Beware! AximTrade 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.
AximTrade is a complicated type of broker. It seems to be regulated by the Australian Securities and Investments Commission (ASIC) and also has a registered address in St. Vincent and the Grenadines – a country that doesn’t license forex brokers in general. This firm also offers its financial services in Indonesia, however the trading conditions are all the same no matter the country you wish to trade from.
This being said, note that AximTrade offers a highly risky leverage of 1:3000 for its Micro account and this applies for all of its websites regardless of the country. The point is that the leverage in Australia is restricted to 1:30 so we are wondering how this firm can possibly be authorized there? For more details about AximTrade keep reading the following lines.
Regulation and safety of funds
AximTrade claims to have registered addresses in Australia and in St. Vincent and the Grenadines and also displays an email, but no phone number is to be found on the website.
This broker also claims to be regulated by the Australian Securities and Investments Commission (ASIC) under the name of AximTrade Pty Limited and posts a license number as well. We searched the registers of ASIC and there really is a company with this name that is said to be licensed. There are no domains however that can prove that we are talking about the same firm so keep this in mind. Nevertheless, AximTrade seems to really be authorized by this entity or at least this is how it looks.
Furthermore, this broker also claims to be regulated by the National Futures Association (NFA) – the self-regulatory organization of the US. We searched the registers of NFA however it turned out that AximTrade is not a member at all. See for yourself:
This fact seems rather suspicious at least to say.
As for its registered address in St. Vincent and the Grenadines, note that this country doesn’t license forex brokerage activities, so brokers there are not authorized or supervised by any financial authority. The local Financial Services Authority (FSA) states the same on its website, take a look:
Always make sure to invest with a truly regulated broker with a proven reputation. Otherwise you risk getting scammed and in this case no financial authority would be able to help you anymore.
In the case of AximTrade we advise you to be extra careful and if you have even the slightest doubt about this broker’s credibility, better turn to another firm.
In addition, regulated brokers in Australia must keep up to the rules and are obligated to meet some very tough requirements in order to be granted a license. As a beginning, they must have at least 1 000 000 AUD of minimum net capital just as a guarantee for their financial stability. Moreover, they must also keep their clients’ funds in segregated accounts apart from their own capital. This way you can be sure that your money’s in safe hands.
On the other hand, brokers in Indonesia are not obligated to follow any rules or guidelines. However in order to have an office in Indonesia, a brokerage house must hold a BAPPEBTI license. Just as you know, BAPPEBTI is the Indonesian Commodities and Futures Trading Regulatory Authority, which is in charge of the operation of various financial institutions. AximTrade doesn’t mention anything on the topic so we are not completely sure if it’s authorized to offer financial services in the country.
Trading software
AximTrade claims to offer the industry standard MetaTrader 4. You can either download it or open the Web Terminal, which we actually did. It turns out that AximTrade really provides MT4, take a look:
Apart from that ,we didn’t have much success with our registration. After we entered our names, email and phone number we were supposed to receive a confirmation code on our phone. However, since we didn’t want to provide such personal information, our account was left incomplete.
In addition it’s always for the best to invest with trustworthy brokers with legit forex licenses. These firms usually offer MetaTrader 4 or MetaTrader 5 and this is a huge advantage.
MT4 and MT5 have been praised by both brokers and traders for a good reason. They definitely surpass their predecessors in so many ways – they are more advanced, have more functionalities and tools to choose from at least to say.
You can be sure your funds and personal information are safe, as all transactions are encrypted and so is your IP address. MT4 and MT5 are definitely platforms you can fully trust to execute your trading operations promptly and effectively.
Among all great features that MT4 has for example, the most popular are the Expert Advisors. These trading bots can do the job for you – they search for certain conditions and start trading the moment they find them. As simple as that!
MT4 and MT5 have desktop, mobile and browser-based versions. All of them are very easy to navigate even for beginners. Don’t worry – these platforms are free and don’t require any payments.
Unfortunately for all of us MetaTrader 4 and MetaTrader 5 are no longer available on AppStore, as Apple has recently removed both of them. If you are using an iPhone or iPad and you have already downloaded one of them, you can continue using it but without any further updates or upgrades. Hoping this is only temporary and that Apple shall bring them back as soon as possible. MT4 and MT5 are still available for download on Google Play Store.
