XM Review

For this XM review, we opened a live account and deposited over €5,000.

We traded the popular instrument in each market to identify the actual spreads and placed a total of 12 trades.

We contacted the broker’s customer support team to resolve the challenges we faced.

Finally, we withdrew our funds to find out if the withdrawal process was smooth.

What is XM

XM is a global Forex and one of the regulated CFD brokers founded in 2009 whose parent company is Trading Point Holdings, operating as XM Group.

The broker is licensed in Australia, the United Kingdom, Cyprus, the UAE and Belize.

However, the UK’s FCA only regulates trading.com, not the XM brand, despite being operated by the same group.

XM offers the following instruments to traders: Forex pairs, indices, stocks, and commodities. The broker has a diverse product range compared to other brokers, given that it offers over 1000 tradeable instruments.

Here’s a summary of XM’s key features:

Licenses and Regulations

XM is licensed by 5 regulators worldwide, including the top-tier UK Financial Conduct Authority (FCA), the Australian Securities and Investment Commission (ASIC), Dubai’s Financial Services Authority (DFSA), Cyprus’ CySEC and Belize’s FSC.

Here’s a full list of the licenses held by XM’s subsidiaries:

Is XM Safe

Yes, XM is safe to trade. The broker is regulated by the top-tier ASIC, and Cyprus’ CySEC, which have strict rules and enforcement mechanisms.

Furthermore, the CySEC guarantees investors’ compensation of up to €20,000 if the broker becomes insolvent.

We did not encounter any difficulties when trading with XM.

For this review, we opened an account with Trading Point of Financial Instruments Limited, regulated by the Cyprus Securities and Exchange Commission (CySEC). We deposited money into the account, placed trades, and finally withdrew our funds.

We recommend that you open your account with the Cyprus entity since it is the only one that offers deposit protection to traders if it is available to you.

The CySEC offers deposit protection of up to €20,000, making it the best regulator for traders trading with the XM brand.

Remember that the UK’s FCA does not regulate the XM brand, and none of the other regulators offers deposit compensation. Traders who want the FCA’s protection should consider opening accounts with XM’s UK subsidiary trading.com.

Fees and Commissions

XM charges average fees for trading the main instruments offered, including Forex pairs, indices, stocks and commodities.

The broker’s average spreads for the popular instruments in each market were at par with industry averages.

However, the fees charged on stocks and commodities were marginally lower than industry averages.

Spread Charged in our Trades

In our tests, we traded the most popular instrument in each market. We placed 3 trades per instrument to get an accurate estimate of the average spread. We tested XM’s Standard Account, which charges a spread on all instruments. The spreads were very stable, as outlined in the table below.

We executed all our trades via the MetaTrader 5 mobile app on our iPhone.

A closer look at the spreads charged in our trades revealed that they were all aligned with industry benchmarks. None of XM’s average spreads was above industry averages. We also discovered that the broker’s spreads on stocks and commodities were slightly lower than those of its peers.

Other fees

XM does not charge other non-trading fees such as account inactivity fees or deposit and withdrawal fees.

XM Account Types

XM offers 5 account types with different fee structures, that is, the XM Micro Account, Standard, XM Zero, XM Ultra-low and Shares accounts. See the differences below:

XM also offers Islamic Forex Accounts. The main difference with Islamic accounts is that they charge an administration fee if a trader holds a position for more than 3 nights instead of a daily swap fee.

For our tests, we chose to open a Standard Account.

Account Opening

XM account opening is quick and effortless. We reviewed the entire process when opening our account, and it was fully digital.

Here are the 5 steps to opening an XM account:

1. Enter your full name, email address, phone number, country of residence and preferred language.
2. Choose your trading platform and account type,
3. Enter your date of birth and address including your city/town, street number, residence, postal/ZIP code.
4. Select your account base currency, leverage level and provide your financial details including your employment status.
5. Answer a few questions about CFDs and trading to demonstrate your knowledge of the markets and investor profile.
6. Verify your account using either a national ID or Passport and a bank statement.

The registration process took exactly 14 minutes, and our account was approved two days later.

We registered our account on 23 February 2022, and it was verified on 25 February 2022. Our account was approved after submitting all the required documents.

For this test, we opened a standard account with Trading Point of Financial Instruments Limited, which is regulated by CySEC.

Deposit and Withdrawal

XM offers free and fast deposits and withdrawals. Traders can fund and withdraw from their accounts using various payment methods, including bank wires, credit and debit cards, and e-wallets such as Skrill and Neteller.

XM Minimum Deposit

XM has a minimum deposit of US$5 for its standard and XM micro accounts, equivalent to 75ZAR for XM Minimum Deposit in ZAR. The XM Zero account has a $100 minimum deposit, while the XM Ultra-Low account has a $50 minimum. XM’s shares account has a $10,000 minimum deposit.

Deposit

XM clients can deposit funds into their trading accounts using debit/credit cards, bank transfers, and e-wallets such as Skrill, and Neteller.

