ATFX Review

As of November 30th ATFX does not allow retail traders.
ATFX is a brand of branches providing CFD/forex trading services within the global financial consortium, AT Group. ATFX (UK) started as a FX/CFD broker in 2017 and has quickly risen to notoriety due to the company’s well-tailored offerings of competitive spreads and zero commissions, across a range of trading accounts. Since 2015, the firm, which is regulated by the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA), has been the recipient of 37 industry awards, in Europe, Asia and Africa.

With headquarters in the heart of London, the company itself offers more than 200 financial instruments to trade with including forex and CFDs in indices, commodities, cryptocurrencies and shares. Its cutting-edge trading platform, MetaTrader 4 (MT4) allows you to trade with confidence using over 55 FX pairs. Further to this, ATFX provides a state-of-the-art, mobile-accessible client trading portal, as well as 24/5 live access to free market commentary and exemplary client services.

The group AT Global Markets (UK) is a member of the Financial Services Compensation Scheme (FSCS), this covers eligible investments of up to £85,000 per person, per firm.

Advantages of Opening Account with ATFX

• Competitive Spreads
• No commission
• Regulated by the FCA
• More than 200 financial instruments
• Trade on reliable platform MT4
• Free VPS (subject to account type)
• Raw Spreads (subject to account type)
• One to one coaching
  Forex Education Centre
  Multi asset trading including FX, Commodities, Indices, Stocks and Cryptos
• Social trading platform – ATFX Team-UPAward winning customer support – 2019 Best Customer Service Award by ADVFN
• Best online trader award 2020 by ADVFN
• Best news & analysis provider 2020 by FXdailyinfo.com

Account Types

ATFX has a fully digital account opening process which is both user-friendly and seamless. The company provides four different account types, all of which differ in their required minimum deposit, pricing, leverage, and additional services.

Standard Account – A Standard account requires a minimum of £$€500 and offers a minimum spread on the benchmark EUR/USD currency pair of 1.0pips.

Edge Account – The Edge account requires a minimum deposit of £$€ 5000 offering a minimum spread on the benchmark EUR/USD currency pair of 0.6 pips.

Premium Account – The Premium account requires a deposit of £$€ 10,000 and offers a minimum spread on the benchmark EUR/USD currency pair of 0.0 pips, with a commission charged at $25 per mio per side.

Professional Account – Finally, the Professional account, reserved exclusively for traders who meet a specific criteria, allows you to trade on all instruments with higher leverage. Due to the nature of this account, traders must prove that they meet the threshold to qualify as an elective professional upon application.

Platform and Tools

ATFX uses a third-party platform, MetaTrader 4 (MT4) which is the most popular and widely used trading platform in the FX/CFD industry. It’s highly customisable, available in an exceptionally large number of languages, and has a clear fee report. It caters for all levels of ability; from novice to expert and professional.

The platform has the capability to be used as a web-based platform through a web-based browser, and as an application on smartphones and tablets. You can easily change the size and the position of the tabs. A demo account is available and ATFX clients can download several versions of MT4 for free; MT4 Desktop, MT4 WebTrader and MT4 mobile, with apps for Android and iOS.

• Full customization. With MT4, you can customize your indicators, charts, EAs, libraries, and trading scripts.

• 50 technical indicators are preinstalled in the MT4 version you download. The platform also offers 30 chart analysis tools.

• ATFX supports automated trading through Expert Advisors.

While the desktop version offers the most compelling trading experience, ATFX’s other MT4 versions support most of the mentioned features as well.

Asset Classes

ATFX supports a wide range of tradable assets and asset classes. Traders can access most of these from a Demo account. The WebTrader is very friendly in this regard.

The Forex category covers currency pairs. Within this category, the broker has staked out two sub-categories. The FX1 category is home to major currency pairs. FX2 hosts more exotic currency pairs, such as the USD/HUF, EUR/PLN, and USD/HKD. Whatever you need in regards to FX trading, you will probably find here. Be aware that you will trade currency pairs via CFDs, like the other assets offered by the broker.

Spot gold vs USD is one of two precious metals that you can trade at ATFX. The other one is silver.

Energy-wise, the broker offers UK- and US oil. The WebTrader also covers some 13 indices, representing all the important nooks and crannies of the world economy.

Cryptocurrencies make a dynamic and always interesting tradable asset segment. Granted, the CFDs online brokers offer that cover this category are not particularly popular with traders.

That said, ATFX has still pinned quite a few such CFDs onto its tradable asset selection. Thus, traders have access to bitcoin, Ethereum, Litecoin, and XRP CFDs.

Commissions and Fees

The fees you pay on your ATFX positions depend on the asset you trade and your account type.

• Premium Account holders are in the best position fees-wise. They may have to deposit at least USD/EUR/GBP 10,000, but for that money, they will trade almost spread-free. The spreads for this account type start from 0.0 pips. There is a commission of $25 per million per side.

• Those who go for the Edge Account only have to deposit USD/EUR/GBP 5,000. They get to trade commission-free. The spreads start from 0.6 pips, however.

• Professional Account holders enjoy the same privileges. The minimum deposit for this account type is USD/EUR/GBP 5,000 too. Such traders pay no commissions. Their spreads start from 0.06 pips as well.

The main difference between the Edge and the Professional account is that the latter can use higher leverage.

