Founded in 1999, FXCM is a Leucadia Company that once enjoyed a reputation as one of best forex brokers in the US. Although no longer welcoming customers from America, it remains an option for traders from the UK and many other countries across Europe.
With innovative trading tools and excellent trading education services, FXCM aims to provide an effective online trading experience. Customers can make use of mobile trading, one-click order execution and trading from real-time charts. Besides forex trading, FXCM offers CFD trading, spread betting and other related services.
FXCM review: What you need to know
FXCM’s proprietary trading platform - Trading Station - provides traders with the ability to create multiple watchlists. This can be a useful way to separate the various currency pairs, especially if you’re interested in keeping major pairs and the more exotic pairs separate, so you can monitor those markets separately. The platform also provides the option to set up alerts for analytic thresholds, useful for advanced traders who rely on more than just pricing signals to execute their forex trading strategies.
FXCM’s mobile app includes many of the same tools as the desktop platform, making it easy to monitor your positions or make trades from your phone. The charting options are particularly impressive for an app, and all the technical indicators that are available on desktop are there on your phone too.
FXCM charges commissions, but balances this out with some low spreads. The spreads are the difference in the bid/ask price and are constantly fluctuating based on factors such as a country’s economic outlook. For new traders, FXCM offers some of the best educational resources around, with daily FX courses, the Daily FX blog and a series of webinars that include daily market briefings as well as more in-depth sessions focusing on particular strategies. FXCM also provides tutorials and step-by-step training on its platform.
Should you choose FXCM?
The FXCM trading platform remains impressive but is no longer available to traders in the US. Should you be looking for the best forex brokers in America, TD Ameritrade and Ally Invest are among the leading platforms you might consider right now.