Table of Contents

Dukascopy Forex Review

ders. The proprietary JForex platform suite is innovative and has a economical fees structure, this gives traders admission to use comprehensive resources of a growing range of FX pairs and CFDs; across various regulatory authorities including brokerage account with its Swiss bank.

Mathematician Dr. Andre Duka established Dukascopy Trading Technologies Corp back in 1998, followed by the development of Dukascopy Trading Platform in a year later in 1999. Later in the year 2004, Dukascopy, a brokerage firm in Geneva, was established in partnership with Veronika Makarova.

Following the development of the Swiss Forex Markets in 2006, what it means is an eco-system facilitating traders with the desired infrastructure via apps and trading platforms, Dukascopy obtained a Swiss banking license in the year 2010 and this resulted in the launch of Dukascopy Bank. Through its European subsidiary Dukascopy acquired a license to operate as a broker in Latvia, making it MiFID complaint, hence allowing it to provide its services throughout EEA. Dukascopy K.K. is its subsidiary in Japan which is regulated with JFSA (Japanese Financial Services Authority) and is a member of FFAJ (Financial Futures Association of Japan).

At present, 64 FX pairs and 357 CFD markets are available to the Dukascopy traders; the broker offers its traders competitive prices as compared to the industry standard. The traders can trades through JForex platform suite which supports algo-trading and compatible with almost all OS’.

Commissions & Fees

Dukascopy provides a single account type for Forex Trading under its FX ECN account, where the method of execution can switch between agency and individual clients. The platform offers same spreads for all the clients in the ECN account, the added commission/fees charged will vary as per the trading volume, total deposits and account balance.

The commission based pricing of Dukascopy is in par with other brokers such as Saxo Bank, with the all – in cost of 1.02 pips. This cost was derived by using the average spreads of 0.32 pips on Euro/Dollar pair for US trading in the month of Feb 2018, coupled with the default commission rate of 0.70 pips.

The offerings of industry competitive spreads, coupled with its active trader pricing helped it bag the rank of ‘Best in Class, Active Trading’ in out 2018 Review.

Traders have the option to open an account with either Dukascopy Europe or the Swiss bank. The major difference apart from regulations is that the European bank has a minimum deposit of $100, whereas the Swiss has a minimum of $5000, if you are a non-Swiss resident.

Dukascopy comes out at par with FX brokers that support auto-trades and active trading platforms such as FXCM, Pepperstone and Forex.com when it comes to all-in cost of trading.

dukascopy fees

Customer Service

For the purpose of our Forex review, conducted in the year 2018; 129 customer support phones were tested over the period of 90 days. The data collected is on institutional scale. To score the tests, the tests were categorized into three groups and were scored on the duration to get in touch with the support rep, the ability of the reps to answer the question thoroughly and effectively. To score the overall experience, A Net Promoter Score was given.

Research

The broker offers a wide-range of research tools in its JForex3 desktop, web and mobile platform, which includes live market news feed, real-time economic calendar, market sentiment analysis and an array of other research tool that help traders make improved trading choices.

The broker further enhanced its research content by adding a wide range of additional market content to its web and mobile platforms in 2017.

Dukascopy owns a fully staffed pro-level TV studio in Geneva which publicizes news in-house, with their reporters who conduct interviews and market analysis. This forms the basis of its research content generation on Dukascopy TV. This makes the content not only relevant and insightful, but also, professionally curated and created, making it amply beneficial for traders of all levels.

Pattern analysis and auto-trading integrated in the charting systems are some of the other research tools available at Dukascopy.

Platforms & Tools

dukascopy platforms

Dukascopy’s proprietary platform is JForex3, which is available as a web, desktop and mobile version supported on Mac and Windows, IOS and Andriod. While the client also supports the third party, market-popular MetaTrader4 (MT4), its focus lies on JForex and for the purpose of this review we shall focus on the same too.

It caters well to the technical traders with more than 313 indictors with along with the ability to import custom indicators at their disposal.

Let’s start with the desktop version which was run on Mac; the platform is equipped with quality trading tools and is user-friendly. It is especially beneficial for technical traders as it comes equipped with 313 indictors with custom indicator add on option.

It bodes well in comparison to MT4 as it also supports algo-trading, custom indicators and cloud storage for 24 hours VPN support.

