S2Trade Review
Why S2Trade Sucks In 50 Words
Under normal circumstances, the lack of regulation is the main Suck factor but in this case, I would say that the horror stories told by some of S2Trade’s clients take the top spot. Complaints range from failed withdrawals to unauthorized trading and to lack of communication after a deposit has been made. ThatSucks!
Why S2Trade Doesn’t Suck In 50 Words
On the upside, they have a daily video market review (or at least it was updated the day I visited them) and they offer Meta Trader 4 as a downloadable client and as a web-based solution – however, I couldn’t get the latter to work at all, so I have high doubts about its functionality.
Is S2Trade A Scam?
We cannot say for certain, but judging from the massive number of complaints found online, this is definitely a broker that you should avoid. The first red flag is the lack of regulation but we’ve seen unregulated brokers with a relatively good reputation, however, that’s not the case here! People are warning others to stay away, or otherwise, they will get their money sucked in the black hole called S2Trade. Of course, we cannot vouch for 100% for these comments but we cannot disregard them either, so we must warn you.
Should I Open An Account With S2Trade?
S2Trade is an unregulated broker that offers FX and CFDs on commodities, stocks, indices, and currencies. The known location is Tallinn, Estonia, and the owning/operating company is GoldTech Media Services OÜ.
When choosing your broker, you should always look for regulation or a good reputation, preferably both. Unfortunately, S2Trade doesn’t have either, so I see no reason why you should trust them with your money when there are so many alternatives.
Launched sometime in 2017 (no exact date given by the broker), S2Trade offers Meta Trader 4 as a downloadable platform, which is a good thing but when I tried to download it, the name of the client was “titanium4setup(dot)exe” and I don’t really understand the reason for that; it should be a name somehow related to S2Trade, but this looks like you will be opening an account with another company or broker. I don’t really understand what’s going on but it’s something worth mentioning.
A more important thing though, is that the minimum deposit is $500 (Standard Account), which is very high and not competitive at all. You would think that a broker without regulation and with a bad reputation would try to attract some customers by allowing low deposits but looks like S2Trade has other ideas. The next accounts are Premium ($5,000 deposit) and VIP ($50,000 deposit) but the advantages they offer are not worth it: lower spreads, trading signals, and express withdrawals. Trading signals from such a shady broker are never a good thing, “express withdrawals” mean absolutely nothing because no additional information is given and we’re left with “lower spreads”; while under normal circumstances I would say that’s a good thing, in this case, it’s insignificant. Let me explain: the spread for the lowest account (Standard) is 2.5 pips for EUR/USD (which is humongous) and if you deposit 50 grand you will get to a spread of “just” 1.5 pips for the same trading pair. Honestly, that’s laughable considering that respectable brokers offer spreads of around 1 pip for the lowest account, which often requires a minimum deposit of just $100.
The obvious conclusion draws itself: this broker has nothing in terms of trading conditions that could make us recommend it and is under scam suspicion. I don’t see a reason why you would open an account with S2Trade but of course, the final decision is yours.
The broker can be contacted at email [email protected] and phone +3726347396.
S2Trade Complaints
The Internet is full of people screaming SCAM about S2Trade! The complaints range from phone call pressure to unauthorized trading on behalf of the client’s account and to all sorts of withdrawal problems. However, sometimes I don’t really understand why people blindly trust brokers: a client wrote that he deposited $6,000, followed by $7,000 and another $7,000 and then he was “left in the dark and penniless”. WHY would you do that? 20k USD to a broker you never traded with and without checking if they are regulated or not???
S2Trade Bonus
On the main page this broker shows a 30% Bonus but no additional information is given on the site except a small bit in their Terms And Conditions: “For a bonus of $1.000, the minimum lots required are 200”. Considering that a normal lot is $100,000, simple math shows us that the required turnover is 100,000 x 200 = 20,000,000. Good luck trading that!
S2Trade Withdrawals
The processing time is 3 to 5 business days but actually receiving the money is another thing altogether and if we were to listen to the internet masses, it will take forever. The minimum sums are not specified and the same goes for the methods. On-site, they show logos of credit cards, Neteller, Webmoney, and a few others but on the FAQ they don’t provide any other details.
S2Trade Extras
I will list here the daily market updates offered in video form. They are not gonna make you rich but it’s a good and fast way of learning about the upcoming economic releases of the day. With the positives out of the way I cannot help but mention their take on trading: “Additionally, you can trade Forex on commodities, stocks, and indices”. So, you can trade FX on something else than currency pairs??? WOW, that’s news to me! That sentence shows they don’t know what they are talking about, they don’t know what they’re doing, they don’t know what Forex is and they don’t know what the other asset classes are. I don’t know how people like this can run an “FX” brokerage.
S2Trade Overall Ratings
User Friendliness 12/20
Information is pretty difficult to find, and important bits are missing, the website is translated in 6 languages, demo accounts are not available and the web-based platform couldn’t be accessed at the time of writing; US clients are not accepted. A mobile platform called MobileTrade is available for Android but it’s not clear if this belongs to S2Trade or some affiliate third party.
Range Of Markets, Spreads And Leverage 10/20
They cover all the well-known asset classes but there’s not a wide variety and especially cryptocurrencies are poorly represented: they only offer 4 pairs, with 1:5 leverage and a stupidly high spread on some of them. To get an idea, the spread for LTC/USD is 800 at the time of writing but LTC’s price is around 115 bucks. The spread for XRP/USD is 300 and XRP is valued at 0.40 bucks at the time of writing. So, what’s the deal here? Is this more evidence that they don’t know what they’re talking about? Leverage for fiat currencies goes up to 1:200 but the spreads are around 2.4 for EUR/USD and 4 for GBP/USD. Again, incredibly high!
Fees And Support 10/20
The fees are not specified, which is another reason why you should be careful around this broker! As for support, I asked a simple question (if they offer crypto) and was bombarded back with questions about my phone number, email and account number. I asked again and was told that I should schedule an appointment with their manager (???) and when I insisted again, I was finally given a short answer.
Deposits And Withdrawals 12/20
Deposits can be made via credit cards, wire transfers, WebMoney, Skrill, Neteller, and Bitcoin. The lowest account is clearly $500 but in some other part of the website, we got $250 as the minimum deposit. Withdrawal information is lackluster, with the only usable bit being that processing time is 3 to 5 business days.
Extras 10/20
This broker doesn’t stand out with anything other than some daily videos covering the upcoming economic releases. It’s not much and you can get the same information quicker from any economic calendar.