Many traders will know of XM, they are very big on marketing, currently sponsoring the sprinting legend Usain Bolt. You will see Bolt in their upscale ads on TV, YouTube and all over the internet with their current campaign slogan being ‘trade with the greatest!’
But are XM ‘the greatest’? Well in my opinion no and we will go through why in this broker review.
XM love fancy marketing but under deliver
The fancy promotions don’t stop with the adverts. On their homepage, you will see the two bonuses you can receive for signing up with them. Now, one of them I like which is a $30 non-withdrawable bonus that you receive without having to make a deposit. Any profits you make from that $30 are yours to keep.
The other bonus which is up to ‘$5000’ is dependant on how much money you deposit into your account, and only really of use if you lose all your money. But still, it is better to have it than not to have it, but I feel it’s more used to lure people into making larger deposits.
My favorite over-the-top promotion on their homepage is that they have ’16 Trading Platforms’. I couldn’t find these platforms so I asked them in the chat support and it turned out actually to be 2 platforms – MetaTrader 4 and MetaTrader 5. The other 14 platforms are just the fact that you can use them on an iPhone, iPad, android phone, android tablet, blah blah blah…
One thing I must say is their chat support is excellent, so quick… definitely 10/10 for that. Setting up an account is also very easy and does not take long at all.
MetaTrader 4 and MetaTrader 5 are two of the most popular and well-known platforms so it is good of course that they have them. However, they are not offering anything unique in regards to platforms as you will find these with most brokers.
What real traders want from a forex broker
The most important things traders look for in a broker are the following: Security, reliability, specialist platforms, tight spreads, low commissions, and fees.
We have already established they are not offering any specialist platforms above, just the popular MetaTrader platforms.
When it comes to security and reliability XM does very well. XM has been around for 8 years; they are a massive company with more than 1,000,000 clients and are fully regulated by the FCA (Financial Conduct Authority) in the UK.
Your money is safe with XM. When you place your trades they’re going to get executed, you won’t have any problems there. There are also no hidden fees and it’s free to deposit and withdraw your funds so that’s another plus.
The thing is all the positives mentioned above are almost to be expected these days. There are plenty of forex brokers out there that are reliable, fully regulated and keep your funds safe in segregated accounts.
That leaves the two most important and highly competed over parts in the forex broker industry; commissions and spreads. For a trader these are your daily expenses, you want to get the best deal possible without compromising security and reliability.
This is where XM falls short. They do not offer the tightest spreads with lowest commissions so what’s the point? For both their XM Zero Account (has commissions) and their Standard Account (no commissions), there are better more competitive alternatives elsewhere. So unless there was some unique offering from XM that was worth paying a premium for, I would not recommend them.