Probably what attracts traders most about ATFX are its low fees on Forex trading, its simple and speedy account creation process, and what many are actually concerned about, are the absence of deposit and withdrawal charges.
But apart from these apparent advantages, the brokerage other features and services that we should take a look at.
This review emerges from months of testing out trades through the brokerage firm, ATFX. The review team had looked into the following aspect of the firm’s services, specifically:
1. The regulatory firms that sanctions all the brokerage’s trading activities and the transactions it allows to be executed through its trading software
2. The trading instruments that the firm gives access to
3. The trading accounts that clients can open in accordance to their needs
4. The trading platforms that come with these accounts
The examination of these facets would serve the cause of rendering a pointed and well-informed assessment of ATFX’s overall capabilities.
ATFX: A Forex and CFDs Brokerage
ATFX is owned by the AT Group, a group of financial companies that trades CFDs and Foreign Currency Pairs. Being an organization of financial entities, the services of the firm go through four different channels. The one that is being looked at through this review is the coming out of Global Markets in the United Kingdom.
The Global Markets arm is being sanctioned by the UK Financial Conduct Authority (FCA).
The financial group itself, the AT Group had been established back in 2017. What the review team had found to be wanting with the company is its transparency of its existing financial data, especially given that as of writing it is relatively young and starting to gain traction in the online trading community.
But as far as regulation is concerned, ATFX clients are assured of legitimate services given the firm’s services are verified by the FCA.
Offers and Services
As already mentioned, ATFX specializes in trading Foreign Exchange currency pairs.
When you look at the Foreign Currency Pairs that the firm offers, these amount to a total of 70 pairs, admittedly the highest among its known contemporaries. But what it falls short on, as far as the review team is concerned, are its CFDs offerings namely:
Stock CFDs – amount to only 170 as opposed to other notable brokerages that amount to over thousands
Commodity CFDs – amount to only 10 with its key competitors offering up to 41
Stock Index CFDs – amount to only 13 with other offering over 20
These offerings from ATFX are glaring especially that it had poised itself as a CFDs brokerage. While its relatively young tenure may be pointed as the direction from this shortcoming may be coming from, it simply could not be justified.
ATFX: A MetaTrader 4 Platform Brokerage
Lacking a proprietary trading software, ATFX provides industry-favorite MetaTrader 4. While MT4 can simply be lauded for itself, the fact of the matter is, being offered through ATFX comes with certain limitations. Sure the platform allows for clean and fast fee reports and customization of charts, but it does fail on security and design.
The MT4 through ATFX is limited in security as it does not have a two-tier authentication solution. In addition, it does not provide traders with price alerts and is suffering from poor design despite customizability.
Available ATFX Trading Accounts
ATFX offers 4 trading accounts. These would be detailed below:
Standard Account
Among the other offers this is the one with the lowest minimum deposit amount requirement which is $500. It does not offer any commissions, and has higher spreads that start from 1.0 pip. The offered leverage is at 1:30.
Edge Account
Requiring a deposit of at least $5,000, the Edge Account offers lower spreads starting from 0.6 pip, zero commissions, a number of research implements and a leverage of 1:30.
Premium Account
For a deposit of $10,000, traders would be able to avail of Raw Spreads starting from 0.0 pip, a price of $25 for 10 lots, education allowance alongside select research tools.
Professional Account
The Professional Account requires $5,000 for clients to avail of lower spreads starting from 0.6 pip, zero commissions, and a leverage of 1:400.
Start Trading With ATFX Today?
The points detailed here do not necessarily figure well for ATFX. The total assessment is being anchored to this given the total number of offerings in CFD are obviously few. The firm would benefit from increasing its number, especially its claim of being a CFDs trading firm.
The firm would also benefit from improving the features that are available from its version of MetaQuotes’ MT4.
Having said these, the review team has not yet come to the conclusion that ATFX is a firm that may be worth the try. It is still young and has yet to prove much.
