Beware! e-Planet Trade 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.
At first glance, nothing in the interface of e-Planet Trade suggests that you should avoid this broker. On the contrary, all the necessary elements that compose this online brokerage are there, along with the assurance the this broker provides the best solution for you. However, this is not quite so and your precious funds could be at risk. Here it is why.
e-Planet Trade Regulation and safety of funds
From the footer of e-Planet Trade interface, we see that the address of the company is in UK. We check the register of the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) to see whether the company is registered. From the image below, you can see that it is not. A non-registered and non-licensed broker such as e-Planet Trade is not a good trading partner as there is no guarantee whatsoever for the safety of your money.
Luckily, FCA is a strict regulator of forex brokers and there are many measures set in place to prevent scammers from infiltrating the ranks of legit brokers. First of all, UK brokers must invest an initial capital of no less than 730,000 EUR which also serves as a barrier against scammers. In addition to that, UK brokers must keep their clients’ funds segregated from their own with tier-1 bank establishments, provide negative balance protection, keep leverage that does not exceed 1:30 for forex currencies, report transactions on a regular basis, allow for external audits, etc. A big advantage for traders is that they can get compensated if their broker becomes insolvent. UK brokers are obliged to participate and deduct funds towards the local Financial Services Compensation Scheme which can dispense up to 85,000 GBP per client if the broker goes bankrupt.
The same great conditions for forex trade exist in the EU as well. The major difference is that EU brokers participate in local investor compensation funds from which clients can be repaid up to 20,000 EUR in case of the broker’s insolvency.
e-Planet Trade Trading software
e-Planet Trade trades in forex, commodities, stocks, indices and cryptocurrencies and the trading software consists of a web trader. We must say that a web trader is a cheap and basic trading software with limited functionalities that does not offer advantages to the traders using it. Besides, as you can see from the image below, the chart is provided by a third-party, TradingView. Such cheap software is typical for dodgy brokers and scammers.
If we take a closer look at the web trader, we’ll see on the left-hand side the menu for trading products with their bid/ask price. In the middle of the screen, is displayed the chart of one of the major forex currency pairs, namely, EUR/USD, with the fluctuation in price in a given time frame. From the bid/ask price, we find out that the spread is 2.7 pips. Such spread is rather wide and above the industry average 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 achieve sustainable profit.
When we registered an account, we saw that the leverage for this trading account is 1:100. However, if you take a look at the information in the account types image, you will see that for the Platinum account the leverage is 1:200. First of all, this high leverage is another proof that e-Planet Trade is a non-legit broker. As we mentioned in the previous section, in the UK, the leverage for forex currencies is capped at 1:30 and licensed brokers cannot go over it. Besides, trading with high leverage may look tempting as it looks like it increases the potential of making a big win. However, such notion is misleading as 70% of traders lose in transactions and the high leverage will amplify the scope of financial loss suffered by the traders.
If you research legit brokers, you will find out that the trading software they offer is of much superior quality and in 80% of the cases it consists of the MetaTrader 4 or MetaTrader 5 trading platforms. This is not surprising as both platforms are considered to be the best in forex trade, thanks to the advantages they offer to the traders. For example, MT4 and MT5 are equipped with auto trading option, trading signals, VPS, code base for customs scripts, an app market, a financial calendar, etc. Worth mentioning are the many charting options and technical analysis indicators that help traders predict the future direction of exchange rates and make a profit.
e-Planet Trade Deposit/Withdrawal methods and fees
e-Planet Trade offers 4 trading accounts (image below) – Standard, Silver, Gold and Platinum. The minimum initial deposit for the Standard account is 1,000 EUR. In our opinion, such an initial deposit is too high compared to what legit brokers ask for, i.e., as little as $1-5. The other accounts start at 10,000 EUR, 25,000 EUR and 100,000 EUR respectively.
The payment methods that are at clients’ disposal consist of payments made via credit card, wire transfer and ePayments.
The minimum withdrawal amount for wire transfers is 250 EUR/USD/GBP and the withdrawal fee for this payment method is 50 EUR/USD/GBP. For the other methods, the minimum withdrawal amount is 100 EUR/USD/GBP and the withdrawal fee is 10 USD/ 7 EUR/ 5 GBP. If the trader has not executed more than 200 in turnover prior to the withdrawal request, a levy of 10% of the withdrawal amount will be charged, as well.
There is also a monthly fee of 10% for any trading accounts that stay inactive for a period of 3 months. Legit brokers allow for a longer grace period for inactive accounts which could be between 6 months and 1 year. Also, they would charge a fixed fee, not a percentage as this broker does which can result in a considerable chunk of money being taken out of the trader’s account.
Dodgy brokers often offer bonuses as a way of luring potential clients. It may seem that bonuses add extra trading power which makes them attractive to the clients. However, it is good to know that they are funds belonging to the broker, not the trader, and always come with some often impossible to fulfil requirements. In this case, to be eligible to withdraw the bonus amount, the trader must execute a minimum of trading volume equal to 30 times the sum of the deposit and the bonus amount. With such high amounts for initial deposits, you can do the maths and see for yourself how difficult this would be. For your information, legit brokers in the UK and the EU are banned from offering bonuses to the clients.
How does scam work?
If scammers make a movie, it will probably be called “Dream on”. They make everything sound credible and build their scam on your dreams of getting an easy and quick profit. People get duped if they decide to deposit money into one of the scammers’ schemes. What you probably do not know is that your hard-earned money goes as commission to the scammers. Next, you get inundated by daily calls. First, the scammers congratulate you for joining their business, next they try to persuade you to invest even more money. After all, the more money you send, the bigger money fall you can expect. This of course is not how things work. By the time you realise that no money is coming your way, it might be too late. All you want now is to get your money back and get out of there but the scammers have other plans for you and they won’t late get away so easily. Now they try to delay you so that you miss the deadline for a chargeback.
What to do if scammed?
If you get scammed, our advice is to act immediately and if you have paid your deposit via credit/debit card you may still have a chance. Visa and MasterCard allow 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.
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.
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.
