360 SmartFX – Is This the Only Option You Have?

360 SmartFX Review

Are you looking for an online broker? Initiating a simple Google search will give you so many options to explore. The twist comes when you visit the website of these brokers and realize that they all have one thing in common; each of the brokers advertises themselves as the best companies in the world. They claim to work in the best interest of their clients and offer the ideal experience anyone can want while trading. But, if you do some research, you will come to know that this industry is full of scams and frauds. Most of the new traders end up suffering at the hand of these unreliable and shady companies.

Even if the broker you sign up with is not a scam, there is no guarantee that they will offer you any appropriate services that you would need for trading. One name that you will come across during your search is none other than 360 SmartFX. There is considerable hype about this broker, which prompts traders to give it a look.

Introduction to 360 SmartFX

360 SmartFX is a forex and CFD offshore broker, which is based in Saint Vincent and the Grenadines. It draws attention to itself by offering a large selection of forex pairs to the traders. There are more than sixty available and many of them include exotic currencies, such as Czech Krona, Polish Zloty, Norwegian Krone, Philippine Peso, Swedish Krona, Mexican Peso, Singapore Dollar, Hong Kong Dollar, South African Rand, Russian Ruble, Turkish Lira, Danish Krone, and Hungarian Forint.

It is also a CFD broker, which means traders can enjoy access to a variety of markets as its list of CFDs include natural gas, commodities, stocks, oil, spot metals like palladium, platinum, gold and silver and also crypto coins like Bitcoin, Monero, Stellar, Dash, Zcash, Litecoin, Ethereum, IOTA and Ripple.

Other than this, 360 SmartFX also enables its traders to benefit from leverage of 1:200. This is considerably high leverage and even though it sounds like an advantage, traders should remember that leverage comes at a price of higher risk. As a matter of fact, even professional traders don’t use leverage that’s higher than 1:00 or 1:50. Therefore, this might not be as good as it sounds.

360 SmartFX – The Claims it Makes

According to the broker’s website, it provides them the best way to earn some money. They call themselves as one of the best brokers out there because they have an innovative trading platform, which is equipped with a wide array of tools. Some of the other selling points they have used for backing their claims include helping clients in making their trades and providing them with profitable terms. They also state that they provide trade SMS signals and have personal account managers to help their users.

You will straight away notice that they are offering a 30% sign up bonus. Leverage of 1:200 is available, as mentioned above, and they also have 24/7 customer support. Plus, when you become a member of the broker, you can enjoy 0% fee on deposits. Moreover, they promise you a spread of 1.6 on the EUR/USD and you just need to create an account to get it. Is it truly that simple? Let’s find out.

360 SmartFX – Fake Platforms

When you visit the broker’s website, you will discover that several platforms are operated by 360 SmartFX for ensuring traders can trade from anywhere. However, the alarming part is that none of their trading platforms actually work. You can download their desktop and mobile trading platform, but it will be futile because the download will stall. This is rather shocking because it means that traders cannot initiate transactions on the move.

When there is a problem in downloading and it stalls constantly, it means that it is unsecure and unstable. Why would anyone want to use a trading platform that’s so vulnerable to hackers? There have been too many stories about brokers being compromised and all funds being wiped off by the brokers. No one wants to be a victim of same, but you will make yourself vulnerable if you try and use 360 SmartFX’s trading platforms.

360 SmartFX – Account Types

There are four different account types that are being offered to traders at 360 SmartFX. Traders can choose from Standard, Classic, Gold and Platinum options. The packages for each account are different and you will get access to features according to what you choose. The minimum deposit requirement for the accounts begin at $250 for Standard, $2500 for Classic, $20,000 for gold and $50,000 for the Platinum account.

These deposit requirements are considerably high and not on par with some of the top brokers in the market. In addition, some of the promotions that you will come across in these accounts are also quite unrealistic. When you look at the promotions, you will realize that 360 SmartFX are just using industry jargon to come off as professional because they don’t really have anything to offer.

360 SmartFX – Customer Support

If you check the broker’s claims, as aforementioned, you will see that they offer live support. In reality, this is not true. Go through their website and you will see that they don’t have a live support interface. In this day and age, all brokers should have live chat options because sometimes traders need urgent help. But, 360 SmartFX doesn’t seem to have the option of live chat, which means their claims of 24/7 customer support is false. Emails can be used, but they take a very long time to respond. Phone calls can also be made, but you will be talking to call support centers, which means a trading professional will not be there to assist you.

360 SmartFX – Ownership and Regulation

According to the broker’s own website, it is owned and operated by a company that’s known as Game Capital Ads Limited. If you take a look at the company, you will discover that it has become rather notorious and is on the radar of a number of financial watchdogs. In fact, a warning has been issued by the Italian Commissione Nazionale per le Societa e la Borsa (CONSOB), which has accused them of targeting Italian customers without obtaining any form of authorization first.

The company is regulated and doesn’t have permission to offer financial services in regulated markets, like USA, Australia, Japan or the European Union. Moreover, the company has also received warnings, not just about 360 SmartFX, but also about other brokers that it owns and operates, including GameBtcFx, CryptoClubFX, FirstFXClub and SmartProFX, which are all scams.

Visiting their website, you will notice that 360 SmartFX claims to have an experienced founding team behind it, but they have not disclosed their identities. Only scam artists would want to hide their identity, which is exactly what the broker has done. When you don’t know who founded the broker and when it was founded or even who designed their algorithm, it is safe to assume that they are a fraudulent platform.

360 SmartFX – Payment Methods

Another red flag that you will come across in the case of 360 SmartFX is their payment methods. When it comes to deposits, you will notice that they are fast and easy. After all, they are getting your money. It is not until you come to withdrawal that you will realize what the problem is. As far as payment methods are concerned, they have covered Visa, MasterCard, Neteller and AstroPay, but they are missing on some notable ones like Skrill. This has become noteworthy because Skrill has an anti-scam policy in place under which all brokers need to have a legitimate license in order to provide their services.

Since 360 SmartFX is an unregulated broker, they do not fulfill this requirement, another warning sign. Moving onto withdrawals, you will notice on the broker’s website that they are offering a welcome bonus of 30%, along with some other trading incentives. So, what is the price that you have to pay? If you go for the trading bonus, then you will have to achieve a trading volume of 3 standard lots for every $10 of bonus that you accept. If you get a $300 bonus, it will be translated to $10,000,000. This might turn out to be a big challenge, even for a professional trader.

Hence, withdrawing your money will become a tough job for you and it will be stuck, again not something you want in a broker.

360 SmartFX – Final Thoughts

Put simply, 360 SmartFX is just one of the unregulated brokers that are being operated by Game Capital Ads Limited and it has been targeted by the CONSOB in Italy. It has very unrealistic spreads and even though it claims to offer the MetaTrader 4, it is provided by a different company called West Media Group, which means it is not the same. Combined with the other issues of complicated withdrawal condition, lack of customer support and high deposit requirements, it doesn’t come off as the right package. Luckily, it is not the only option you have and you can certainly explore other options in the market.

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360 SmartFX
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