,000 EUR per client in case of bankruptcy.
We advise you to research the links we provided above if you are looking for a reliable broker with beneficial for you trading conditions and guarantee for the safety of your funds.
Capital Invest Trading software
The trading software Capital Invest offers to its clients is a web trader (screenshot below). On the left-hand side is the menu with the buttons for trade, opening and closing transactions and others. In the horizontal bar on top of the screen is the menu with the trading instruments which include forex, cryptocurrencies indices, commodities, stock, ETFs and bonds. The chart in the middle of the screen displays the fluctuation in the price of one of the major currency pairs, EUR/USD and in the far right you see information about this pair containing the minimum trading amount, leverage, bid and ask price, etc.
From the bid/ask price, we calculated that the spread is 3.8 pips. Such spread is too high compared to the industry average spread of 1.5 pips. The implications for traders are that the cost of transactions will be too high and they won’t be able to make a sustainable profit. Also, you must know that brokers obtain their revenue from the spread, so the higher the spread, the richer your broker will become at your expense.
Another high that we must mention is the leverage which is 1:200 for the same currency pair. We must point out two things – firstly, this is another proof that this broker is non-legit because in the UK, the leverage is capped at 1:30 and brokers cannot exceed it. Secondly, high leverage presents a high risk for clients losing serious funds if the transaction proves to be unsuccessful. The higher the leverage, the more serious your financial loss will be. And if you are thinking that it’s not going to happen to you, you are wrong as 70% of traders experience unsuccessful transactions. Please keep that in mind and trade cautiously with low leverage.
As you can see for yourself, a web trader is a rather simplistic trading platform that does not have a lot to offer. On the other hand, there are trading platforms far superior to this one. We are talking about the MetaTrader 4 and MetaTrader 5 which offer far better trading tools and instruments, such as auto trading option, trading signals, code base with customs scripts, VPS, an app market, a financial calendar, etc. In addition to the many charting options these platforms are famous for and the array of technical analysis indicators, clients have the opportunity to predict the future direction of exchange rates and make a profit.
We strongly recommend when selecting your licensed broker, to look up and choose one that offers either of these platforms for your enhanced trading experience.
Capital Invest Deposit/Withdrawal methods and fees
The number of the trading accounts offered by Capital Invest is four – Classic, Gold, Platinum and VIP. The minimum initial deposit for the Classic account is 0 EUR and the maximum initial deposit for the VIP account is 50,000+ EUR.
Clients of the company have a choice to make a payment via wire transfer, credit card, Sofort Banking, WebMoney, QIWI Wallet, Skrill and Neteller.
The minimum withdrawal amount via wire transfer is $500 and for credit cards, it is $100. It may take between 7 and 10 business days for a withdrawal request to be processed which is a rather lengthy period.
Another sign that this broker is not reliable is the fact that it offers bonuses to its clients. Please note that regulated brokers do not do that. Bonuses may look attractive and tempting to accept as it seems that they add more trading power. However what you should keep in mind is that these are funds belonging to the broker, not the trader and they usually have some difficult to fulfil conditions attached to them. In this case, to be eligible to withdraw funds from his/her funds, the trader must execute a minimum trading volume equal to 25 times the bonus plus the deposit amount. This is not something easily achievable even for experienced traders and the mess it may create with your funds and withdrawal options is unimaginable.
How does scam work?
Scam works in different ways. It could be either that you receive an unsolicited telephone call or you see one of these flashy ads on the Internet or the social media promising you a quick and easy profit. Scammers will promise you the sky and the earth until you give way to temptation and deposit money. Once you give them money you get caught in the scammers’ mousetrap and the cheese in the shape of a big fat money fall is gone! It may take some time before you realise that you are being scammed. Scammers are smooth talkers and they are masters of deception. They will give you some excuses as to why the big profit hasn’t come yet and will try to lure you to make even a bigger investment because according to them, the more you invest, the more you profit. After you have been waiting for a while and you finally come to your senses, you realise that you are being scammed. All you want now is to get your money back and get out of there. However, the scammers won’t make it easy for you! They will try to delay you so that you miss the deadline for applying for a chargeback.
What to do if scammed?
There are a few things that you must do immediately – file for a chargeback if you have paid using a VISA or MasterCard. Those two payment providers allow you 540 days time frame within which you may file for a chargeback.
However, the chances are grim if you have used bank transfer or Bitcoin as a payment method. There is no chance you’ll be able to recover your money.
In such a desperate situation, some so-called ‘recovery agents’ may approach you with offers to recover your money for a fee. Be cautious as you may be dealing with another type of scammers. Always check the information about the recovery agency – make sure it is legitimate and transparent in the public eye. Also, some scammers publish personal comments after our review about how they have been scammed and how they found a recovery agent who helped them get their money back. Do not trust such comments and do not use the published contact info in them as it will lead you to another scammer!
And lastly, a reminder to cancel your credit card if you have given your CVV code to the scammers and erase any software from you PC that gives the scammer access to your personal data.
