HotForex

Now, let’s talk about, arguably, the most important feature in any Forex broker – the available platforms. After all you are your platform; you will spend countless hours in front of the screen and you must have the most efficient, effort-less and sophisticated platforms at your disposal. We have seen them all: MetaTrader 4, various browser-based platforms, various custom trading software, multiple mobile trading platforms, etc. But we can easily state that HotForex is once again flawless. Why?

Well, think about it; what do you need? You need reliable trading software; well, this is easy – the world standard is called MetaTrader 4. Next, you have to be able to take your trading with you anywhere you want. This means you need a reliable mobile trading platform for your smartphone or iPad. Last, but not least, if everything else fails, you have to be able to access your account through any computer or device in the world; this is possible thanks to the browser-based trading platforms. HotForex has it all and even more, so bear with us.

Trader’s Room

We would like to talk a bit about HotForex’s high-end account management system – the trader’s room. Basically, when you register at HotForex, you open an account in the trader’s room. This is your private Forex world, where you have a virtual wallet, multiple trading accounts, comprehensive educational system and many more. Let’s talk about those multiple accounts and the virtual wallet.

Once your account has been verified and activated, you can open as many trading accounts as you like and you can do it with the push of a button – no new ID verifications, no new registration forms, no new activation links. This is fantastic, because you don’t have to put all of your apples in one basket. Instead, you can plan and execute your trading strategies more precisely with separate MetaTrader 4 accounts. At first we thought that the whole multiple account system will cause more confusion than good, but we were wrong. You can easily see each account’s financial, trading history, account type, leverage and more.

The second feature worth mentioning is the virtual wallet. You see, when you deposit money into your account, you actually deposit money in your virtual wallet in HotForex. Then you can redistribute your funds to your trading accounts with the push of a single button. You don’t have to wait for bank transfers is approvals; it is almost instant. Wait, there is more, just as easily you can then cash back money from a trading account to your wallet. This way you can manage your money extremely fast. This is how it’s done by the best in the Forex industry and that’s the HotForex way!

MetaTrader 4

There isn’t much to say about the MetaTrader 4 platform. It is the best, period. HotForex hasn’t customized it in anyway, which is perfect!

Browser-based Trading Platform

HotForex’s WebTrader is one of the most sophisticated browser-based platforms we have ever seen. First of all, the screen is organized perfectly – huge space for the charts, active positions, favorite instruments and on-click trading buttons. Nothing more, no fancy pop-ups, no moving or sliding panels.

We won’t go into much details here, but we will stop by the charts. The charts are very nice; well, you can’t apply any indicators, which is bad, but the zoom is actually working properly and you can see your active positions on the chart.

Mobile Trading Platform

The mobile trading platform is also very good. It doesn’t save your credentials, which is perfect. Note that the whole mobile industry is rather young and those sensitive personal details shouldn’t be saved on your phone or iPad. The mobile app does the job perfectly:

• The chart. The charts are pretty good, actually. You can change time frames, apply indicators and view historical periods. But most importantly, they illustrate the market properly. This is more than we can say for eToro’s mobile charts, which are just horrible.
• Open positions. You can view all of the essential information – stop-losses, take-profits, profit, swap, etc.
• Rates. Really responsive and the update time is just insanely good.

Now, let`s talk about education. HotForex offers one of the best education solutions currently online. It features:

• Education for beginners - basic forex terms, ordinary trading strategies and many more.
• Advanced education - trading strategies, fundamental and technical analysis for traders that want to improve their trading skills.
• High-level information - a trading blog with daily discussions and analysis.

The interactive video lessons in the education section are definitely awesome: straight to the point, comprehensive, detailed, understandable, practical. We are old-school trades, so our favorite lessons feature the candlestick analysis (candle patterns, bullish and bearish formations). However, there is one more interesting thing here; these interactive videos are identical to the videos that AvaFX and 4XP have in their websites. The question here is who was first and does it really matter? We contacted each one of these brokers and got really disappointed when 4XP stated that these videos are their intellectual property and know-how. This is a lie. The true creator is a company named Academy Center ltd, which specializes in developing educational courses for the Forex industry. We will not go into any more details here, because the main focus is HotForex, but we will be bringing articles on this subject.

Economic calendar

Every trader wants to have an immediate access to the most important news as soon as they are being announced. That’s why a lot of Forex brokers have economic calendars and HotForex is not an exception. HotForex’s economic calendar looks great and is really fast. However, we experienced some technical issues, when we tried to access it with different web browsers, but after a brief consultation with the chat support everything worked just fine.

Blog and news

HotForex has a trading blog where you can find a lot of useful, updated information regarding the current economic situation. Personally, we like the daily analyses – both fundamental and technical. Apparently most analysts use only trend line, because all they talk about are support and resistance levels.

Unfortunately, HotForex doesn’t feature webinars, unlike 4XP which has a webinar called “Daily Trading Room”. Truth be told, HotForex already has more than enough educational options, so we can live with that.

