TradingMarket Review – Five Things You Should Know About Trading-market.online

TradingMarket Review

TradingMarket is a shady broker that is trying to clone a reliable company in an effort of convincing you your money will be safe with them. Nothing could be further away from the truth – this broker will rob you as soon as they get their hands on your deposits. You would have to ask yourself before investing – what kind of legitimate broker, especially one regulated by top regulatory bodies like ASIC or CySEC,  claims to offer platforms they don’t and has such big inconsistencies when it comes to trading conditions? What kind of reliable broker only has Terms and Conditions that are a few paragraphs long?

Stay as far away from TradingMarket as possible if you want to be sure your money won’t just disappear into the blue.

TradingMarket REGULATION AND SAFETY OF FUNDS

TradingMarket tries to fool you into thinking that they are well-regulated by providing license numbers for the registers of ASIC (Australia), CySEC (Cyprus) and the Securities Commission of The Bahamas. It turned out that a broker with those company names and license numbers actually exists – but that is definitely not TradingMarket. The scammers basically copy-pasted the website layout and company information of an actually ASIC and CySEC-regulated broker – IC Markets. This broker, however, has completely different domain, phone numbers and addresses. To make matters worse, the UK financial authority, the FCA, has issued a warning on TradingMarket because of the fact that they are offering financial services in the UK without having met the necessary requirements and without being authorized.

This broker is supposedly based in Seychelles and regulated by the local authority, the FSA, but they did not show up anywhere in the register of the financial authority. The FSA is not the strictest regulator out there, especially compared to reputable authorities like the FCA, ASIC, and CySEC but still imposes some laws when it comes to forex trading – in order to start operating, a broker should have at least $50 000 in a local bank account and two shareholders and two directors. The same person, however, could act both as a shareholder and a director, segregated accounts for client funds are not a must and a broker could do whatever they want with those $50 000 once they have proved they have it. So this is a bare minimum of requirements but TradingMarket still did not manage to meet them.

The story is completely different with brokers regulated in the UK, Australia, and the EU. These brokers answer to top financial authorities and have to maintain the highest standards if they want to offer services under these jurisdictions. Client money must be kept in a segregated account which basically makes it impossible for the broker to use your deposits for their own financial operations. UK and EU brokers must participate in compensation schemes so if one such broker goes bankrupt, their clients could receive compensation of variable amount – up to €20 000 in the EU and £85 000 in the UK. Negative balance protection is also a big plus – so your losses cannot ever exceed the size of your investment. Finally, the minimum capital requirements are pretty high – A$1 million for Australia and €730 000 for the EU and the UK.

TradingMarket TRADING SOFTWARE

The web-based platform we were able to access with TradingMarket was nothing impressive and did not allow for any advanced charting and analysis. The platform took years to load and did not offer any trading tools worth mentioning. Moreover, the only thing we could trade on it were different cryptocurrency pairs as well as crypto/fiat pairs.

Whoever is behind this broker is even insolent enough to ask for a $2 donation in order to make the platform better – but does not provide an address and a phone number so you would have no way of knowing who you are donating to.

Don’t waste your time on a broker who cannot even offer you a decent trading platform and check out our list of brokers offering MetaTrader 4 or MetaTrader 5 – two platforms that have established themselves as the best in the industry. Many experienced traders swear by these platforms and would not give them up for anything in the world. That is understandable considering the number of useful features they offer – from Expert Advisors and possibilities for trying out strategies – either in a demo account or through back-testing, – to a market for trading apps and a built-in economic calendar.

TradingMarket TRADING CONDITIONS

We did not get a lot of information on TradingMarket’s trading conditions. They had not stated what the minimum deposit amount is and as for leverage, we would have to trust their website because leverage settings could not be found anywhere on the platform. If what the broker is saying is true, you could get leverage as high as 1:500 – which no legitimate CySEC broker could offer you because of the leverage restrictions that are in power in all of Europe – 1:30 for forex majors. Since TradingMarket’s platform only allows crypto trading, we would say that leverage of 1:500 is even more ridiculous – cryptocurrencies are considered to be a very volatile asset which is why the leverage restrictions for trading crypto are a lot lower – just 1:2. Leverage gives you the possibility of making larger offers with assets you don’t own. This could lead both to bigger profits and to huge losses so you should be careful with leverage settings, especially if you have just started trading.

The broker supposedly offers two raw spread accounts – one on cTrader with the commission of $3 per side per lot and one on MT with the commission of $3.5 per side per lot. There is also a zero commission account on MT. However, as MetaTrader is not at all available with this broker, the offer of such accounts is a blatant lie and we cannot be sure what kinds of spread TradingMarket has.

TradingMarket DEPOSIT/WITHDRAWAL METHODS AND FEES

We were supposed to be able to deposit “our money, our way” via a few different payment methods – Visa, MasterCard, PayPal, Skrill, and Neteller. When the client area finally loaded after a very long wait, we found out that we could deposit and withdraw via PayPal, bank transfer, and a number of cryptocurrencies. We always like to be presented with a credit/debit card option – especially if such was promised – since these transactions are the easiest to reverse and you could ask for assistance in getting a chargeback within 540 days. Crypto transactions on the other hand cannot be reversed by default – which means that they are offered by a lot of scammers these days. If you are depositing money with a broker using crypto, make sure they are completely legitimate first.

HOW DOES THE SCAM WORK?

The weird thing is that such scams are never very imaginative but they seem to trick a lot of people – you see an ad on the Internet for a broker’s website and decide to check their website out. Then you start thinking to yourself “Man, that actually sounds great, I should maybe register an account to find out what they have to offer.”

Once the scammers have received your contact details, they won’t leave you alone before you deposit – and with time, they will start asking for bigger and bigger sums. You will probably see that you have turned an unbelievable profit in no time so you will keep transferring money – just know that it is fairly easy for platforms to be manipulated. At some point, of course, you would want to withdraw and this is where it gets complicated. All sorts of clauses in the Terms and Conditions and additional fees will show up – the scammers will try to delay your withdrawal and milk you as much as possible. By the time you figure out something is wrong, your “broker” will be long gone – with your money.

WHAT TO DO IF SCAMMED?

Be prepared that happy endings are not very likely and the chances of you seeing your money again are not big. That is why prevention is key – you should always read Terms and Conditions carefully and make sure that your broker is legitimate by checking if they are actually licensed.

If you got scammed, there are still things you could do. Notify the authorities in your country and share your story with as many people as possible – this way, they would know to avoid such types of scams. Change all passwords that you gave the scammers access to. If you have deposited with a credit or debit card, ask your card provider for assistance – you could get a chargeback within 540 days with both Visa and MasterCard. Bank transfers are a bit harder to reverse but that is still not impossible.

Finally, don’t trust anyone trying to pass as a recovery agent and offering to retrieve your money for a small fee – this is just another type of scam, usually conducted by the same people that robbed you in the first place.