According to the test we’ve conducted on several brokers to see the quality of scalping on them, Hotforex showed competitive results and ranked very good on our list, so I decided to take a closer look at this broker and review it completely.

You can see the whole study here.

Introduction to Hotforex

Hotforex  is an STP/ECN broker that has been around since 2010 and I think I heard its name about that time. Like most of the forex brokers they started the company under the registration of an area with the minimum financial restrictions rules; St. Vincent, a small country somewhere in the Caribbean Sea.

Every time we see a broker coming out of that kind of places we say, there it is, another new shitty broker trying to make money from new traders who are lured by bounces or other kinds of enticements.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not against bounces whatsoever but I’m against the bad brokers that try to tempt you to register with them and then they don’t live up to their promises. Even the rules of their bonuses are ridiculously hard to meet.

Anyway, I thought the same way about hotforex when I first heard about them; however, they proved me wrong to a great extent.

They started growing and have acquired reputation by not only doing well but also registering under some well-know and important financial bodies such as FCA, CySEC, and more — we’ll talk about them later in this post.

Testing Hotforex Performance

The main reason that I decided to check this broker is because I’m looking for a broker that doesn’t have any problems with scalping or giving small fast pips.

The broker is regulated by one tier-1, three tier2, and two tier-3 regulatory bodies that bring it the score of A or 85 out of 100 — see more on the regulation part of this post.

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We tested MT4 order execution speed of this broker using two EAs.

One EA, send limit orders (buy/sell limits, and buy/sell stops) and calculate the time between sending the orders and receiving answers or the time that the orders are executed.

As long as the servers of the brokers are in the different parts of the world, you have latency to the brokers’ servers so we had to subtract the ping from the results.

After doing the test several times in different situations, the final result of the limit order execution speed for the broker is 180ms or 0.18 seconds that brings an A for this broker.

The other EA test the market or instant order execution speed by opening and closing several positions and calculating the results as the above procedure.

The final result after testing several times in different situations for this broker on this test is 145ms or roughly 0.14 seconds that brings an A+ for Hotforex.

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Another examination that is necessary for scalping which is the initial factor you consider when choosing a broker for scalping is spreads and commissions.

Fortunately, they release the average spreads for all types of their accounts. As long as the broker is highly regulated, they can’t release fake data.

We examined the zero account of the broker by taking the spreads from Hotforex website, and adding the commission to it for 9 currency pairs.

The results for spreads + commission for the 9 tested pairs are:

• AUD/USD: 0.93
• EUR/USD: 0.72
• EUR/JPY: 1.1
• GBP/JPY: 1.6
• GBP/USD: 1.1
• USD/CAD: 1.1
• USD/CHF: 1.1
• USD/JPY: 0.72
• NZD/USD: 1.08

What Countries Does Hotforex Accept Clients From?

Hotforex accepts clients from all over the world except the US, Canada, Sudan, Syria, and North Korea.

Support

There are some aspects of this broker that I think make it reliable but the most important one with no doubt is hotforex support team. Their customer service is up to par and even more than I expected.

You see that as soon as you contact them through live chat. They instantly answer you and have good knowledge about what they are doing. Even when I tried to ask them about more technical subjects, the supporter knew most of the answers and the moment she didn’t know the answer to my last question, she connected me to another person who knew the answer completely.

I contacted them several times and didn’t have any problem. I stress this because I’ve contacted lots of brokers during the years in my trading career and many of them are absolutely terrible.

I don’t even know why some brokers don’t give a damn about this very important factor which is the threshold of their business.

All in all, you can rely on them whenever needed and you can be really confident that you’ll get a good deal at least in this part of hotforex broker.

Regulatory

We all always need to know who are the people that are going to keep our money, don’t we? Well, there is a certain metric in brokers that we all look at when we decide to choose one of them.

Are they regulated? In general, and what financial bodies are they registered under?

Hot forex is regulated by FCA, Financial Conduct Authority (United Kingdom), which is one of the top regulations that you can expect from brokers to have.

There are three other important financial authorities that HF is regulated and authorized by them, however, they are not as important as the first one, FCA.

