IX Securities

Does IX Securities have what it takes to survive the endless competition between brokerage firms, or is it short lived? Read on to see for yourself.

IX Securities Ltd is the trading name of IX Capital Group Limited, which is a registered company under the laws of the Commonwealth of The Bahamas, and is licensed by the local Securities Commission of The Bahamas (SCB).

The commission behind the SCB is responsible for disclosing adequate investment information and establish rules of conduct concerning the financial market. It requires all brokers under its gaze to hold a minimum capital of $300k. However, bear in mind that the SCB is an offshore regulator, which are known for their liberal approaches to regulating.

IX Securities has included a compensation fund, or rather a client insurance plan that covers clients’ losses of up to $1 million, which is a fantastic initiative. However, there are certain terms and condition that must be met. Moreover, IX Securities holds the funds of clients in separate, segregated, bank accounts.

As an offshore broker, IX Securities is not limited by ESMA, and so can offer any spread it wishes. Here the leverage has been raised up to 1:400. However, the leverage given to us when opening the trading platform was capped at 1:500.

The demo version of the platform, while using the STP account, gave us a EUR/USD spread of 1.9-2 pips, which is not advantageous to users.

The broker offers Commodities, Forex Pairs, and Indices as trading products.

The two languages that IX Securities gives us to work with are English and Chinese.

IX SECURITIES LOGIN

The classic MT4 makes a return here, with all the features you have come to expect.

METATRADER4

MT4 encompasses a to-the-point look and feel without sacrificing any accessibility. With MT4 you can set automated bots to trade instead of you so that you can indulge in other activities while profit is made (or lost). MT4 also comes with over 50 customizable trading indicators, great options for managing your charts, a drag and drop feature and many more pros.

The leverage on the platform is capped at 1:500.

We got a EUR/USD spread of 1.9-2 pips on the STP accousnt. But again, this is the demo version of the trader. On the website, the broker promises costs of trading as low as 1.2 pips for the STP account, and 0 pips for the ECN account. The ECN account is commissioned, yet the broker does not make it clear by how much. Even more distressing is that it barely mentions a commission anywhere. On the STP&ECN page we get the following vague information:

Next is a confusing mention of commissions found at the Trading Fees- Spread page:

Furthermore, in the Client Agreement the broker drops the following clause on us, that again is imprecise with the commissions.

There are others like this scattered throughout the website that we wont bore you with. This is indeed odd, but it’s not uncommon for offshore brokers to conceal certain types of information.

The MT4 trader is available on Android and iOS devices, as a desktop trader, and on MacOS.

IX SECURITIES MINIMUM DEPOSIT

The Customer Support page provides some sloppy info on a minimum deposit. The information is delivered in an unclear way, and there are obvious punctuation errors. But we can read that the minimum deposit is $800.

On the Home Page, the minimum deposit is said to be $500. Either way, these are quite high standards, and most retail traders will be unsettled because of it.

Due to the lack of clarity and obvious inconsistency, the minimum deposit may be completely different. There is also the chance that only verified Live users have access to this information.

In the “Smooth Deposit And Withdraw” page, the following methods for funding an account are made clear: Skrill, Neteller, UnionPay, Wire Transfer. The most pivotal and widespread method for paying is no where found: Credit and Debit Cards.

The only base currency at IX Securities is USD.

Skrill and Neteller take up to 1 day to process deposits. UnionPay reduces this time to 2 hours. Bank Transfers as usual take the longest, around 3-5 days.

The only charge from the brokers side (banks charge separately), is a $15 fee for any Wire Transfer.

IX SECURITIES WITHDRAWAL TIME AND FEES

The minimum withdrawal is not made available to us, which isn’t something uncommon, but it would be nice to have this piece of information somewhere conspicuously.

The same payment methods for deposits are used for withdrawing: Skrill, Neteller, UnionPay, Wire Transfer.

Skrill and Neteller process payments between 1-7 days. UnionPay does this in 1-5 days, while Wire Transfer require a waiting time on average between 3-5 days.

Netteler/Srill withdrawal are charged with $15 per request. UnionPay is charged the same amount if the withdrawal is under $50; if over $50 then there is no charge for withdrawing. There is a $15 fee for Wire Transfers.

There is a sleeper account fee of $15 per year is applied to all accounts that are inactive for more than a calendar year.

BOTTOM LINE

IX Securities might have an offshore license and offer good trading conditions, but we cannot shake the feeling that something is off here. There are too many inconsistencies, too much info is withheld, and if we’re honest the interface is somewhat clumsy. Our advice to readers is that they should try other brokers instead; it’s not that we’re dismissing IX Securities, it’s just our hunches are not quite straight with this one.