Tastyfx

Trust

• tastyfx, LLC (“tastyfx”) is a registered Retail Foreign Exchange Dealer (RFED) with the Commodity Futures Trading Commission and is a Member of the National Futures Association (NFA ID 509630). We rate CFTC and NFA as Tier-1 regulators.

Why is it important to know where your broker subsidiary (entity) is regulated?

Different regulators provide different levels of protection. tastyfx clients do not have negative balance protection, and their funds are not segregated. tastyfx, LLC holds client funds in the same bank account as operating funds because US regulations do not permit forex accounts to have segregated account status.

In the unlikely event that tastyfx, LLC becomes insolvent or files for protection under bankruptcy laws, clients may have only an unsecured claim against their deposited funds. tastyfx, LLC would pay all debts to creditors before any unsecured claims in the event of liquidation.

Stability and Transparency

In our tests for the Trust category, we also cover factors relating to stability and financial strength. Here, we focus on how long the broker’s longevity, the company’s size, and its transparency.

The parent company of tastyfx, IG, dates back to 1974, making it one of the oldest and most experienced forex brokers. According to its LinkedIn page, tastyfx is headquartered in Chicago, while IG is based in London and has 1,001-5,000 employees.

In my research, tastyfx showed high transparency in its regulatory status, listing its regulators in the footer of each page of the ig.com/us website. The website breaks down costs, including spreads and margin rates on the page. Traders can find the on the page.

Is tastyfx Safe to Trade With?

To summarize, my findings indicate that tastyfx has a high level of trust and stability due to the following qualities:

• Regulated by top-tier NFA and CFTC
• Parent company IG has 50 years of operating history
• IG is a publicly traded company valued at over £3B
• High level of transparency

Fees

Trading Fees

I tested the spreads at tastyfx across various markets during the London open and after the New York open. At these times, the market is typically highly liquid with the tightest spreads.

tastyfx spreads are highly competitive in major pairs like EUR/USD, GBP/USD, and USD/JPY. In other pairs like GBP/JPY and NZD/USD spreads are closer to the industry average.

Swap Fees

In the table below, you can see the Swap Long (the cost/credit of holding a buy position overnight) and the Swap Short (the cost/credit of maintaining a sell position overnight) for one full-sized contract. A full-sized contract is 100,000 units of the base currency (the first currency quoted in the pair). I recorded the data on 5 July 2024.

My live tests showed that swap fees at tastyfx are better than average for the industry.

Non-Trading Fees

tastyfx does not charge any inactivity or account maintenance fees.

Volume Based Cash Rebates

At tastyfx, active traders get cash back on every lot traded if they trade $50 million or more in notional volume monthly.

tastyfx rewards active clients with up to 15% cashback on their spread paid. Volume-based rebates are automatically credited to the accounts of qualifying traders in the following month.

Volume-Based Cash Rebate Examples

Here are some examples of how the tiered monthly volume rebate works.

Are Fees at tastyfx Competitive?

I rate the fees at tastyfx as highly competitive for the following reasons:

• Very tight spreads in major pairs, as low as 0.8 in EUR/USD
• The opportunity to earn rebates and further lower costs
• Lower-than-average swap fees

Platforms and Tools

tastyfx Web Platform

The tastyfx Platform is intuitive, highly customizable, and packs a meaty range of features. These include popular items like watchlists, a news feed, alerts, one-click trading, trading from the chart, and trading signals.

The tastyfx Platform is web-based and accessible via your browser without any downloads required. The interface is clean and simple, making it easy for new traders to get up and running.

Charting within the tastyfx Platform is robust, with 33 technical indicators, 19 drawing tools, 17 time frames, and 5 chart types.You can customize the platform to view multiple charts at once on one screen or mix charts with items like watchlists, news, and alert panels. The image above shows one ‘workspace’. You can create multiple workspaces and flip between them in a tabbed format. I found this feature super useful and created workspaces covering different groups of assets – one for major currency pairs, one for exotic currency pairs, etc.

Watchlists enable traders to keep an eye on predefined lists like popular markets or recently traded instruments. You can also set up your own custom watchlists.

The tastyfx platform offers a strong range of order types, including market orders, limit orders, stop loss orders, and trailing stop orders. You can specify the duration for which your order remains active by marking it as ‘Good Till Canceled’ or setting it to expire on a future date of your choice.

The platform has a sophisticated range of alerts to help optimize your trading performance. You can set up alerts to inform you about price movements, news events, and even emerging technical patterns.