• Dubai Financial Services
  Authority (DFSA)
• Cyprus Securities and
  Exchange Commission (CySEC)
• Financial Sector Conduct
  Authority (FSCA) in South Africa

And two not really important ones

• Seychelles Financial
  Services Authority (FSA)
• St. Vincent & the
  Grenadine as an International Business Company

Financial Trading Instruments

Hotforex has a competitive range of financial instruments among the forex brokers with 150+ instruments. Not only can you trade almost 50 currency pairs but you also have other instruments such as

• Cryptocurrencies
• Metals
• Indices
• Shares
• Energies
• Commodities
• Bonds

It can be a really good advantage when you have a lot of options to pick from especially if you trade like me trying to find the best setups for trading. I remember the days when we have only a handful of pairs to trade, however, it’s a double-edge sword and you should really know what you do and know the instruments you trade at least to some extent.

Anyway, there’s a good potential in terms of diversity in hotforex instruments, however, I think cryptocurrency is not HF strong suit and there are just 7 of them. On the other hand, there are 50+ shares you can trade — Facebook, Amazon, Google, and IBM to name a few.

Overall, you can have a decent portfolio by choosing from a wide range of products.

Trading Platforms

Widespread MT4 is the base platform of hotforex, however, they provide it in different versions such as

• MT4 desktop
• MT5
• Multiterminal
• MT4 web terminal
• iphone trader
• ipad trader
• android

As you can see, besides trading from your computer, you can trade via your phone and iPad. If you don’t have access to your devices, you can also trade through the web by MT4 web terminal which is a good option for those who are not a full-time trader and they don’t have access to an installed MT4 at work.

Although I use MT4 for trading, there are traders who use other terminals and are used to them so maybe HF is lacking in this category.

Hotforex Tools

You can find a wide range of both downloadable and web-based tools on trading tools. I think HF is one of the best ones at providing a broad number of tools for its clients.

MT4/MT5 indicator package is one of the handy tools which includes some useful indicators such as pivot points, Renko bars, magnifier, candle countdown, and more.

You want to know how much of your account you risk or maybe you need to close a percentage of your profit and breakeven your trade. By trade terminal, you have access to a professional toolbox that can do all those things plus other jobs for you.

You have some session preference and only trade at specific trading sessions. Session map is another tool that makes you free from searching or adjusting your time.

Auto chartist is another cool feature that used to be a paid feature but it’s free now. It has two different features. One is related to analyzing the charts and scanning all the instruments. The other one is a risk management tool that helps you determine the correct lot size for your position in different pairs.

As you know one lot of EUR/ USD doesn’t have the same value as it has for GBP/JPY so you have to calculate that if you want to have a solid money management.

The list goes on and on. This is an outline of the hotforex tools.

Premium Trader Tools

1. Trade Terminal
2. Mini Terminal
3. Connect
4. Sentiment Trader
5. Session Map
6. Alarm Manager
7. Excel RTD
8. Market Manager
9. Correlation Matrix
10. Correlation Trader
11. Tick Chart Trader
12. MT4 & MT5 Indicator
    Package

For having the above package you need to deposit at least $200, so you can’t have them with minimum deposit, $5.

Autochartist

1. The first market scanner in
   MT4
2. Autochartist Risk
   Calculator

For having access to this package you need to open at least a $500 account.

HotForex Exclusive Analysis

Daily market analysis conducted by HF senior market analyst, Stuart Cowell

The HF App

Using HF app to analyze and trade through your phone

Economic Calendar

An economic calendar on HF website showing news based on actual, consensus, and previous information on financial events. You can also find the importance of news under vol section.

SMS Service

1. Flash Updates: send you SMS
   about important news events
2. Autochartist Updates: send
   you important technical signals

Traders Board

A collection of information about breaking news, the percentage of client positions, and percentage change of major currencies against each other.

HotForex VPS Hosting

You’ll probably need this if you run EAs because you don’t want disconnection or delay in orders execution. You can have it free under an HF trading account, however, not every account. You need to open at least a $5000 account, so it’s not free free but still a good option for serious scalpers and of course running EAs

Remember we talked about latency at the beginning of this post. If you want to eliminate the delay between your platform and your broker’s server to have faster order execution speed, VPNs can do the trick.

