Fondex

Founded in 2011 in Cyprus, Fondex is the trade name of TopFX Ltd. In Europe, TopFX Ltd is regulated by the Cyprus Securities and Exchange Commission (CySEC) under licence number 138/11. Outside of Europe, Fondex Ltd is licensed by the Seychelles Financial Services Authority (FSA) with a Securities Dealer License No: SD037.

Fondex is also registered with 17 EU Regulators, including the Federal Financial Supervisory Authority (BaFin) and the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA). To maintain licensing and registrations, Fondex is required to fulfil capital adequacy requirements, submit financial reports to the regulators, and undertake a detailed annual audit performed by an independent auditor.

Global traders will be trading under the Fondex Ltd subsidiary regulated by the Seychelles FSA.  The FSA’s rules are not as strict as those of CySEC, but it does allow Fondex to provide its clients with higher leverage.

In accordance with FSA regulation, Fondex holds all client funds in segregated accounts and provides negative balance protection, which means that clients can never lose more than is in their trading accounts.

Overall, with a long history of responsible behaviour, strong international regulation, negative balance protection, and wide industry recognition, we consider Fondex a safe and secure broker to trade with.

The account opening process at Fondex is user-friendly, fully digital and accounts are ready for trading immediately.

Italian residents are not eligible to open an account at Fondex.

Creating an account is straightforward, the process is fully digital, and accounts are usually ready immediately. Fondex offers individual and corporate accounts, but we will focus on opening an individual account:

1. New traders will have to click on the “Start Trading Now” button at the top of the page where they will be directed to fill in their email address and register a password. 

2. Traders will then have to fill in their personal details, including name, surname, and date of birth, and physical address.

3. Once this step is complete, clients are required to fill out a questionnaire that helps Fondex assess the trader’s investment knowledge, experience, and expertise to deem the suitability and relevance of the services on offer. While most brokers don’t include this step in the account-opening process, it is a responsible move in an industry that is often accused of an irresponsible approach to consumer protection.  Traders who fail the appropriateness test will be encouraged to open a demo account before proceeding with live trading.  

4. Traders will then have to upload the following documents:

   • Proof of Identification – Fondex accepts all government-issued identification documents such as Passport, national ID card, driving license, or other government-issued ID. 

   • Proof of Address – Proof of residence/address document must be issued in the name of the account holder within the last 6 months and must contain a trader’s full name, current residential address, issue date, and issuing authority.

5. Once this step is complete, traders can fund their accounts and begin trading.    

Overall, Fondex’s account-opening process is fully digital and hassle-free and accounts are generally ready for trading immediately.  

Fondex offers trading on Forex, indices, shares, precious metals, energies, cryptocurrencies, and ETFs.

The trading costs are built into the spread, which is variable and gets wider or tighter depending on trade volume and market volatility. 

The average cost of trading one lot of EUR/USD is 5 USD, which is much tighter than the spreads at other similar brokers – most other brokers have a trading cost of 9 USD per lot of EUR/USD.  Additionally, Fondex has no minimum deposit requirements, making it accessible to all traders.

Swap Fees

Another important cost to consider is the swap rate charged on positions held overnight. Interest is paid (or received) for each night a position is held. In currency trading, the swap rate is determined by the direction of your trade (short or long) and the overnight interest rate differential between the two currencies. In Share or Index CFDs trading, holding costs are based on other factors such as the interbank interest rate for the currency of the relevant asset.

Unfortunately, Fondex does not publish any of the swap fees associated with each instrument on its website.  These can be found in the market watch window of the cTrader platform. 

We opened and tested Fondex’s Live and Demo accounts:

Live Account

Fondex offers a single commission-free account type on the Fondex cTrader platform. Maximum leverage is 500:1, and there is no minimum deposit requirement. Fondex provides raw spreads from its liquidity providers, but a small spread mark-up is charged, with spreads that average at 0.28 pips on the EUR/USD.

Demo Account

Fondex also offers a demo account loaded with virtual funds to make real-time transactions and refine a strategy. Demo accounts at Fondex don’t expire, and there’s no monetary risk involved, so users have peace of mind when browsing the cTrader platform.

Fondex’s mobile trading apps are limited compared to other brokers, with no mobile proprietary trading solutions.  