Research and Education

ATFX shines in this category, with extensive research and analysis from in-house analysts that serves to demystify the trading process. The educational resources are broader in nature but equally useful, with segmentation between beginner, intermediate, and advanced topics. The analysis is deep, nuanced, challenging, and detailed in scope, using a host of technical data.

ATFX’s primary goal is to inform your trading and help you to develop a trader’s mindset. To achieve this, the company builds on your analysis skills with insights and views from experts while broadening your trading knowledge with expert-led learning material. A healthy roster of online webinars fills the need for advanced topics and allows you to identify news catalysts.

Day-traders who understand how currency values are determined are in a better position to develop strategies and profit from market fluctuations. As such, ATFX’s free eBooks cover timely and relevant topics such as trading methods, money management and trader psychology. In a similar vein, the highly regarded quarterly report covers recent market sentiment and movements, while concentrating on the forthcoming events and macroeconomic backdrop. ATFX’s reports simplify the complex, often with analogies. 

Premium Education – Opening a premium account with ATFX means unlocking a number of exclusive benefits including, premium tutorials and videos, as well as full access to Trading Central. The premium education feature compliments the free VPS and raw spreads that this account type offers. In September 2019 the firm launched its ATFX Connect brand, to cater to high-end professionals, corporates, and institutional level clients. This development indicates ATFX’s full-spectrum knowledge of its industry in all its iterations. 

The firm’s trading seminars, held all over the world, are set to recommence once considered safe to do so following government guidelines. During the Covid-19 lockdown period, ATFX supplemented it’s seminars for regular online webinars, which gave clients even more access to market professionals and education material.

Market News

The firm provides daily news and the latest market updates, with the most advanced advice and market commentary on FX pairs, precious metals, oil, commodities and indices. With the use of both technical and fundamental analysis, all the content is well researched and caters for all types of traders and investors.

Every quarter an in-depth report is curated and published to ATFX client’s offering them an outlook of the coming quarter. Trade ideas and different market scenarios are discussed to help plan your trading quarter.

Daily Webinars

ATFX’s Global Chief Market Strategist, Alejandro Zambrano, delivers a daily webinar which discusses the current state and trends of financial markets. During these webinars, there are real-time insights provided to traders who can share in Zambrano’s twelve-year wealth of knowledge and trading expertise. He has been recognised by Reuters, CNBC, and Bloomberg respectively.

One-to-one Coaching

One-to-one coaching from ATFX account managers is available upon request, this depends on the account type you have. If you have an Edge account, you’ll benefit from one-to-one coaching with Alejandro Zambrano. He will assist in creating a personalised trading plan tailored to your specific needs and goals. Traders can learn where to place stop-loss orders and where to take profit, as well as knowing how to manage leverage.

Trading Tools

ATFX offers a wide array of tools to invest in capital markets. The firm’s advanced trading tools help you analyse the markets and identify potential trading opportunities.

Trading Central – Unlimited access is given to Trading Central (subject to account type), providing clients with an unbiased customisable view of the markets. This covers more than 8,000 financial instruments.

Clients can also use trading signals to meet their goals, this includes:

• The long and short entry/exit signals
• Slow and fast price indicators
• Raw and smooth signal lines
• Slow and fast oscillators

ATFX Team-Up – The firm recently launched a social-trading platform called ATFX Team-Up. Clients will be able to follow and mirror other traders in the community, as well as interact over the web by sharing ideas and opinions.

It benefits both novice and experienced traders. Novice traders can copy the experienced and experienced traders can earn for every trader that copies them.

Web TV – Access to live recordings from the New York Stock Exchange floor, providing professional financial commentary on market movements as well as actionable trade ideas.

Leverage

The maximum leverage offered on the main retail account types is 30:1 and the minimum trade size for FX is a micro lot (0.01 full lots). The firm also offers 400:1 leverage to professional traders which is subject to eligibility.

ATFX provides its customers with negative balance protection, and allows both scalping and hedging. Negative balance protections do not apply to professional clients. Professional clients’ losses can exceed their deposits.

Customer Service

ATFX was awarded the prestigious Best Customer Service Award in 2019 by ADVFN. The company provides an exceptional customer-centric, multilingual service, with agents based in 14 countries, speaking 20 different languages.

The ATFX website offers a browser-based live chat feature, which is arguably the most effective way of getting assistance.

In addition to it, traders can also contact the broker through two phone hotlines.

• 0800 279 6219 for those in the UK.
• +44 203 957 7777 for those calling from outside the country.

There are two support emails as well: complaints.uk@atfx.com and info.uk@atfx.com.

ATFX support is active from Monday to Friday.

Mobile

As mentioned, ATFX’s MT4 platform is available in mobile versions for Android- and iOS-based devices.

MT4 mobile is every bit as impressive charting- and trading tools-wise as the web- and desktop versions.

Conclusion

ATFX is a brokerage that has put its act together well. It offers a solid suite of trading platforms, as well as a decent selection of tradable assets. In some instances, the broker uses an ECN (Electronic Communication Network) to connects buyers with sellers. In such instances, it does not act as a market maker. It does, however, reserve the right to act as a market maker in other instances. Market-making brokers are seldom straight-shooters, however, so that is a mark in the “shortcomings” column.

Also, the lack of user feedback is somewhat concerning. It may be the sign of the whitewashing of history in some cases.