Aug 22 2023

SquaredFinancial Review 2023 - The Good and the Bad
SquaredFinancial review covering their licenses, minimum deposit and withdrawal, fees, account types, platforms and more.
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Vs.
By TheTradingBible.com , Updated on: Apr 07 2023.
💡 Score | 1.1 out of 5. |
🏛 Regulators | CySec, FSAS. |
💳 Minimum Deposit ($) | 500 |
💰 Payment Methods | Credit Card, Debit Card, Bank Transfer, Neteller |
💵 Base Currencies | 3 - EUR, USD, GBP |
📚 Assets Offered | 🔹 Stock CFDs 🔹 Currency CFDs 🔹 Commodities CFDs 🔹 Indices CFDs 🔹 Crypto CFDs 🔹 Bond CFDs |
💪 Retail Leverage | 1:30 |
💪 Pro Leverage | 1:300 |
✍ Custom Leverage | No |
🎲 Deleveraged Trading | No |
🎓 Demo Account | Yes |
💰 Commissions | None |
Vs.
Alvexo is a Cypriot broker founded and regulated in 2014 that specialises in CFDs trading via MT4 and their proprietary trading platform. As of August 3rd 2022, Alvexo's CySec license is partially suspended making them unavailable in French territory.
Here’s what we’ll talk about during our review:
Alvexo holds only two financial licenses from our other licenses categories and no licenses from our top-tier considered ones.
Financial
Licenses
Regulation
Regulated
Top-tier Licenses
0
Other Licenses
2
Provided by
TheTradingBible.com
A very important point to note is that as of 10th of November 2022, Alvexo's CySec license is partially suspended.
It has come to our attention through several news articles (such as this one from fxnewsgroup) that Alvexo was fined over €100,000 by CySec (the Cyprus Securities and Exchange Commission) due to several violations such as:
After this fine, Alvexo continued to operate, yet they were prohibited by French Authorities to operate on French territory.
Due to the current regulatory situation of Alvexo and the above news articles, we do not consider Alvexo to be a safe choice at the moment.
Alvexo haqs a minimum deposit requirement of $500. Below you'll find a list of their deposit and withdrawal methods:
Bear in mind that each payment method is not always available on all locations as they depend on what each financial regulator allows.
Alvexo supports the following base currencies:
Alvexo offers 4 account types: Classic, Gold, Prime and Elite. Here's how they compare:
Feature | Classic | Gold | Prime | Elite |
---|---|---|---|---|
Min Deposit | $500 | $10,000 | $50,000 | Not disclosed (must be higher) |
Spreads | From 2.9 Pips | From 2.2 Pips | From 1.8 Pips | From 0.1 Pips |
Min Trade size | $1,000 (0.01 Lots) | $5,000 (0.05 Lots) | $10,000 (0.1 Lots) | $25,000 (0.25 Lots) |
Within Alvexo, the word "expensive" gets a whole new definition of its own. Their spreads are amongst the highest we have ever observed in the industry even if you choose to deposit $50,000 to get access to a "Prime" account.
Alvexo charges spreads, inactivity fees and overnight fees on leveraged positions. Let's go over their fees in more detail:
Here's how Alvexo's spreads compare to similar brokers:
Asset | Alvexo | Plus500 | eToro |
---|---|---|---|
EUR/USD Spread | From 2.9 Pips to 14 Pips | Dynamic - From 0.8 Pips | Dynamic - From 1 Pip |
SP500 Spread | From 175 Pips to 100 Pips | Dynamic - From 70 Pips | Dynamic - From 75 Pips |
Gold Spread | From 90 to 50 Pips | Dynamic - From 30 Pips | Dynamic - From 45 Pips |
TSLA Spread | From $1.91 to $1.41 | Dynamic - From $5.2 | Dynamic - From 0.09% |
XLK Spread | Unavailable | Dynamic - From 7 Pips | Dynamic - From 0.09% |
BTC Spread | From $192.21 | Dynamic - From $136 | Dynamic - From 0.75% |
As you can see, Alvexo's spreads are far more expensive than even some of the most expensive (in terms of spreads) brokers out there.
Here's how Alvexo's commissions compare:
Alvexo | Plus500 | eToro | |
---|---|---|---|
Commissions | None | None | No commissions on real stocks and ETFs |
Fortunately, Alvexo does not charge commissions.