One Click Trading

Opening position fast just by one click on your mouse. An expert adviser showing you bid and ask price plus the spread of the currency pair and lets you open positions. The one click is not something new and most of the brokers have it but I always wanted to see the spread on them, which I couldn’t, so I think the cool part of this tool is showing the spread.

Auto Trading

I think it’s a useless feature if you are a trader not a signal copier. This feature is for those who want to use free and paid signals.

Risk Percentage Calculator

A money management tool on HF website that you can use to calculate your SL and lot size. You won’t need that if you use the pop-up calculator in the trade terminal tool.

Multitarget Calculator

A calculator used to set several TPs if your strategy has several exit points in different steps.

Pivot Points Calculator

A calculator on HF website that provides different support/resistance levels based on 4 popular methods — Floor Pivot Points, Woodie’s Pivot Points, Camarilla Pivot Points, and DeMark’s Pivot Points.

Pip Value Calculator

It’s another tool on HF website that you can also find in the Premium Trader Tools package, Auto chartist; if you have access to that. As you probably know, different pairs or other instruments have different lot value. For example, 1 lot of EUR/USD is worth $10 while 1 lot of GBP/JPY is worth 9.33.

Position Size Calculator

Free tool that lets you calculate the size of the position in units and lots

Risk and Reward Calculator

A tool that gives you TPs based on Fibonacci levels, and then calculates RR for each target.

Fibonacci Calculator

A simple Fibonacci tool to calculate fibo levels. It basically does what the fibo tool does in your trading terminal. Kind of useless.

Spread

We talked about the spreads and commission for the zero account before, but they have other accounts with only spread and no commission.

Obviously, the cost of trades here is higher than their ECN, Zero, account but still competitive compared to many brokers.

They claim that in all types of their accounts, except zero spread, the spread starts from 1 pip, however, they have an average spread table that shows 1.2 for EUR/USD which is the average spread you can get most of the time.

Some typical spreads of non-ECN accounts of HF are:

• EUR/USD: 1.2
• AUD/USD: 1.5
• USD/JPY: 1.7
• EUR/JPY: 1.7
• GBP/USD: 1.8
• USD/CHF: 1.9
• USD/CAD: 1.9
• GBP/JPY: 3

You can find the spreads for all the available HF currency pairs in the link above — click on each pair to see the spreads of the pair for different types of accounts.

Types of Accounts

Hotforex is offered 6 types of accounts which is better than most of its counterparts.

1. Micro
2. Premium
3. Zero Spread
4. Auto
5. Pamm
6. HF Copy

Micro

Micro account can be a good warm-up trading account which is suitable for beginners who want to get their feet wet after a few weeks of demo trading. You can open an account with as little as $5.

The starting amount is too small that you can even skip the demo trading and start trading with real money, however, you should start with a bigger amount otherwise you’ll have problems with the money management.

Something like $5 is just good for testing a broker not trading.

Some other features in this type of account are:

• Market execution
• Spread from 1 pip
• MAX leverage of 1:1000
• Lot size starts from 0.01
• All the available trading
  instruments

Premium

There aren’t any tangible differences between premium and micro accounts other than the initial deposit. For opening a premium account the minimum deposit is $100.

Other differences are:

• Leverage 1: 500
• MAX total trade size(lots)
  60 lots per position — it’s 7 for micro
• Max Simultaneous Open
  Orders is 300 — it’s 150 for micro
• Margin Call is 50% — 40% in
  micro
• Stop Out Level is 20% —
  it’s 10% in micro

Other factors are the same as micro accounts.

Zero Spread

It’s another name for ECN accounts. This is the account we talked about early on this post and explained the results. The other features of this account are:

• The initial deposit is $200
• Max Simultaneous Open
  Orders is 500
• Unlike micro and premium,
  it doesn’t have raw bonus (we’ll talk about bonus later)

By the way, this type of account is only for forex.

Auto Account

This type of account is designed for clients who want to use free and paid signals offering in the MQL community which is one of the biggest automated trading groups in forex.

Personally, I’m not a fan of using signals, especially the ones that you have no clue how they are generated and worse than that, the signals are from expert advisors; but if you can’t help yourself and you find them tempting, at least don’t invest too much on them.