Before we talk about the various account types that HotForex offers, we would like to spend a minute to tell you a thing or two about the registration process. The hardest part of Forex trading, should be forecasting the price’s movement, not the registration and verification process. Why do we bring this up? We had an absolutely terrible experience with AvaFX a few of days ago – we registered, then they took our deposit and THEN they decided to verify our identity. So far so good, but after two days of hassle, we gave up, because evidently our evidences weren’t convincing enough. By the way, we are still waiting for our deposit! HotForex is another case, their registration process is extremely fast; then they ask you to upload an image of your ID; THEN, deposit some cash and that’s it – 12 hours later we opened our first order with real money.

HotForex offers a wide variety of trading accounts, which is good, but how clumsy the registration procedure is? First of all, the obligatory fields are brought down to the bare minimum; name, email, employment status, account type and bonus type. That’s it! Next, you have to upload a copy of your ID card and in 24 hours you are good to go. This is one of the most clever and stress-free registrations in the industry today. HotForex has managed to obtain everything they need without causing massive headaches to its customers. Congrats!

HotForex offers a maximum leverage of 1:500; this is absolutely fantastic, because even people with smaller accounts can engage in big orders and possibly collect huge winnings. Truth be told, a leverage of 1:500 is way too powerful for people that don’t have enough experience in the market, because, yes you can win a lot, but you can also lose your entire account in a matter of minutes or even seconds.
While we are on the account topic, we cannot skip the member area. Once you log in to the official website, you have instant access to all sorts of cool features. On the top of the page you will see a few sub-menus, but there is one that caught our eye – “Tools”. Here you will find a few useful calculators. You can easily calculate pretty much anything: money/risk percentage, pivot points, etc. We really like the position size calculator, because here we can see how much lots we should open in order to maintain our own risk management strategy – perfect!

You can check out the Summary, if you want to take a quick look at the possible account types that HotForex provides. However, we would like to share our observations on two accounts in particular: PANN and Scalping.

PAMM Accounts

If you have read our review about eToro, you already know that some people are not interested in spending countless hours learning technical and fundamental indicators, strategies and developing demo accounts. Some people just want to invest in the market, or maybe you are new to Forex and you would like to see how an experienced trader operates on the market: decision-making, strategies, currency pairs, etc. HotForex has developed a PAMM system that allows you to open an investor account, choose a trader (account manager) and to automatically follow his moves. Is this system any good? Yes, it is, however it is not as good as eToro. Keep in mind, though, that eToro’s main focus and concept is investment, not trading. Truth be told, there are a couple of things that caught our eye:

• Each account manager defines his/her own conditions: fee and minimum deposit.
• Most traders have a success fee more that 30%. Although we found some traders that would claim 50% of the profitable trades.
• The minimum deposit amount is no less than 500 USD.

We did not like these conditions, simply because we can register at eToro with 50 USD and there is no success fee. Yes, there is a ridiculous spread, but it is better. Sure, HotForex claims that they control and supervise the account managers’ competence, but we haven’t got any proof to support this statement. Bottom line, if investment is the ONLY thing you are interested in, then HotForex should be your second pick – EToro dominates this territory.

Currenex

HotForex offers a special account, designed specifically for Forex scalpers. This is good, but it is not that impressive by today’s standards in this industry. Yes, you will get an awesome spread (starting from 0.2 pips) and a low commission (5 USD for every 100 000 traded units), but this is what you would expect, right? Whe really liked two things in the Currenex account:

• The minimum deposit amount is really low – 500 USD.
• If you deposit 2000 USD or more, you will get a free MYFX trade managing platform. This platform costs 249 USD a year, but here you will get it for free. We will post an article dedicated to this platform, but here are the highlights we like about it. The MYFX gives you the tools to take your risk and management strategy to the next level, because you can set a custom profile, where you can predetermine a lot of settings like a four-stage take-profit, stop-loss breaks, automated stop-losses, take-profits and trailing stops. This is extremely handy when you decide to scalp, because time, speed and accuracy is everything here. What’s more this platform works together with MetaTrader 4, which gives you the best from both worlds – proper technical analysis environment and comprehensive, custom scalping profiles. To be honest, you will get this platform with every HotForex account (apart from the Micro), but we believe that it is most efficient with Currenex.

You can easily set up a free demo Currenex account and you can download a free demo version of the MYFX, too. This means that you can test your scalping strategy with this software as long as you want.

ZuluTrade

For those of you who are not familiar with ZuluTrade, this is an investment network, where people who don’t want to trade in Forex themselves, invest their money and follow/copy professional traders. Generally speaking, we love the concept of the investment networks, because these are places where people who don’t have the time and/or knowledge can still profit from the world of Forex.

First of all, here you have the chance to test this system with a demo account. You will receive an email containing an activation code and all you have to do is to paste it in the corresponding field. That’s it, now you have a demo account and are ready to pick a signal provider from the “Performance” section. It is worth noting that there are a lot of filters, which means that you can narrow down the search results using your personal preferences.

