A Clean Crystal or a Mirage?
Scandinavian Capital Markets (SCM) is a Stockholm, Sweden based financial services company. It works on an ECN/STP trading model and works within the European Union.
Sweden has been a good market for forex trading. But it has also invited a lot of unethical practices and exploitation of genuine investors. Investors usually get lost in the temptation to have deals while ending investing in the wrong deal.
SCM is registered with the Swedish Financial Supervisory Authority. All professional investors already know that merely being a registered entity does not give any broker company clear thumbs up for reliable and profitable trading. Even if it looks like an attractive opportunity to deal with regulated trading companies, investors are highly advised to go through the company backgrounds before starting to invest. Most of the companies have done the registration part just to maintain a good online reputation but do not comply with the rules of the same.
My Scandinavian Capital Markets review finds that the registration authority itself has made to headlines recently.
It is regarding a money-laundering scam report being delayed multiple times by the Swedish Financial Supervisory Authority (FSA) citing non-reasonable causes.
SCM Trading Accounts
SCM provides options for live accounts and demo accounts. The trading accounts are classified into three different categories. Below are the details taken from the company website itself.
Standard Accounts:
It is the most basic account with a minimum deposit of €10,000. While hedging and one-click trading are available, the maximum trade size is capped at €10,000,000 only. The commission rate is very less i.e. €0 per lot. Hence, a very high initial investment ratio as compared to the trading options to the investors.
Premium Accounts:
As the name itself suggests; it is for premium customers who are ready to shed €25000 as an initial minimum investment. The maximum trade size can go up to €10,000,000. The commission is different for different trading platforms. Thus experienced traders can utilize the premium accounts only once they are fully aware of the rules and regulations.
Customised Accounts:
The customized accounts having almost tailor-cut investments, currencies, commissions, maximum trade size are the third category of trading accounts provided by SCM. Thus a complex mechanism comes into play. Each investor must be very good at calculations while dealing with the same.
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While investors have the option to choose from a demo account or a live account, it is not possible to judge the process using a demo account. Also, the higher initial investments make it a real-time problem for the new bee investors. An intermediately experienced person can opt for a customized account only after taking the calculated risks as the permutations and combinations are relatively high.
You are thus advised to have a trading expert with you while dealing with the accounts.
Trading Platforms
SCM provides trading platforms for both mobile and desktop usage.
Meta Trader 4 is available for both mobile and desktop versions.
Meta Trader is the most used and popular forex trading platform. Investors can opt from a large number of EA’s available but it will be attracting additional costs.
cTRader is another trading platform available with SCM
cTrader can be used for both mobile and desktop use. The server of cTrader usually creates a problem with heavy traffic trading time. Investors also suffer technical problems like account details error while working on the trading platform
Currenex is a leading currency trading platform.
Currenex creates most of the time the connection issues again and again. Its frontend is also not user friendly and it does not come with ESP protection alert.
Apart from the above-mentioned platforms used for forex trading, investors can go for a MAM i.e. Multi-Account Managers facility as well. MAM is managed by both investors and traders. But in a practical case, the choice of trading conditions are made by investors only and the trader does not have access to the funds as the trading is directly managed by the governing account platforms.
Modes of Payment
The method for depositing funds in SCM is through bank wire. Bank wire is an electronic message system that allows major banks to communicate between themselves for various transactions. It has got its share of problems when it comes to delayed response time and inter-bank refund problems. It is, however, claimed that the funds are deposited within one day while it takes 2-3 business days.
You can choose from various currencies options available with the trader. You can invest in USD, SEK, EUR, GBP, etc.
While withdrawing your funds, the company does not provide third party support. Withdrawals are done through the client portal and it can take up to a week for the same.
Thus modes of payment are relatively slow when it comes to transferring funds. While it will usually take 2-3 business days for the depositing of the funds, response time is extended up to 5 working days when it comes to transferring the funds to your account. So, chances are high that you may have earned a lot but you will not be able to extract your funds according to your need.
Customer Support
My Scandinavian Capital Markets review has found that the company has good live support but most of the customers are not satisfied with the type of support. It lacks the basic technical help in accounts required by traders while trading online.
Social Media Presence
Scandinavian Capital Markets have active social media accounts. While company accounts sing of their clear and profitable investment resonance, it is hard to find any positive reviews posted by consumers for SCM on any social media platform.
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While the company is operating with @Scand-markets on twitter it also has a pretty old but active facebook account. Operating with username @scandinaviancapitalmarkets on facebook, it has a good list of followers. But the company usually keeps the accounts updated with promotional and catchy offers itself. While the number of followers does not guarantee authenticity, SCM’s online reputation can be regarded as a medium on a low to high ranking.
Clearing the mirage:
SCM review thus concludes that the waters are not that clear as they look to be. There are several issues related to the Swedish broker.
First of all is the non-dealing of the company with clients from the US, North Korea, Iran, Yemen, Cuba, and Syria. The broker has a long list of rules and regulations to be followed while you start investing. While some are the basic points to be kept in mind, most of the list contains irrelevant conditions.
Secondly comes the nonavailability of CFDs on indices and CFDs on stocks. So investors are basically left with no good options to choose from.
Thirdly, the company does not support e-wallets for payments. It thus becomes very hectic to use bank wire again and again which is again not user-friendly in terms of the response time taken by various banks. On the contrary, most of the other trading companies do accept payments from e-wallets like Skrill, Neteller, etc.
Fourthly is the additional charge for getting EA benefits on the trading platforms. Investors pay monthly charges for EA’s.
Lastly but most importantly are the high minimum investment limits set up by the Swedish company. If we compare the same with other competitors of the company, there is a genuine gap of €500 to €1500.
In conclusion, my SCM forex broker review suggests you to stay away from them. They are definitely worth your time or money.