As mentioned above, cTrader is available on both Android and iOS.  The cTrader mobile app offers the best features available on the desktop version including the complete range of order types, trade analysis, and watchlists.

Fondex offers support for a single trading platform: cTrader. Advocates of cTrader will tell you that it is more beginner-friendly than MT4 and offers high-speed execution with a cleaner user interface.

Fondex cTrader comes with 70 pre-installed indicators, and cTrader Automate allows traders to build their own custom indicators or download them from the cTrader’s bot storefront. cTrader’s intuitive interface makes complex trade orders easy to manage, and it features multiple options for order execution, monitoring, and modification:

• Create an unlimited number of watchlists with your favourite instruments and store them in the cloud for easy access from any device.
• Use the Quick Trade tool for extra speed when opening, closing, and modifying orders.
• Fondex cTrader’s Market Depth lets you view the full availability of executable prices as they are streamed from our liquidity providers.
• Enter multiple orders and have them filled at once, with no queue.
• Access up to 50 fields of information on your deals, orders, and positions.
• Use Advanced Take Profit to define 1 to 4 levels of Take Profit and scale-out of your positions gradually.
• Activate Advanced Stop Loss to have your stop loss moved to a break-even level after the price has progressed a certain number of pips in your favour.
• Set price alerts to be notified when the price of an instrument reaches a certain point.

cTrader also comes complete with an advanced Copy Trading function, a real bonus for beginner traders. The copy trading strategy selection process is easy and straightforward:

• Assess all available strategies via an intuitive interface.
• Rank them according to profit percentage.
• Select the strategy that suits your profile and trading goals.
• Click ‘Start copying’, and all your trades will be executed automatically.

Overall, cTrader is a clean, modern, and feature-rich platform that all traders will enjoy using. The user base is smaller than MT4 or MT5, so tutorials and trading bots are not as prevalent online.

cTrader is available via your browser, as a desktop download for Windows PCs and for both Android and iOS devices for those that want to trade on the go.

Fondex charges no fees for deposits and withdrawals, and processing times are generally very fast across all funding methods. 

Fondex offers a wider range of base currencies than is available at other brokers, but it does not offer accounts denominated in NGN. 

The Fondex client portal allows traders to deposit funds in 9 currencies, including AUD, CAD, CHF, EUR, GBP, JPY, PLN, USD, and THB.  

High-volume traders (who trade more than 10 lots a month) should consider opening an account denominated in USD because a conversion fee will be charged for every trade made on a USD-quoted currency pair.  This can be done by opening a multi-currency bank account at a digital bank.  

Overall, Fondex offers a wider range of base currencies than other brokers.

Besides the copy trading functionality built into the cTrader platform, Fondex has also partnered with Autochartist to offer its signals plugin. 

Autochartist

Free for all Fondex clients, Autochartist is an award-winning automated technical analysis tool that plugs into cTrader and scans all available CFD markets for trading opportunities. This plugin combines standard technical analysis, chart analysis, and Japanese candlesticks and provides you with actionable information for all types of trading styles.

Autochartist’s advanced pattern recognition engine identifies the strongest potential trading opportunities and predicts future price movements. Some of Autochartist’s key features are:

• Chart pattern recognition
• Fibonacci pattern recognition
• Key level analysis
• Pattern quality indication

Autochartist is one of the best technical analysis tools on the market, and Fondex does well to offer this tool to its clients.  

Fondex’s market analysis is updated frequently but is less comprehensive than what is available at other brokers.  

Though Fondex provides a short market news section, it is updated frequently throughout the day. New articles are posted daily and are generally brief, though insightful. Fondex has also partnered with Autochartist, the world’s leading market analysis resource, to provide in-platform signals, technical analysis, and market news.

Fondex’s education section comprises a collection of articles covering everything from technical analysis and risk management to exit strategies and more general tips for successful trading. Though this section is unstructured, with no course for beginners, the material on offer is detailed and valuable. More experienced traders may find some of the articles helpful, too, with articles on scalping strategies and a deep dive into trading fundamentals.

Fondex customer support and marketing is also active on social media and can be reached via Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and Instagram.

For the purposes of this review, we found the live chat support responsive and polite.  The live chat agents were also able to answer our questions satisfactorily.