Beware! LVM 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.
LVM Trade impresses with a slick-looking website, seemingly great conditions, and the offer of the advanced platform MetaTrader 4. However, this broker is not to be trusted – they claim to be regulated in a jurisdiction that does not regulate forex brokers, and use another company’s MT4 terminal. Some of the fees LVM Trade charges are outrageous – if you invest with them you would probably end up losing far more than you win. This is not a good choice for a broker – read the review to find out more.
LVM Trade REGULATION AND SAFETY OF FUNDS
LVM Trade claims to be “a fully regulated broker to manage and hold clients funds also transmit clients orders” – however, they also state that they are based in St. Vincent and the Grenadines.
The problem with that is that the financial authority of this country, SVGFSA, only monitors the banking sector and does not supervise or regulate forex brokers. No broker could be regulated in St. Vincent and the Grenadines – such licenses simply do not exist and if anyone claims otherwise, they are certainly lying. Brokers based in the country do not have to meet any requirements or answer to anyone – which makes them potentially dangerous. An additional perk for scammers is that money transferred to such offshore locations is untraceable – so you would not be able to get hold of it and retrieve it.
Invest with a broker licensed in the UK, the EU, and Australia instead. Such brokers have to answer to merciless authorities like the FCA (the UK), ASIC (Australia), or CySEC (Cyprus) and report regularly to ensure that all of their activities are legal and fair to clients. Licensed brokers have to maintain a minimum operational capital of €730 000 in the UK and the EU, and A$1 million in Australia to prove their good financial standing – after all, you would want to know that your broker would be able to survive all tricks and turns of the markets. Negative balance protection is a must – as a retail client, you could never lose more money than you have in your account. Client funds are kept in segregated bank accounts – so no mixing of the two could happen, with or without the broker’s knowledge. Trading with a licensed broker would provide you with the security you would not get if you turn to unlicensed scammers.
LVM Trade TRADING SOFTWARE
Supposedly, LVM Trade offers the leading trading platform MetaTrader 4. We were indeed able to download the software from the broker’s website – a pleasant surprise considering our initial expectations. Many scam brokers are not willing to invest in more expensive and functional software and offer rudimentary web-based platforms that could barely be used for trading or no platform at all. This was not the case with LVM Trade.
There was still a problem though – the MT4 terminal we downloaded did not belong to this broker. It is actually owned by another offshore company – LVMarkets Ltd. – based in Vanuatu.
From what we could discover, that broker did not look very reliable either. Moreover, LVM Trade is run by a company called LVM Ltd., not LVMarkets Ltd. We would not be surprised if the same people were behind both companies – changes in names, domains, logos, and addresses are not uncommon among scammers. This is what they usually do when someone starts getting the sense that there is something wrong going on.
We would advise you to check out these legitimate brokers who offer MT4 instead. MT4 is a great platform indeed – it is fairly intuitive and user-friendly but it is also highly functional which can explain its standing popularity in the trading community. MT4 offers a full charting and analysis package, and some amazing additional tools such as preprogrammed Expert Advisors that track markets and trade automatically, VPSs you could purchase to keep trading bots running even when your computer is off, possibilities to create custom bots and indicators, signals, Strategy Testers, a market for trading apps and much more that waits to be discovered.
LVM Trade TRADING CONDITIONS
LVM Trade offers surprisingly good trading conditions. The minimum deposit the broker asks for is just $50 which is in line with current prices for basic accounts. However, this broker is extremely unreliable and most probably a scam – look into other affordable trading options.
The spread we got on EURUSD was just 0.2 pips – a truly great number that could potentially lead to great profits. However, this is not LVM Trade’s own MT4 terminal so matters could turn out to be much different. Moreover, this broker charges a decent performance fee of 25%. Such fees can eat up all your profits very fast.
The maximum leverage this broker allows you to trade with is 1:400 – a rate that offshore brokers can legally offer. Just remember that leverage is restricted in many jurisdictions for a reason – this instrument can lead both to bigger profits, and to bigger losses. If you are a novice trader, we would suggest that you stick to lower, more reasonable rates. And if you are looking for a broker who can offer higher leverage, there are some legitimate ones who can promise higher rates.
LVM Trade DEPOSIT/WITHDRAWAL METHODS AND FEES
LVM Trade did not explicitly mention which payment methods are available for depositing. The Terms and Conditions mentioned both credit/debit card payments, and wire transfers as possibilities but the broker would not provide us with access to a Client Area – so we cannot be 100% that this is true. Refrain from depositing with this broker because you might end up losing a huge amount of money. But if you already have and have used Visa or MasterCard, there is still hope – both card providers allow chargebacks within 540 days of the transaction.
We ran into some outrageous clauses regarding withdrawals when looking through LVM Trade Terms and Conditions. The broker would not allow you to withdraw if this means that your account balance would go below €5000 – which is a fairly big amount. Moreover, you would not be allowed to withdraw your deposit before a whole year passes. When it comes to profits, you could access them sooner – but you would still have to wait 30 days.
This is obviously the broker trying to prevent you from withdrawing your money after you have figured out you have been scammed. No legitimate broker would ever include such a dubious clause – because the main purpose of legitimate brokers is to keep you as a client and encourage you to trade, and not to keep your money for years on end.
HOW DOES THE SCAM WORK?
In this day and age, such scams are far more frequent than you would think. With the rising number of people willing to invest in the forex market, the number of scam brokers has increased drastically. It is important to learn how such scams work in order to spot them and avoid them. Scammers are rarely very imaginative so you would not find a lot of deviations from the following scheme.
In your search for a broker to start trading with, you stumble upon one who promises particularly great conditions. Or maybe you were not even looking for a broker but have heard stories about people getting rich by trading and are tempted to see what all the fuss is about. This particular broker promises fast effortless profits, enormous promotions, and an all-around great trading environment. So you fall for it and provide the scammers with your email and phone number.
The moment you do that, you will start getting calls from the broker asking you to invest – the scammers will be persistent and promise you all sorts of tempting profits. If you give in and deposit, you will be asked for increasingly bigger amounts – and you will gladly deposit because, at this point, you would probably be seeing profits.
The problems will start once you try to withdraw those amazing profits – all sorts of additional fees and clauses in the Terms and Conditions will prevent you from doing so, or result in huge losses of capital. At some point, you will understand that you are being scammed – but the scammers will be long-gone by then.
WHAT TO DO WHEN SCAMMED?
Prevention is key in such situations. Make sure that you choose a reliable brokerage with a solid reputation, and always check the registers of the responsible authorities to make sure that all of the broker’s regulatory claims are true. Do not trust offers that are too good to be true.
If you have, however, already deposited with a scam broker, make sure to look up chargeback options as soon as possible. Both Visa and MasterCard, for example, allow chargebacks within 540 days of the transaction. Getting your money back if you have deposited via cryptocurrency or bank transfer, would not be possible. You should make sure to change all banking passwords, and remove any software the scammers had you install from your computer. They might have you believe that you should install some sort of remote access software to help you trading, or with technical issues but that is a lie – they just want access to your banking accounts.
Make sure to notify authorities about the scam and share your story with as many people as possible – this would prevent such scams from spreading.
Finally, do not trust anyone – usually calling themselves a “recovery agent” – who offers to retrieve your money for a fee. This is just another type of scam.