• Price level alerts are triggered when your market hits the price you set.
• Price change alerts trigger when a market moves your chosen amount. These can be set in pips or in percentage terms.
• Technical indicator alerts tell you when a market meets your technical conditions. For example, you can receive an alert when RSI crosses the 70 level into overbought conditions.
• Economic calendar alerts remind you of key economic releases.

tastyfx provides client sentiment data drawing from the IG user base of over 300,000 clients. Sentiment data shows the percentage of traders that are long or short in a currency pair. This gives you powerful insight into the psychology of a market. Traders can interpret the data in a variety of ways. Most commonly, it is understood that when an extreme percentage of traders are either long or short an instrument, a trend reversal may be coming.

The platform has a built-in news feed from Thomson Reuters. A steady stream of stories is published throughout the day. The feed includes updates on major economic releases and central bank policy. It also has coverage of technical analysis, key support and resistance levels, and trade ideas. For example, the EUR/GBP Trader bulletin shows a current position, stop loss, profit target, and the technical rationale for the trade.

The technical context for the EUR/GBP trade shared in the Thomson Reuters news feed is also provided in chart format.

The range of available order types is above average. Market orders, limit orders, stop-loss orders, and trailing stop-loss orders are available. Traders also have the option to apply time-in-force conditions such as Good-Til-Canceled (GTC).

The TradingView platform has the rare combination of being powerful in its functionality and intuitive with a well-designed interface. The large, active community on TradingView is helpful for users seeking inspiration, especially through features like the ideas stream.

ProRealTime

Live account holders at tastyfx also have access to ProRealTime. This is a third-party platform geared towards experienced traders, with various advanced features:

• Robust charts with 100+ technical indicators, tools, and price comparisons.
• Scalping order book with an interface designed for speed.
• Advanced order types including triple orders, OCO orders, and trailing stops.
• Automated trading, backtesting, and optimization.

tastyfx Order Execution Model

tastyfx acts as principal and is the sole venue for the execution of spot forex contracts. In the Principal Model, forex brokers are counterparties to client transactions – they take the other side of their trades.

Tradable Instruments

At the time of this writing, clients can access 82 currency pairs:

• 10 Major Currency Pairs
• 16 Minor Currency Pairs
• 13 Australasian Currency Pairs
• 14 Scandinavian Currency Pairs
• 22 Exotic Currency Pairs
• 7 Emerging Markets Currency Pairs

In the tables below, you can see a selection highlighting the variety of currency pairs available to US traders:

tastyfx Instruments: My Key Takeaways

tastyfx offers an excellent range of currency pairs catering to different trader profiles. For example, some pairs, such as GBP/JPY, are highly volatile, making them attractive to day traders. Other pairs like USD/CHF are suitable for traders who prefer slower-moving markets.

Emerging market pairs currently offer high interest rates, allowing traders to engage in the carry trade and capture the interest rate differential between the base and counter currency. I also noted that traders using correlation strategies can work with highly correlated pairs like NZD/JPY and AUD/JPY.

While the forex offering at tastyfx is excellent, it could improve by adding spot commodities and cryptocurrencies.

Customer Support

tastyfx Customer Support Test

I evaluated tastyfx support with multiple inquiries ranging from basic account-related questions to more complex issues. Emails were typically responded to the same day or within 24 hours, and I could reach a helpful operator by live chat or phone within a couple of minutes.

Deposits & Withdrawals

In the tables below, I break down the fees and processing times for each deposit and withdrawal method.

Deposits

While brokers do not normally charge any fees for deposits, tastyfx beats the industry average with a relatively fast processing time.

Withdrawals

Here again, processing times are better than average for the forex industry. Some brokers do not charge a wire transfer withdrawal fee, but the $15 charge from tastyfx is fairly standard.

Note: Generally, all funds will need to be returned to the source of your payments.

Account Types and Terms

Account Application

To open an individual account at tastyfx, prospective clients must provide the following information:

• Personal Details: Country of residence, name, email address, date of birth, phone number, citizenship, social security number, home address.
• Income and Savings: Employment status, job, source of trading funds, gross annual income, net worth.
• Trading Experience: Trading activity in the last 3 years, products traded, experience, or qualifications related to trading.

Demo Accounts

tastyfx offers demo accounts for the tastyfx web platform and mobile app. Demo accounts are especially important for beginners as they allow them to practice their strategies and get comfortable with the trading platform without risking real money.

The demo account features live quotes and simulates live market conditions in all 82 currency pairs. Once users are to speed up on a demo account, they can easily switch to a live version.

Margin and Leverage

One of the reasons that traders are attracted to the forex market is the high degree of available leverage. Leverage is the use of borrowed funds to increase the size of your trading positions beyond what would be possible using only the cash in your account. In the table below, I cover the leverage available at tastyfx across a range of currency pairs.