Trading conditions
AximTrade claims to offer four account types – Standard, Cent, ECN and Infinite, take a look:
The Standard account requires just 1 USD in order to start trading. This amount is typical for micro accounts, which usually require around 5 to 10 USD.
As for the leverage however, this broker offers a leverage of 1:3000 for its Standard account which is insane at least to say. To be honest this is the highest leverage we have seen so far and it is associated with a huge risk of losing your money entirely, without a doubt. We definitely do not recommend investing with such amounts especially if you are a retail trader. In fact the leverage in Australia, where this broker claims to be regulated, is limited to 1:30 exactly because of the risks. Otherwise, there are no restrictions in St. Vincent and the Grenadines nor in Indonesia, as we mentioned before. Anyway, if you want to give it a try and trade with high leverage we suggest looking at some of the offshore subsidiaries of reputable forex brokers.
As for the spread, this broker promises tight spreads from 0.0 pips however it doesn’t mention anything about additional commissions. After we opened the Web Trader and saw its platform, there was a spread of 1.4 pips for EURUSD, which seems fine for trading. In general every spread below 2 pips is more advantageous as it means there are going to be lower trading costs.
Deposit/Withdrawal methods and fees
This broker claims to accept all of the most popular payment methods like Visa, Mastercard, UnionPay, Skrill, Neteller, as well as some other options like local bank transfers in Indonesian IDR.
However, given the fact that we couldn’t create our account, we simply can’t confirm if the above mentioned is true or not.
All in all, even though this broker seems to have a forex license, it also has some drawbacks in its regulation and trading conditions. For this reason we advise you to be careful and to think twice before investing here.
How does the scam work
Remember that financial scammers are only interested in your money, not in your trading or financial success. They happen to come upon new ideas on how to deceive people every day. Unfortunately despite the efforts of all financial institutions there are still a lot of offshore brokers that claim to invest your money in the best possible way but in fact aim to steal everything. The worst part is that they use various techniques to win your trust and to make sure it’s almost impossible for a beginner to tell them apart from a reputable broker. Here’s a list of their most common tricks you should watch out for.
First of all, scammers tend to offer incredibly high return on investment. They assure you there’s nothing to worry about, as trading with them is easy as a, b, c. Offshore brokers might even promise they can handle the trading for you and your only job is to relax and wait for the “fantastic results”.
Bear in mind that scammers can manipulate their trading platform and make it seem as if your funds are being invested, but in reality no such thing happens. They also can fake your trading results thus making you believe they have been very profitable – this is made to make you invest more and more, because your trading is “so successful”.
Scammers might also claim that trading with them is risk-free and so on. That is another ridiculous lie – reputable brokers even tend to display on their website the exact amount of trading losses as a warning.
Furthermore they might offer you some kind of bonuses just to make you invest right away. Don`t believe them however as such promotions usually come with a very high volume requirement that is a challenge even for experienced traders.
Another scam alert is the presence of a certain fee upon any withdrawal request – this fee may start from 10%, 20% and go higher depending on the broker. It’s important to know however that most regulated brokers don’t usually ask for a fee in order to allow withdrawal.
Nevertheless even if you decide to pay the fee you still won’t have access to your money – with most scam firms this scenario is very likely to happen. You may realize that a withdrawal is impossible – no matter if it comes to your initial deposit or the so-called “profits”. So finally you may end up losing everything plus the paid fee.
What to do when scammed
Most people that have been scammed usually try to take some actions to retrieve their stolen funds. Unfortunately in such cases you can’t really turn to any official financial institution as offshore brokers` actions are not overseen by any regulator. So a regulatory body can’t help you here. What most people do in such circumstances is to turn to people on the internet who promise to retrieve their money in exchange for a certain fee. This is probably the worst thing you can do, actually. These people are most certainly also fraudsters who want to take advantage of your despair and steal even more of your funds. It may even turn out that they are the same scammers that already deceived you.
The best possible thing you can do is to turn to your bank and file for a chargeback if you used your Visa or MasterCard. If you have paid using PayPal or Skrill you can also open a dispute. Paying with crypto coins like Bitcoin and Ethereum is not eligible for a chargeback as we already said and the funds cannot be restored.