One subtle feature we would like to highlight is Dukascopy notifies whenever the platform is updated by displaying the improvements made to the preceding version.

The broker added 30 new technical indicators making it a sum total over just over 300 indicators in the year 2017, for charting to its desktop version of JForex3. This is higher than all the other brokers reviewed by us barring the 366 indicators offered on the thinkorswim platform by TD Ameritrade.

One more feature that we like is the hover over the indicators that display a preview of how it will appear on the chart. This feature is especially useful while navigating your way through over 300+ indicators.

The charting experience remains seamless in spite of addition of 24 different drawing tools or custom indicators.

Another aspect in which the platform shines through is the way each time an additional trend line is drawn. Every new trend is assigned a different colour to avoid confusion and keep the visibility clean. This in when compared to other platforms where it takes manual efforts to assign colours. Dukascopy really outdoes itself by enabling addition of an indicator or another indicator, in other words, overlay a moving average and volume.

The broker also supports a signals market for social trading. Overall traders with a liking for technical analysis will be mighty pleased with the experience provided by the JForex3 platform.

When it comes to the web-based version, it lacks some of the robust features of its desktop variant. However, Dukascopy has made significant updates to the platform in the year 2018, to make it more up-to-date and seamless.

While we were happy about its transition from the outdated flash-based version to a more modern form, it still requires Java, which can be limiting. Moving to HTML5 may lift some of the limitations of the platform. That being said, the charts run seamlessly and it is evident that the web version has made considerable progress since our last review.

The broker also offers an app store with a variety of app for traders to use within the JForex3 platform suite.

As an overview it is proven that Dukascopy understands trading tech and equips its traders with the tools they need for successful trading. While most FX Traders prefer MT4 to a flagship platform built in-house, JForex3 stands its ground and competes with the best the market has to offer. This is why it finished Best in Class for Platforms and Tools in our 2018 review.

Mobile Trading

dukascopy mobile platforms

The review focused on testing the SWFX Trader mobile app from amongst the many apps developed by the broker. This app is available on Apple and Andriod devices.

During our test conducted on Samsung Galaxy S8+ Edge, there were several sophisticated features that stood out instantly. These were patterns adjacent a pivot point tool and integrated market signals. The App also comes equipped with several custom parameters and alerts that can be added to charts to in the same screen to give traders a robust and efficient charting experience.

Charting operated seamlessly and was rich with options such as a list of 47 technical indicators – which is above the industry average for mobile trading.

Charting worked without a glitch and come with an option of around 47 technical indicators which is well above the average that the industry has to offer.

Additional USP of the apps includes – several related order types and level two quotes. The order types include conditional and bid offers which can be utilized while placing a trade.

When it comes to research, the SWFX Trader app has an array of useful tools such as separate pre-defined screens and a clean, flexile display of marker movers which can be set as per four time frames (hourly to monthly). It also offers pattern-recognition tool for trading strategies organized systematically next to the other research categories. Dukascopy also scored ‘Best in Class in the mobile trading category’ of our 2018 review.

Other Notes

In terms of margin rates and available leverage the Dukascopy Europe provides up to a maximum leverage of 300:1, yet on the weekend cuts back its leverage by three to provide a max leverage of 90:1. To avoid client exposure and margin calls that can happen due to geopolitical events over a weekend, the broker applies the same ratio to lower leverage tiers. This structure ensures holding of positions over Saturday and Sunday is discouraged, as margin requirements go up, this making Dukascopy more suited for intraday traders and less suited for longer term investors.

Final Thoughts

Dukascopy is an ideal choice for professional traders as the broker provides competitive spreads for active traders and a Swiss Bank account that can be procured for a deposit of 5000 dollars. Traders also have a choice to go via Dukascopy Europe with a minimum deposit of mere 100 dollars.

Plenty of resources are available to forex traders at Dukascopy such as Dukascopy TV, a wide variety of services within the SWFX online community. That being said, customer service can be enhanced to advance its premium range of services.

JForex3 is a robust and efficient platform provided by Dukascopy to its traders. The desktop platform bodes well in terms of charting, interface functionality, tools depth, and choice of over 313 indicators.

Taking all factors into consideration, Dukascopy earned its badge as the ‘Best in Class Overall’ in our 2018 review to join other highly acclaimed brokers.