FXCM fees explained

Forex Capital Markets Limited: FCA registration number 217689 (www.fxcm.com/uk)

Disclaimer: CFDs are complex instruments and come with a high risk of losing money rapidly due to leverage. 63% or 74% of retail investor accounts lose money when trading CFDs with this provider. You should consider whether you understand how CFDs work and whether you can afford to take the high risk of losing your money.

FXCM EU LTD: CySEC license number 392/20 (www.fxcm.com/eu)

CFDs are complex instruments and come with a high risk of losing money rapidly due to leverage. Between 74-89% of retail investor accounts lose money when trading CFDs. You should consider whether you understand how CFDs work and whether you can afford to take the high risk of losing your money.

All references on this site to "FXCM" refer to the FXCM Group.

It's safe to say that FXCM's fees are low in general. They either don't charge a brokerage fee for things other brokers do charge for, or they only charge a small amount. This means that you can use FXCM even in case you trade frequently like multiple times a week or daily.

Here's a high level overview of FXCM's fees

Disclaimer: 63% or 74% of retail investor accounts lose money when trading CFDs with this provider. You should consider whether you can afford to take the high risk of losing your money.

Online brokerages in general charge much lower brokerage fees than traditional brokerages do - this is largely due to the fact that online brokerages' businesses can be much better scaled: From a purely technical standpoint it doesn't make that much of a difference for them if they have 100 or 5000 clients.

This is not to say however that they don't have any fees at all. They make money by charging you at various events for various rates. Usually you need to keep an eye on these 3 types of fees:

• Trading fees - these are brokerage fees that you pay when you actually do a trade. What you pay is either a commission, a spread or financing rate. Some brokers apply all of these.
  • A commission is either based on the traded volume or it is fixed.
  • A spread is the difference between the buy price and the sell price
  • Financing rate or overnight rate is charged when you hold your leveraged positions for more than one day.
• Non-trading fees. These occur related to some operations you make in your account, i.e. depositing money to your account, withdrawing money from it or not trading for an extended amount of time.

We compare FXCM fees with its closest competitors, Forex.com and Pepperstone.

FXCM's trading fees are low which makes it suitable for you even if you trade often (i.e. multiple times a week).

Let's break down the trading fees into the different asset classes available at FXCM.

Trading fees

FXCM's trading fees are low.

It is super hard to compare trading fees for forex brokers. What we did at BrokerChooser? Instead of quoting long fee tables, we compare brokers by calculating all fees of an example trade for two currency pairs.

• EURUSD, a popular currency pair
• EURGBP, another popular currency pair

The example in this context would mean that you buy for $20,000 using 30:1 leverage, and sell it after a week.

This super catch-all benchmark includes spreads and financing costs for all brokers.

Here is the verdict.

Financing rates

FXCM financing rates are low.

If you want to trade on margin and prefer to hold your positions long, financing costs can be significant.

Leverage is a double-edged sword and can dramatically amplify your profits. It can also just as dramatically amplify your losses. Trading foreign exchange/CFDs with any level of leverage may not be suitable for all investors.

Currency conversion fee

FXCM will charge a Currency Conversion Fee for all trades on instruments denominated in a currency different to the currency of your account. The fee is charged as the following: Exchange rate received from liquidity providers plus a mark-up. We used the EURUSD trading fees for the calculation..

When it comes to looking at all the non-trading fees FXCM is an average broker. This means that some of the non-trading fees are high, but the others are low or not charged at all.

Non-trading fees include various brokerage fees and charges at FXCM that you pay not related to buying and selling assets. Among some others, typical non trading fees are withdrawal fee, deposit fee, inactivity fee and account fee.

Deposit fees are applied when you send money to your trading account from your bank account. Usually brokers don't charge money for that and FXCM is not different: you will see the exact same amount on your brokerage account that you sent by any of the deposit methods FXCM offers.

Electronic wallets are available only for non-EU clients.

Unlike some online brokers we have reviewed FXCM usually does not charge a withdrawal fee. This means that you'll see the same amount of money on your bank account that you transferred from your brokerage account.

Electronic wallets are available only for non-EU clients.

The above-mentioned withdrawal fee depends on the withdrawal method you select.

FXCM does apply an inactivity fee and it is $50 per year after one year of inactivity. This means that you need to be strategic about your trading activity to avoid getting charged after a longer time of no trade. The fact that FXCM charges an inactivity fee makes it less ideal for you if you are a buy and hold investor.

FXCM has low inactivity fee.

Read more about FXCM inactivity fee on their own site.