What to Expect from UFX Review
The title for this online review could not have been more appropriate. The question has been thrown around the online trading community in observation of the trend of a lot of brokerages seem to be basing themselves off of Cyprus or the Grenadines. It is easy to suspect that all these entities, claiming to be legal are in fact just the same company masquerading as different firms. And the probable reason? To better gather profits; such division may be a measure to effectively collect from all fronts—if one is tagged a scam, then there will be more to take its place.
But of course, there are those that simply are legitimate. They just happen to based in the same region as those who are merely posing as such. Enter UFX.
This review is a result of months spent with the brokerage. It employs an exhaustive methodology that saw the usage of all the firm’s services and offers in an attempt to render a pointed and well-informed assessment of UFX’s capabilities. The review team aims at assisting interested parties who may or may have not heard of the brokerage and are thinking of enlisting the help of one.
About UFX
Established back in 2010, this broker is supported by MassInsights Technology. In 2018, the firm had reported a total of 2.8 million unique trades submitted to the CME. What this initially telegraphed to the review team is that UFX had secured the trust of a number of clients within its tenure. However, it does bring to question why this is the only number that had been reported.
It is hardly possible that the firm gathered only 2.8 million trades through the course of 8 years. It is either the company has a poor business model or there were other trades that it purposefully did not report due to the fact they were complete failures or fraudulent ones.
UFX is based in Cyprus and is effectively regulated Cyprus Securities and Exchange Commission or simply CySEC. The regulatory agency complies with the strict guidelines of the MFID Financial Harmonization Law. With this in consideration, it can be assumed that all UFX’s trading activities undergo stringent scrutiny, instilling in it great regard for the law.
Sweetening the pot, each trader engaged in trades through UFX, are duly protected by the Financial Instruments Directive 2014/65/EU or MiFID II and the EU’s 4th Anti-Money Laundering Directive. The directive mandates that traders be secured by the Investor Compensation Fund (CIF) with maximum coverage of €20,000.
However, it must be noted that the firm’s regulation only came 2 years after its establishment, thus bringing to question the trades done within its initial 2 years of business.
Offers and Services
This segment focuses on UFX’s key services, namely:
- Trading Instruments
- Trading Platforms
- Trading Accounts
Trading Instruments
UFX makes a number of trading assets available to its clients, namely, Forex currency pairs, commodities, equities, indices, and ETFs. In addition to these, the firm also trades Bitcoin. It is to the opinion of the review team that the asset selection provides more than enough diversification, giving the client sufficient options to build their investment portfolios.
The maximum leverage for trades is pegged at 1:30 in light of UFX’s observance of CySEC’s regulation. Seasoned traders are allowed to apply up to 1:400 leverage.
Trading Accounts
UFX offers six (6) types of accounts. While this is a number that seems to provide sufficient options, fact of the matter is, the costs are too high to open viable accounts. For instance, a minimum deposit of $5,000 is asked for as a starting fund. This is considered already costly as there are other brokers that ask for less. Both the UFX Islamic Account and the Platinum Account are required of a $10,000 deposit.
Trading Platforms
UFX provides its own trading platform simply called, “UFX Webtrader”. It is built through the firm’s MassInsights Technology that provides streaming of market events and allows for the examination of trader behaviour through an Artificial Intelligence.
The review team observed that the UFX Webtrader interface is user-friendly and highly-intuitive. Trades can be placed simply with the permission of seven (7) unique sentiment-based alerts.
The MetaTrader 4 (MT4) is not available, only the MT5. And for one to avail of this, a deposit of $5,000 has to be made.
Probably one of the points that the review team saw against UFX is its lack of autotrading services, something that might prove not enticing to the more advanced traders.
Trading with UFX
With all the points discussed about UFX, the review team is rendered polarized about recommending the brokerage to novice traders. While it had already been proven that the firm’s operations follow legal standards through its CySEC regulation, fact of the matter is, plenty of the trading conditions might turn interested parties off, specifically with its fee structures.
Nevertheless, UFX is a legal entity and trading with it does not pose great risks. The only risk here is losing trades that one had spent a great deal of money for—and that is already well within the responsibility of the trader, not the brokerage.
