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BenchMark Finance
BenchMark Finance is an investment intermediary, part of the structure of BenchMark Group. The company was established in 2003 and is regulated by the Financial Supervision Commission (FCA) under reference number 621564. In addition, the company has licenses from the Spanish National Securities Agency (CNMV), the Federal Financial Supervisory Authority in Germany (BaFin) and the French Financial Markets Regulator (AMF).
The company offers for trading over 30 000 financial instruments, including more than 180 currency pairs, over 19 000 stocks commodities, indices and cryptocurrencies. As an EU-regulated brokerage firm that meets ESMA’s requirements, BenchMark Finance provides a maximum leverage of 1:30 for major forex instruments. The average spread for the EUR/USD pair for retailers is below 1 pip. In addition, the average spread for the Bitcoin is USD50, the necessary margin for retailers is 50% and the maximum volume is just 4 Bitcoins. Under these conditions, the company urges customers not to trade cryptocurrencies.
BenchMark’s platforms offer many features and personalization capabilities that are suited to all types of investors. The company provides two of the most popular trading terminals in the world – MetaTrader 4 and MetaTrader 5. The desktop version of MT5 is easy to use and offers everything necessary for professional trading. The web version allows customers to trade directly from the browser, regardless of the operating system they use. On the other hand, the MetaTrader 4 platform is preferred both by beginners and professionals due to its intuitive interface and low system requirements. The integrated program language MQL4 allows developing and implementing of individual expert advisors (EAs) for automated trading.
Traders can deposit their accounts with debit/credit cards or bank transfers at no extra charge. However, we couldn’t find the minimum deposit required. The Education section of the website has a wealth of useful material and the Analyses section provides market news and an up-to-date economic calendar.
Let us look at the legal documents. The ‘Agreement for trading in financial instruments’ unveils that this reputable company does not really offer negative balance protection. It is written: ‘The Client is obliged to pay all losses, suffered by BenchMark Finance as a result of unfavourable exchange and price rates or market gap and lead to negative balance (loss) on the account of the client along with the interest accrued until their total repayment.’ This means that you may lose more than you deposited, and a situation may arise where you owe money to this brokerage company. In addition, stop loss orders are not guaranteed and they can be filled at a level different from the one previously set by you. The ‘Terms and Conditions’ document informs that BenchMark acts as a market maker and that the company may have an interest that conflicts with the interests of customers, so BenchMark benefits when clients lose.
We can conclude that BenchMark finance is a strictly regulated European brokerage company that offers MetaTrader terminal for all types of traders. However, those who want to trade cryptocurrencies probably will do so with another broker. Keep in mind BenchMark is a market maker that doesn’t offer negative balance protection.