Editor’s Verdict
Overview
Review
Headquarters | Greece |
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Regulators | HCMC |
Year Established | 2008 |
Execution Type(s) | No Dealing Desk |
US Persons Accepted? |
AAAFx is an online Forex and CFD ECN (electronic communications network) brokerage launched in 2008. They are headquartered and regulated in Greece, being one of only two Forex/CFD brokers who are truly Greek. As they are regulated in Greece by the Hellenic Capital Market Commission, they are also fully regulated in all European Union member states.
AAAFx offers traders the opportunity to trade a reasonably wide range of instruments wrapped as CFDs (Contracts for Difference), even including some bonds and soft commodities. In addition to Bonds, AAAFx offer trading in 36 Forex currency pairs and crosses, 10 global equity indices, the commodities of gold, silver, crude oil, natural gas, and copper, and all the major cryptocurrencies including Bitcoin paired again the U.S. Dollar. Minimum margin requirements differ, and of course, maximum leverage at a broker regulated within the European Union is restricted to 30 to 1 by ESMA regulations.
Accounts
AAAFx differs from most brokers in offering clients an ECN account model. There is only one account type for retail clients, without any of the gimmicks which many brokers typically use to promote spurious distinctions, although there is a choice of platforms. Opening an account with AAAFx requires a minimum deposit of $300.
As AAAFx operates an ECN model, clients are charged both a spread and a commission on all transactions. Spreads are variable and begin at a low of 0.2 pips on the benchmark EUR/USD currency pair. Commissions are of course fixed and equate to another 0.8 pips on EUR/USD which means you can expect to pay about 1 pip for every round-trip trade in the EUR/USD currency pair. This is competitive, and in fact for a deposit of $300 is truly good value.
Commissions for institutional clients are considerably lower, with institutional accounts charged approximately 70% on commissions, due to their large trade sizes.
The spreads and commissions on non-Forex assets are also broadly competitive. Unusually for a Forex/CFD brokerage, AAAFx publish their overnight swap rates. They look mostly OK and are positive where there are significant interest rate differentials, which is a positive sign, and as it should be.
Swap-free Islamic accounts, and demo accounts, are also available, as is typically the case with Forex/CFD brokerages.
All accounts offer a minimum trade size of 1 micro-lot (0.01 full lots).
Scalping and hedging are allowed, and automated trading is possible. This combination of advantages is something that is increasingly hard to find, especially with a Forex/CFD broker regulated in the E.U. such as AAAFx.
There is no choice of trading platform if you do not want to use the ZuluTrade platform, as the only alternative is MetaTrader 4. Happily, this is the world’s most popular and common Forex trading platform. AAAFx is a partner of ZuluTrade, which allows its customers to effectively operate in a way that takes advantage of all of ZuluTrade’s social trading and trade copying features.
Features
AAAFx’s most notable feature is the economy and flexibility of its offering – clients are offered ECN trading with very competitive transaction costs, and may hedge, scalp, or swing or position trade with no restrictions.
A reasonably wide range of assets are offered for trading, especially within the Forex universe, although this is still a relatively narrower offering than what is typically offered by most Forex/CFD brokerages.
Education
AAAFx has no educational offering. In our view, this is refreshing, as they are focusing on offering a brokerage service instead of using the common tactic of offering low-quality education to suck in new clients with high transaction costs.
Bonuses and Promotions
Bonuses and promotions have been prohibited under European Union regulations, so are neither offered nor available to clients.
Deposits/Withdrawals
Depositing funds into a AAAFx account is an easy and secure process. Both may be made using several different methods, including credit cards, debit cards, Skrill, Neteller, and even Bitcoin. Withdrawals are generally made through the same channel that deposits have been made through.
Customer Support
Website Languages |
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Customer support is available 24/5 in many languages: English, Greek, German, French, Spanish, Italian, Portuguese, Russian, Chinese, Arabic and Japanese. You can communicate with AAAFx by chat, email, or by phone.
Conclusion
AAAFx has an exceptional offering for retail Forex/CFD traders, which smacks of professionalism and integrity, and avoids cheap gimmicks. If you are not looking for an extremely wide range of obscure assets to trade, and want a cheap ECN-style trade offering, these guys are certainly worth seriously considering, especially if you have a relatively small deposit to make.
Features
In terms of features, the stand-out strengths of AAAFx’s offering are:
- A very competitive spread/commission offering, especially for small depositors.
- A reasonably wide range of instruments available for trading: Forex currency pairs, global equity indices, gold, silver, crude oil, bonds, and cryptocurrencies.
- An ECN trading model.
- Negative balance protection.
- Regulated by a major industry center (E.U.).
- AAAFx is a well-established firm with a well-earned reputation to protect.
Platform
MetaTrader4
The MetaTrader 4 is an independent trading platform, developed for trading FX, commodities and other products and is one of the most advanced and easy platforms to use. It remains the gold standard of trading platforms.
In addition to the wide range of markets available to trade, the MT4 platform provides traders with a multilingual interface, instant execution, built in help guides for MT4 and MetaQuotes Language 4, a complete technical analysis package including a wide range of in-built indicators and charting tools, various custom indicators and time periods and more.
Automated trading is also offered through the MetaTrader 4 platform where traders can create and test their automated trading strategies by using the MetaEditor, Strategy Tester and Compiler tools within the MT4 platform.
With this automated trading system clients may create Expert Advisors, software programs enabling traders to constantly monitor the markets. Custom Indicators help traders to predict future price movements by analyzing past and current price information. And the Scripts feature gives traders the opportunity to set up an automatic repetition of specific operations such as closing all positions with a single keystroke.
MetaTrader Mobile
The MetaTrader 4 and platform apps can be used on iPhones, iPads, Multi-Terminal, and all Android devices.
ZTP
ZuluTrade’s proprietary platform, providing a fully-fledged web-based Trading Station for Forex and CFDs manual trading.
Offers technical charts (Candlesticks, OHLC, lines) and indicators (Trend, Oscillators, volatility, volumes, Bill Williams etc.) you can tailor according to your trading requirements. In addition, ZuluScripts™ allows trading robots to be used or developed via your own algorithms to run your trading strategies.
Your account is always shielded against connectivity issues and can run EAs uninterruptedly without the need for a VPS.