The table below shows the details of our deposits:

Please note that the first deposit has to be made via credit card. Traders can use their preferred deposit method, starting from the second deposit. The deposit methods offered by XM are instant and free. We did not deposit via bank transfer.

Withdrawal

XM processes client withdrawals via the same payment methods available for deposits making it easy for clients to withdraw their funds.

However, we could not withdraw funds back to our credit/debit card for the reasons outlined below.

XM does not have strict rules on withdrawal methods compared to deposit methods.

We couldn’t withdraw our funds via credit card because the refundable period for this payment method had expired. So, we decided to use Skrill and Neteller to withdraw all our funds.

We did not encounter any problems during the withdrawal process, which was smooth once we abandoned our plans to withdraw funds back to our credit card.

XM Markets and Products

XM offers trading multiple tradable instruments in the Forex, indices, stocks and commodities markets.

Here’s the complete list of XM’s product offerings:

Volatility 75 Index

XM offers the Volatility 75 Index, also known as the VIX, which tracks the volatility in the S&P 500 index. The VIX is regarded as the markets fear gauge with a reading above 30, indicating that investors are fearful. A reading below 30 indicates that investors are complacent.

Trading Conditions

The trading conditions at XM are great. Traders can execute most trading strategies since the broker allows high-risk strategies such as hedging and scalping.

There are no time limits for keeping your hedging positions open. XM also allows traders to use Expert Advisors (EAs).

Leverage

XM clients have access to different leverage levels based on the entity under which they registered their account.

Traders can also change their account’s leverage levels after registration.

The table below shows the different leverage levels available to clients:

Bonus

XM offers a 50% deposit bonus up to $500 or a 20% deposit bonus up to $4,500 to new traders. The broker also offers a free VPS service that is very useful to traders running EAs.

The broker also runs seasonal offers at different times of the year to celebrate various events. Some of XM’s clients may also be invited to participate in its exclusive invite-only bonuses.

The bonus offers are only available via XM Global Limited. The other entities do not offer bonuses.

XM Trading Platform

XM offers the popular MetaTrader 4 (MT4 platform) and MetaTrader 5 (MT5) platforms to its clients and does not have a proprietary trading platform. Traders can trade via the broker’s website and the mobile and desktop MT4 and MT5 applications.

XM Trading Review

Some traders may be discouraged by the lack of a proprietary trading platform. However, traders who prefer the MetaTrader platform have the option of choosing between MT4 and MT5 platforms.

While the MT4 platform is a bit dated, we found the MT5 platform to be more than adequate for traders who prefer a modern platform.

Research and Tools

XM provides market research via the MetaTrader platforms. The broker also has a Research & Education section on its website where traders can find numerous resources.

The section has a ‘markets overview’ page that provides a summary of the latest market news. There is also a research page that contains market analyses, reviews and explanations of market movements.

XM also offers daily forex news videos covering market movements throughout the day, conducted as interviews. The broker later uploads the audio from the interviews as podcasts.

Education

XM has a great education offering for beginners under its Tradepedia video course that provides an in-depth guide to the markets. The videos are of high quality with excellent delivery from the instructors.

The broker runs over 40 webinars weekly in different languages that its clients can join and learn about the markets. The webinars are based on experience level and take place in different timezones to suit its clients.

XM offers detailed articles covering various aspects of trading the Forex markets. However, there’s not much regarding the other CFD products offered by the broker.Customer Service

XM’s customer service team was very helpful and gave us direct and relevant answers to our questions. However, the quality of the answers varied. Our first interaction with the customer service team was via live chat, and we received an accurate and detailed answer to our question.

You can contact XM via email and live chat. For our live chat query, we were connected to the customer support team within 1 minute, which was impressive.

Our second interaction with the customer support team was via email. We received a response within an hour, which was again quite impressive, but the answer was not as clear as it could have been.

Our query was regarding our credit card withdrawal, which was declined because the refund period for the card had lapsed. The support agent did not clarify how long the refund period was, but advised us to use another payment method.

See the results of our test below:

Conclusion

Overall, we had a smooth experience with XM starting from the account opening, to the deposit, trading and withdrawal processes.

XM provides great customer support response times and the spreads on most instruments are aligned with industry averages. The broker also offers fast deposits and withdrawals.

However, traders should be aware of the challenges they might face processing credit card withdrawals. Traders should use the Neteller and Skrill e-wallets for instant deposits and withdrawals, after the first credit card deposit.

We recommend that XM to traders who prefer the MT4/5 platforms and those who run EAs due to the free VPS service. The broker is also suitable for beginner traders because of its detailed educational materials.

We recommend XM for traders who are

• Experienced traders
• Beginners
• CFD Stocks trading
• Run Scalping
• Hedging
• EAs trading
• Trading through MT4 / MT5

XM might not be a fit if you are

• Real Stock / Futures Trading
• Commission based trading
• Prefer other platforms rather than MetaTrader