Opteck

Opteck is owned by Centralspot Trading Ltd, located at 249, 28th October Street, Lophitis Business Centre 1, Office 102, CY-3035 Limassol Cyprus. The registered office of the Company is situated at 6 Tassou Papadopoulou, Office 22, 2373 Agios Dometios, Nicosia, Cyprus and the business address is at Lophitis Business Centre, Office 102, 249, 28th October Street, Limassol, 3035 Cyprus. The Broker is regulated by the Cyprus Securities and Exchange Commission (CySEC) since 20/06/2014 under license number CySEC 238/14. The company’s registration number is 325259.

Is Opteck a Scam?

Opteck is regulated and you can easily locate their physical address. However, Opteck must improve on their upsetting fees like “maintenance fee” are not exactly my cup of tea. I can also see a problem with their staff, it seems they are sometimes too anxious to “help” traders they sometimes make mistakes causing damages to their clients’ accounts. The regulation prohibits the broker’s account managers to give any advice, so we hope we won’t be seeing that anymore. In any case, ThatSucks.com team is here to follow!

Opteck became a regular of our Scam Watch Series during 2016 with people calling them a “gambling site”, “borderline negligent, if not crooks” and feeling tricked by them. It’s safe to say that this brokerage, despite its CySEC regulation, it’s not one of the top choices for traders because of this.

The comments regarding rogue account managers are still being spread in various forums, despite the fact that Opteck recently switched from Binary Options to FX and CFD’s. Interestingly, Opteck’s own conflict of interest policy clearly states that: “The Company or a relevant person, or a person directly or indirectly linked by control to the Company, is likely to make a financial gain or avoid a financial loss, at the expense of the client.”

But even with this information openly shared on their website, they offer investment advice to their clients. This is of course a bad sign and the negative reviews from their clients losing lots of money confirms this.

Regarding the fees, the terms and conditions have not changed that much since Opteck switched to FX and CFD’s.

“A service fee of 3.5% is charged on all other withdrawals. In the event that this percentage equals an amount of $30 or below, the trader will be charged a standard $30 withdrawal fee. The maximum service fee for a single withdrawal is capped at $3,500.” $3,500, that is what I call SUCKY.

We don’t know of any other broker that would charge so much. This means, that if you would like to withdraw the minimum allowed amount (50$/€) your applied fee would be
at least $30 which means a withdrawal of 50 bucks will leave you 20… and there is a monthly maintenance fee of 20$ per month. So basically, if you have only 50 dollars in your account, it means you have zero funds left! Which might be why their traffic has been falling. Traffic has been significantly reduced in the past 6 months, falling more than 99%, which we consider to be a serious issue.

Editor’s Note –  Why does Opteck Suck in 50 Words?

The thing that bothers me the most about Opteck is the above-average number of complaints made by their clients, and a very detailed one as well. More than 20 pages of discussion (most of those are complaints) only on right here below at thatsucks.com… That’s a big number no doubt. I do see some of the complaints being resolved, sometimes a bit too late but the majority are left unanswered.

Since our last update the number of complaints has gone up, it looks like regulation alone is not enough to make Opteck one of the top tier brokers. Their reputation is slowly chipping away along with their traffic and will continue to do so if they don’t step up their game. Putting the complaints aside, the horrible fee structure alone should scare away any client.

Why Opteck doesn’t Suck?

Their daily market commentary is still up to date, something most brokers don’t take the time to mess with. This is a sign of professionalism and should be taken as an example by all brokers and websites that cover the financial/trading sector. The topics “Technical and Fundamental analysis” and “Market Insight” sound good but why go there when you can use the ThatSucks.com School, video library, and forum?

Should I Open An Account With Opteck?

Opteck is regulated by CySec and right from the start I could see they are transparent and I can easily get information about the company that owns the website and also their physical address, a thing that should be adopted by all brokers. After all, I give them all my personal details and copies of government-issued photo ID’s so why some brokers choose to hide their name is beyond my comprehension. But as I was saying, Opteck publicly shares this information, so there’s no problem here. The problem however is their reputation and all the warnings from regulators against them plus the latest fine sanctioned by CySEC in 2017 as we explain further below.

The platform used by Opteck is TraderSoft, which is known to be very user friendly and intuitive; you can trade directly from the chart by clicking on the buy or sell buttons. There are candlestick charts and a handful of technical tools for analysis.

Overall, the platform seems to be easy to use and offers FX, CFD’s, Commodities, Indices and Stocks.

Update August 2016: Live Chat support is not willing to… support at all and answered my questions with predefined copied text. My question “Who is your platform provider?” returned an answer along the lines of Our platform is the most innovative… no download required… the best…

I decided to confront their live chat again in 2018, regarding their low traffic but also to see whether their customer care has improved since the last time. They didn’t want to answer but told me that they did not offer their services “in your region”… This is strange because there is a list of countries on the Opteck website where their services are not offered and “my region” is not among it. I did however not manage to sign up so it is true what customer support said. I also asked whether they offer webinars since they advertise it on the front page. Support said they were no longer offering webinars which is not so surprising considering they dropped almost 100% of their traffic during the last few months.

They still have monthly maintenance fees of 20$. I assume this means 20 USD or EUR or whatever currency your account is in. The problem is that I have to assume because they don’t say what it is even in their Terms and Conditions and their support is going to just copy – paste something like “We are the best in the business”. Keep in mind there’s also a Clearance Fee which will be applied to all of your trades. I recommend you read their T&C, especially section 20 if you want to know about their fees.