Here's how Alvexo's asset offering compares to similar brokers:
Asset | Alvexo | Plus500 | eToro |
---|---|---|---|
Stocks | 0 | 0 | 2000 |
Stock CFDs | 337 | 2000 | 2000 |
Currency Pairs | 0 | 0 | 0 |
Currency Pair CFDs | 54 | 70 | 47 |
Commodities | 0 | 0 | 0 |
Commodities CFDs | 13 | 25 | 14 |
Indices | 0 | 0 | 0 |
Indices CFDs | 15 | 26 | 13 |
ETFs | 0 | 0 | 0 |
ETF CFDs | 0 | 95 | 145 |
Cryptocurrencies | 0 | 0 | 0 |
Cryptocurrency CFDs | 22 | 14 | 26 |
Bonds | 0 | 0 | 0 |
Bond CFDs | 2 | 0 | 0 |
Options | 0 | 0 | 0 |
Option CFDs | 0 | 15 | 0 |
Futures | 0 | 0 | 0 |
Future CFDs | 0 | 0 | 0 |
As you saw on the above table, Alvexo's asset offering is below the industry standard for similar brokers. We definitely look forward to them adding more stocks to be able to compete with their peers.
Alvexo offers the following trading platforms:
Let's take a look at their proprietary platform:
Alvexo's mobile platform is simple, friendly and easy to use. Let's go over a few of its areas in more detail:
Alvexo's mobile home is quite simple. At a glance you'll be able to search assets using the top right magnifying glass or switch between your favourites watchlist, popular assets and your open positions.
When clicking on any asset you'll land on the asset view where traders can easily view several key data points about every asset by switching tabs and also explore their default trading charts.
Alvexo's trading charts were very slow, unresponsive and lacked the feeling of a properly developed charting platform. Nowadays, most brokers use tradingview for their charts, we can't seem to understand why Alvexo would use such slow and uncomfortable. charts.
From the available tabs, you'll see you can explore the following options:
Alvexo's signals are provided by Trading Central and their statistics provide interesting information such as the buyer's sentiment of an asset which indicates whether a lot of traders are buying or selling a particular asset.
Our opinion is that we usually never trust this type of indicator as we don't know on what metrics its based. Are they talking about only Alvexo's traders? Third party data? We don't know.
When clicking the buy or sell buttons, you'll land on the order placement panel. Here you'll be able to quickly create a trading order using either quantity in Lots, in currency value or in required margin.
Additionally you'll be able to set a take-profit order, a stop-loss order or make your buy/sell order a limit order only using price values.
A very important issue to note is that the button used to place the order does not change colour regardless if you're buying or selling, so always pay close attention to which order type you select.
When clicking on the top-left menu of Alvexo's mobile platform, you'll have several options and amongst them you'll find:
While this is not really a portfolio function but rather separate entities doing the function of a portfolio, we simply grouped them for the explanation and decided to show one example.
Alvexo's mobile news are only available inside each asset on the News tab.
News articles seem to be redacted by their own team and in the majority of cases we only see one author in all news articles, so he must have a lot of work apparently.
It would be great to see real news sources from reputable providers such as Reuters, Bloomberg, etc.
Alvexo's web trading platform is an exact replica of their mobile platform with a different layout. Let's take a deeper look into its features:
As soon as you log in, you'll land on the dashboard area (home). Here are the most important functions:
On Alvexo's web platform there is no such thing as a separate asset view. The platform is always viewing an asset. Notice how the same tabs available in the mobile platform inside an asset are available above the trading chart.
When clicking the buy or sell buttons of an asset, an order placement panel will deploy from the right side of the screen where you'll be able to place your trade.
The web order placement panel is exactly the same as the one in the mobile app.
In the same fashion as their mobile app, Alvexo did not create a portfolio app but rather three separate elements to track open positions, pending charts and closed positions. Here's how it looks:
When clicking on the news tab above the trading chart of any asset, you'll land on the news section created by Alvexo.
Alvexo's charting tools are accessible at all times from the bottom of the platform by expanding them using the full-screen option.
We believe that the charts were quite unresponsive, slow and of low resolution.
Alvexo could definitely do a better job improving their trading charts.
Alvexo provides the following research and analysis tools:
Alvexo provides the following educational tools from their platforms or website:
We're definitely looking forward to Alvexo improving their educational offer for new traders.
The only positive point we could find at the moment is that Alvexo's platforms are relatively friendly and easy to use. On the negative side, we have very deep concerns about Alvexo's regulatory situation and ethical behaviour towards their clients. Also, their account offering is simply one of the most expensive ones we've seen in our whole history reviewing brokers with very little benefits regardless of deposited amounts.
We can confidently say that depositing $50,000 in exchange for spreads starting from 1.8 Pips is just nuts. No other way to say it. Most brokers offer spreads from 0.8 Pips for free without any minimum deposit.
At present, we can't recommend Alvexo for any type of customer (from our usual categories such as beginner, intermediate or expert). We look forward to the following:
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