If we have to compare ZuluTrade to similar systems, we can say that the PAMM accounts don’t provide information about the number of followers and copiers that each manager has. What’s more, unlike eToro and PAMM, ZuluTrade has something called “Account Following”, this means that you can actually see the total funds that each manager/guru has and manages. Furthermore, in ZuluTrade and eToro you have total control over your own funds; this means that you can close a deal whenever you want; however, PAMM you can’t do that, you just pick a trader and he/she manages your money completely.

Stay tuned for a specialized article or a series of articles where we will talk about the pros and cons of ZuluTrade and how to pick a profitable signal provider.

However, we couldn't help noticing that HotForex lacks this personal touch that you get from most Forex brokers today. This is probably the oldest trick in the "customer service" handbook of the brokers around the world. Most Forex brokers today will assign you a personal account manager; this is a representative that is authorized to give you off-the-book bonuses, track your trading development and aid you with whatever you need. What's more, you will get a phone call from most brokers just to welcome you to their "family". This is nice, because you can sense a more personal attitude. Take UWC and 4XP, for example. We currently have a personal account manager with each one of these brokers and on top of that, 4XP's representative called us and offered us an off-the-book start-up bonus of 100%. It is good to feel that the Forex industry has a soul!

So far so good, HotForex is shaping out to be the best Forex broker around, but what about bonuses? Yes, you have a 50% bonus to the initial deposit of all new deposits OR a 15% rescue bonus, but you would want more from the best broker, right? Sure, HotForex won’t let you down, because there are three awesome bonus programs currently running:

• Monthly contests. As of March 2012, HotForex has launched a monthly trading contest, where the top ten traders by percentage gain will be awarded a certificate and the top trader for the month will also receive 1000 USD.
• Olympics contest. This contest has started on 14th of March 2012 and will end on the 1st of June 2012. The top two traders by percentage gain will win an amazing Olympics package – free flights, hotel rooms, Olympic tickets and 1000 USD cash. And all you have to do is open an account, deposit at least 1000 USD and make profitable trades. Are you in? We most certainly are.
• Reload lottery. This bonus seems rather cheesy at first, but when we gave it some though, it is really good. There are traders refunding their accounts, literally every week, so why not give them a bonus? If we reload our account with 2500 USD or more, we enter a weekly lottery for an additional 1000 USD – good deal.

Sure, Accent Forex has the most generous bonuses right now – Jaguar XJ, Land Rover, master scalper contests and so on. However, a good bonus system is a motivating bonus system and we can easily state that HotForex are definitely in the top 3, but they will have to spend a few extra bucks to catch up with Accent Forex.

Two words – The Best. They have it all – email support, 24/5 chat support and account managers. At CTrust Network Forex we are a real pain in the ass to nearly every customer support system in the world, because we tend to test their competence really well. We have contacted the chat support more than ten times and here are the results:

• They are always online.
• They are competent. Do you remember our experience with AvaFX? HotForex is a different picture, we have asked them a lot of questions about their registration policy, interactive videos, problems with MetaTrader 4, problems with the WebTrader, problems with the Mobile Platform and they always gave us the right solution without wasting our time with stupid conclusions or ideas. Notice that we didn’t have any problems with the platforms, so we had to pretend that we have some.

They are polite. These people never lost their nerves, even though we have asked them some really stupid and ridiculous questions.

HotForex is a rather young broker, but they have already set a world standard in the industry as far as trading experience is concerned. As a Forex trader what do you want?

• Fast and stress less registration? You got it!
• Flexible accounts? You got it!
• Adequate demo accounts? You can register a regular demo account or a Currenex demo account.
• Scalping environment? You got it!
• Perfect trading conditions? You have MetaTrader 4, WebTrader, Mobile platform for Android, iOS and Blackberry. These all have an impeccable, instant synchronization.
• Fast and reliable withdraws? You got it – HotForex works with Barclays Bank UK, one of the most reliable banks in the Forex industry.
• Good support system? Here it is the best!

One-click trading

One-click trading is a very convenient expert advisor, which could really boost your scaling strategies. The installation is also fairly simple and the activation is done directly in the MetaTrader 4. However, this is not something new, because we have seen similar expert advisor in other Forex brokers like AvaFX and eToro.

Traders’ board

We have already published a detailed article, where we talk about the Traders’ Board, so here are the highlights. You have an online price chart, breaking news, percentage of clients’ positions and volume per symbol. All this data is available for everyone, not just registered users, which is really good. We see the traders’ board as a good tool in order to get a broader picture of the market, but we won’t base a trading strategy on it.

HotForex’s reputation is as clean as a baby’s conscience. It has been a long time since saw a broker that nobody wants to complain from. There are no complains like “withdraw problems”, “bad support” or whatever. We turned all of the Forex forums, blogs and social pages upside down, but could not find a single post or comment against HotForex. The situation is actually quite the opposite, everyone is perfectly satisfied and so are we.

Investing In Forex: PAMM System

HotForex: New Trader’s Room