Putting together the ridiculous amount of fees, dormant account fee, clearance fee, monthly maintenance fee, incomplete application fee and the extremely high withdrawal fee it seems like Opteck really doesn’t like withdrawals or doesn’t want you to trade with them. This is really unprofessional and there are many better brokers who offer free and fast withdrawals and no such fees and if I were you I would try to look for them instead. Considering the crackdown by regulators on such behavior it’s not surprising that Opteck was recently fined by CySEC for €50,000.

Trading CFD with Opteck

Optech offers CFD and FX trading which can be done using their desktop platform Tradersoft. They do offer a mobile platform too. The leverage is up to 200x and there are fixed “low-cost” spreads. Checking their list of assets you can see that the spread varies from asset to asset. If you trade major currency pairs the spread can be somewhere between 3 to 5 pips but even as high as 30 or even 70 pips for “commonly traded assets” like AUDJPY. It is not a major asset but it’s not an exotic either so that 70 pip spread sounds like a nightmare. Even 7 pips is way too high so I am not sure who wants to trade with such a high spread.

Opteck Complaints

Most complaints are very detailed and seem very authentic. It really seems like Opteck’s clients decided to take some time to explain their feelings, the experience they have been through and overall send a clear message – they’re not happy. Some complaints have been taken care of by Opteck Support, which I find great, but not enough. Recently we’ve seen a decrease in complaints.

Recently, we can see that not only have many regulators issued warnings towards Opteck and a fine but there are still many serious complaints which make them look like a bad broker. Stories like “account managers wiping accounts” or withdrawals not being processed or being difficult to achieve do not instill trust. You can also search for Opteck on our main page (select magnifying glass icon) and you will notice how often they appear in our scam watch articles, April, June, August, September, December scam watch and also noticed in our news articles on regulators issuing warnings against Opteck. The latest fine is from 15.12.2017 (December 15th, 2017) and according to CySEC, it was issued for the following reasons: “Opteck failed to comply at all times with the authorization and operating conditions”

but also: “information sent to clients and prospective clients through its website marketing materials were not, at all times, precise, clear and not misleading.”
Overall, we could conclude that Opteck hasn’t changed for the better and the sudden death of their traffic explains everything.

Opteck Regulatory Announcements and Warnings

8.12.2016: Manitoba’s MBS adds Opteck to their list of “Alerts & Cautions” due to them not being registered in Manitoba to provide financial advice in the region. Source: MBSecurities.ca

26.04.2016: Italian Consob adds Opteck to their blacklist after BCSC also warned about them. Source: Consob.it

08.04.2016: The BCSC in British Columbia warns against Opteck who is falsely claiming to be based in Belize and for unlawful solicitation of BS residents. Source: BCSC.bc.ca

02.07.2015: Belgian regulator FSMA, strongly advises against investing with Opteck and their (former) owner B.H.N.V. Source: FSMA.Be

13.02.2015: ASIC in Australia warns of Opteck for being unlicensed binary options provider. Source: ASIC.Gov.Au

21.01.2014: French AMF adds Opteck to their list of unauthorized websites. Source: AMF-France.org

Opteck Bonus

Opteck being a CySEC regulated company is not allowed to offer bonuses and we couldn’t find any bonus offers on their website either so this is a good thing.

Opteck Withdrawal

Their minimum withdrawal amount is $50. Once the client has provided the required documents, the withdrawal will be processed within 1 business day after which, depending on the individual’s bank, it can then take up to 7 days to show on the client’s statement. Withdrawal can be done in the same way as deposited, up to the minimum deposit amount. The rest of the profits could only be withdrawn through bank-wire.

Update August 2016: Processing time is on average 3 to 5 working days and a fee of 3.5% must be paid. More fees… In addition, if the 3.5% fee doesn’t reach 30$/€, an additional 30$/€ fee is added to your withdrawal fee!

Opteck Ratings

User Friendly 15/20
The Tradersoft is intuitive, the website is well structured and all features are easy to use. The website is available in 2 languages – English and Russian.

Range of Markets, Spreads and Leverage 12/20
Their basket of assets is advertised as really really big, over 1000 but I did a quick check and I could count up to around 160 assets in total. There are 7 indices, 6 Commodities, 94 stocks and 50 Forex pairs. Checking under the CFD section, however, it seems the 1000 promised assets are meant for CFD trading. Nevertheless, I could not find a list of available CFD assets. The leverage is ranging but up to 200x and even 400x for major assets. Spreads vary a lot but relatively high for assets that are commonly traded.

Fees and Support 11/20
Customer service was available through live chat. Although a bit slow, they told me that clients from my region are not accepted even though my country was not listed in their list of unavailable countries. It’s strange but at least they were right since I could not sign up!

There are many strange and high fees at Opteck… Clearance fee, Maintenance fee on the first day of each month at 20€, dormant account fee is 50€, withdrawal process fee and withdrawal additional 30$/€ minimum fee. On top of this, you have the incomplete application fee of 50€ if you haven’t verified your account within 30 days which is recurring until your documents are approved!

Deposits and Withdrawals 16/20
The minimum deposit is $250 and can be made using various methods: wire transfer, major credit cards, Skrill & Neteller. A withdrawal is aimed to be processed by Opteck within 1 business day but it could take several more days until the funds will show in your account. The minimum withdrawal amount is 100 for bank wire transfer and 50 for other methods.

Website Extras 10/20
The good extra is their technical analysis page which is kept up to date.

Opteck Ratings 64 + Regulated (+3) – *Low User Rating (-5) = 62/100