 You’d better learn to trade and have your own strategy because most of the signals out there are complete crap and it’s better to avoid them.

There aren’t any differences between this type of account and premium other than the initial deposit which is $200 in this account.

PAMM

Basically PAMM accounts are for the good traders who either don’t have enough capital or they want to increase their profits by trading a bigger account.

As a Pamm manager you can open a Pamm account and trade profitably so that investors recognize you as a profitable trader, therefore, they invest in your trades.

Nowadays, you don’t have any problems with not having enough capital and if you’re really a good trader, you can absorb it easily. If you think you are one of those skillful traders but are lacking money, you can check this page.

The initial deposit for opening hotforex pamm account is $250 and the max leverage is 1:300. There is no limit on Maximum Total Trade Size (Lots) and Max Simultaneous Open Orders is 500. Other factors are like the premium account.

There are two types of Pamm accounts; premium, and premium plus, that are pretty much the same except spread and commission.

Spread in premium starts from 1 pip but in premium plus it starts from 0.3, however, there’s commission for premium plus.

HFcopy Account

This type of account is something between auto account and pamm. Here we have two types of clients, the ones that sell their trading signals and those who want to buy or copy the trades.

Both providers and receivers can open such this account and they consent to the terms and conditions of their agreements. Typically, the providers receive a commission from their followers.

If you are a provider, the minimum deposit for you is $500. On the other hand, if you want to use the service, the minimum deposit for opening a copy account is $100 for you.

The trading instruments are limited to Forex, Bitcoin, Gold for this type of account and the MAX leverage is 1:400. Other factors are the same as the premium accounts.

Promotions

Hotforex has a wide range of promotions and bonuses which is somehow impressive and above par in the brokers’ world.

It’s not just some kind of giveaways through rebates but it has a wide range of prizes that every client can benefit from one way or the other.

Loyalty Program

This promotion provides you the opportunity to receive extra features and tools as well as cash by just being an active trader.

The more days you trade, the higher rankings you receive so that you can use your points to get better rewards.

For example, if you collect 1100 points, you can have access to silver VPS for one month and if you gather 3100 points you are eligible for 3 months of access to VPS.

Bonus Offerings

There are 3 types of bonuses that you can choose from.

100% Supper charged bonus

It means HF adds credits to your account equal to your deposit.  Your minimum deposit must be $250 to be eligible for this bonus.

In simple words; if you, for example, deposit $250 they add another $250 so you can trade with a $500 account. However, you can’t withdraw the amount but you have the opportunity to trade with the two times bigger lot size than you could with your initial deposit.

30% rescue bonus

This type of bonus is pretty much like the previous bonus except you receive 30% of your initial deposit but here you just need a minimum deposit of $50.

100% credit bonus

For receiving this type of bonus you need to have a $100 initial deposit. This kind of bonus is redeemable which means you have to trade a specific number of lots to be able to withdraw the bonus. However, the size of lots that you need to trade is ridiculous and very hard to achieve but still possible.

For example; if you deposit $100, you receive another $100 but for withdrawing the $100 bonus you have to trade 50 standard lots. This is one of the things that I don’t like.

Trading contests

This broker has a good range of contests and they add new ones every now and then while some contests get expired.

You can take part in different live and demo trading contests and have the opportunity to win various prizes from iPhone, PlayStation, or headphones to cash, and HotForex merchandise.

If you want to see the complete list of trading bonus, you can check this page

Hotforex Payment Methods

Hot forex has various types of payment methods. Here is a list of deposits and withdrawals:

The Bottom Line

Overall, Hotforex is a reliable broker with a wide range of extra features, more than the standard that a trader can expect from a broker.

Customer service is their strong suit and you are not going to wait long to get the answers you look for.

Their performance under different conditions is pretty much the same and you won’t jump out of your skin by getting a large spread, or delayed order execution in wavy markets.

Although it’s a good broker, I’ve seen a few problems.

 First, extra features and tools are bound to make a specific initial deposit and you can’t have access to them with any amount of deposit.

Secondly, they should work on the number of their trading platforms and diversify that service, however, their MT4 order execution speed is good enough.