Beware! Top Notch Trade Station 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.
Top Notch Trade Station is not the most reliable option for a broker to trade with – they are mostly anonymous and certainly not regulated. This broker charges quite high fees while also not offering any sort of functional trading platform – all in all, they have nothing to offer you. If you would like to trade safely, Top Notch Trade Station should not be on the list of brokers you are considering.
Top Notch Trade Station REGULATION AND SAFETY OF FUNDS
Top Notch Trade Station has not provided any sort of address – the only thing remotely close to license information was the following US Certificate of Incorporation:
However, in order to legally offer services anywhere, a broker has to be licensed, and not just exist as a company. The situation with US brokers is quite complicated – they have to be regulated by both the NFA and the CFTC. And when we checked the register on the NFA for a broker with this name, we did not get any matches – this means simply that the broker is not regulated. Trading with such a company can be extremely risky since you cannot be sure that all of your interests would be respected.
Trading with a broker regulated by a strict authority like FCA (UK), CySEC (Cyprus), or ASIC (Australia) comes with a huge deal of transparency and safety measures created to protect you as an investor from unfortunate events, or wrongdoings. Brokers have to prove that they are financially stable by maintaining a minimum capital of €730 000 in the UK and the EU, and A$1 million in Australia. Client funds must be kept in segregated accounts – so you can be sure the broker is not using your money to conduct business. Negative balance protection is a must – which means that your losses cannot exceed the amount of money you have in your account. Finally, EU and UK brokers are obligated to provide funds for compensation schemes which means that if your broker goes bankrupt, you could receive a compensation of up to €20 000 in the EU and up to £85 000 in the UK. Such funds don’t exist in Australia as of yet.
The smart, safe decision is to demand that the broker you work with is regulated – and you can quickly check if they are in the registers of the financial authority responsible for regulating brokers in the specific region.
Top Notch Trade Station TRADING SOFTWARE
Top Notch Trade Station does not offer any sort of software you could trade on – when we opened an account with this broker, we were presented with a simple TradingView chart. TradingView is software used for tracking market movements and not for trading. Anyone could access it completely for free on the Internet without having to open an account with a broker. And since Top Notch Trade Station does not provide access to the financial markets with them is quite pointless.
If you are interested in trading on an actual, highly functional trading platform, give MetaTrader 4 or MetaTrader 5 a try. These two platforms are the most popular in the industry and have built a solid reputation through the years. Both versions of the software are adored for their intuitive interface, and for the many tools they offer. Clients would be able to use features such as Expert Advisors that trade automatically, VPSs, customizable signals, and add-ons that could be purchased on the MT market. You would even be able to create your own trading bots and indicators with the MQL4/MQL5 coding languages. There are enough great brokers who can offer you one or both platforms – don’t hesitate to see what the software has in store for you.
Top Notch Trade Station TRADING CONDITIONS
You would be able to become a client of Top Notch Trade Station the moment you deposit $500. This means that this broker is not exactly affordable – many far more reliable companies offer accounts for under $100. It is even not impossible to open an account with an established broker for as little as $1.
Top Notch Trade Station also imposes some pretty high fees for trading. The broker asks you to “pay a one-off set-up fee of €59, after which we won’t charge you anything until you hit 10% profit. The moment that happens Top Notch Trade Station will charge you a 15% performance fee over the realized gains, and the baseline is set to the portfolio value. For example, you invest Eur 5,000 and after a while, your portfolio is worth Eur 5,500 (10% profit). You will receive an invoice for the amount of Eur 75 (500 profit * 15%), and the baseline is set to Eur 5,500”. These fees are actually pretty high compared to those imposed by many very legitimate brokers.
Top Notch Trade Station DEPOSIT AND WITHDRAWAL METHODS AND FEES
Top Notch Trade Station accepts deposits in Bitcoin and Ethereum and provides absolutely no alternatives to crypto deposits. The reason for that is very simple – you would never be able to get a chargeback on such transactions since they are irreversible by default. All such transfers go into a ledger that cannot be changed or tainted at a later point – which is exactly why scammers tend to prefer them.
HOW DOES THE SCAM WORK?
Scams like this one are becoming more and more prominent – they rely on people’s desire to make fast money without putting a lot of effort in. That is why it is important to know how you can tell apart a fully legitimate broker from a scammer and learn more about how such scams generally function.
All brokers promise certain things and try to advertise their services to their best capabilities – but all legitimate companies also provide statistics on how many people have lost money while trading with them. Scammers, on the other hand, promise guaranteed fast profits and a life of luxury. You will probably stumble upon the scam broker’s website randomly – or you might be pursued via phone or e-mail and asked to open an account. Maybe you have heard of people earning a living by trading – so you decide to set up such an account. The moment you provide the scammers with your phone number or email (if they have not already obtained it somehow), they will not leave you alone before you make an investment. These are professional smooth-talkers who scam people for a living – which means that they can be very convincing. Once you have made your first deposit, the scammers will ask you for bigger and bigger sums. You might even be happy to deposit more money because at this early stage, you will be turning a profit – scam brokers are good at manipulating results to make it seem like you are doing great.
The problems will start the moment you try to withdraw those profits – the broker will start making up reasons why this is impossible. – Usually, new, shady clauses in the Terms and Conditions will appear – you might be asked to reach some unattainably high turnover threshold or pay a high withdrawal fee. At some point, you will figure out something is wrong – and that is when the broker will stop answering your calls and e-mails and just disappear.
WHAT TO DO WHEN SCAMMED?
We should warn you that the chances of you getting your money back if you have already been scammed are slim -prevention is key in the world of online brokers. Choosing a legitimate company that holds an official license and has proven its reliability is essential. There are, however, still some things you can do if you have already been scammed.
Make sure to notify your bank that you have been scammed. Change all the passwords you have provided the scammers with. If you have given them remote access to your computer, remove the software immediately. Scam brokers usually claim that you need to install such software so they could help you with software set-up – or even help you trade – but their actual objective is to get access to your banking systems and steal even more money.
If you have deposited with Visa or MasterCard, ask for a chargeback immediately – both card providers allow such chargebacks within 540 days.
Notify the responsible authorities, and share your story with as many people as possible – this way, more people will know about such scams and learn how to avoid them.
Finally, don’t trust any “recovery agents” promising to retrieve your money for a fee – this is just another type of scam targeting scam victims. Often enough, the recovery agency is run by the same people who scammed you in the first place.
