ACY Securities Review

ACY Securities Pty Ltd is authorised and regulated by the Australian Securities and Investments Commission (ASIC) under license number 403863. It is also regulated by the Vanuatu Financial Services Commission (VFSC) under license number 012868. ACY Securities declares that client funds are held in segregated accounts with the Commonwealth Bank Australia and HSBC.

The company says it offers ‘ultra-fast’ order fulfillment, liquidity from 16 global banks, direct access to Equinix Servers in New York and Asia and a No Dealing Desk (NDD) order fulfillment system. It adds it uses the STP execution model, where all trades are priced directly from the company’s liquidity providers 

Customers can trade more than 60 different instruments including currency pairs, global indices, precious metals, and other commodities such as oil. Spreads are floating starting from 0 to 2-3 pips, depending on the account type.

There are three types of accounts, which differ mainly in the initial minimum deposit and the spread of the instruments. The stpECN account requires USD50 to open, there is no commission and the EUR/USD spread starts at 1 pip. You must invest at least USD2,000 to open a zeroECN account. The spreads are close to zero here but there is a USD6/lot commission for currency pairs. The pureECN account requires USD20,000 to open, the spreads are close to zero and the commission is USD5 per lot for currency pairs. Currently, the regulatory body (ASIC) has not imposed restrictions such as those of ESMA and the leverage here can be up to 1:500.

Clients can trade through the easily accessible platforms MetaTrader 4 and MetaTrader 5. The company offers MetaTrader terminal for all kinds of traders, including systematic traders, scalpers, and those using Experts Advisors and trading robots. In addition to the desktop platform, customers can use the MT4 platform on iPhone, iPad, Android system or Windows system devices. The newer MetaTrader 5 terminal provides the opportunity to hedge positions, place additional types of orders and review pricing at level II (market depth).

There is an educational section where you can find plenty of useful things such as eBooks, seminars, and courses. Another section is dedicated to partnership programs such as introducing brokers, money managers, referral programs and white labels.

Looking at the legal documents we found out that although the company claims it is a pure STP broker, it acts as a principal and not as a broker to all client orders. It is written: ‘ACY Securities aims to give competitive pricing via its Trading Platform but please be aware that ACY Securities does not act as your agent to find you the best prices, as ACY Securities is acting as principal when transacting with you.’ This means ACY Securities is a market maker and several conflicts of interests arise. Another thing to note is that there is no negative balance protection. The Product Disclosure Statement document says: ‘It is your legal responsibility to pay your account and bring your negative account balance back to zero after positions have been closed out. Negative account balance is treated as debt that you owe to ACY Securities. We would take debt collection action against you if you failed to rebalance your account with further payments.’ This means that you can owe money to this company and it will sue you until all the debt is cleared. Stop loss orders are not guaranteed and will be filled at the first available price and not at the price specified by you.

Overall, if you decide to open an account, you will deal with an ASIC-regulated company that provides the most popular platform worldwide – MetaTrader version 4 and 5. Trading conditions are competitive (low spreads and commissions) but there is no negative balance protection and in the end ACY Securities is a market maker. This is not such a bad thing because of the rules the company must follow but keep in mind that it benefits when you lose. However, if you are willing to risk more, you can trade forex with leverage up to 1:500 here.