HYCM
A London brokerage company, part of a group active in the financial markets since 1977. It offers trading in contracts for difference on forex, metals, energy, indices, shares and cryptocurrencies, on the MetaTrader platforms and on its own app.
- CFD trading
- Options trading
- Futures trading
- Stock market investing (spot)
The chips also show what the company does NOT offer — useful information if those are exactly the directions you are looking for. For each ticked direction you will find a separate chapter below, with its accounts and its conditions.
TIER 1 — TOP-LEVEL REGULATION
- 20 USD
- Minimum deposit, all accounts
- 0.1 pips
- EUR/USD spread, from
- 1977
- Year the group was founded
- 3
- Account types
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Chapter 01
Introducing the company
HYCM is the brand under which a group with roots in the financial markets since 1977 operates. The London entity has been authorised by the British financial conduct authority since 2001 and appears as active in the public register. The group went through a restructuring in 2024: ownership was taken over by two managers from the company, and the European Union entity gave up its licence and was not replaced.
The offer is concentrated on a single direction: contracts for difference, that is, over-the-counter (OTC) instruments through which you trade the price difference of an asset without owning the asset. The instruments cover forex, metals, energy, agricultural commodities, indices, shares and cryptocurrencies.
The company's business card
| Legal name | HYCM Capital Markets (UK) Limited — the name in the regulators' registers; the entity the account is opened with may differ |
|---|---|
| Year founded | 1977 |
| Group structure | Private company · authorised entities in two jurisdictions, plus one company without financial authorisation |
| Head office | 5 Market Yard Mews, 194-204 Bermondsey Street, London SE1 3TQ, United Kingdom |
| Official website | hycm.com |
| Leadership | Owned by its own management team since 2024 · directors recorded in the British companies register |
| Offices | London · Dubai |
How the company earns
Market maker model (with a dealing desk)
The company is the counterparty to every trade. Its execution policy says that it is the sole execution venue for client orders, that trades are over-the-counter and that a position opened with it can only be closed with it. Prices come in a feed from third-party liquidity providers, and the company adjusts them to obtain the spreads it considers appropriate.
This is also where the main revenue comes from: the difference between the price received from the providers and the price shown to the client. On the raw-spread account, where the client sees the providers' spread, the revenue comes from the per-lot commission, charged separately.
The remaining sources, in the order the client meets them: interest on positions held overnight, currency conversion when the account currency differs from the instrument's, the inactivity fee after 90 days and the service charge withheld from dividends received on share CFDs.
The model is legal and supervised by the authorities that granted the licences.
What sets it apart
An unusually long group history. The activity starts in 1977, and the British entity has been authorised without interruption since 2001, verifiable in the public register. It means the firm has been through several market cycles and several waves of regulation. It matters to those who put age and continuity ahead of the feature list.
The same entry threshold on all accounts. Twenty dollars, on the fixed-spread account as well as on the raw-spread one, with no "starter" account on weaker terms. It means you can test directly the conditions you will be using later on. It matters to those who want to try with real money, but little of it, before deciding.
- Fixed spread available
- Three account types
- Swap-free account available
- Own mobile app
- Analysis tools included
Chapter 02
Regulation and the safety of your money
The HYCM group operates authorised entities in two jurisdictions and also owns a company in a third, without financial authorisation. Clients from the Republic of Moldova register on the group's global licences — the ones serving clients outside the European Union. Moldova does not appear on any of the restriction lists published by the company. Romania is accepted, but the group no longer has an entity in the European Union, so the protections of European law do not apply. Over thirty countries are not served, among them five European Union states — a direct consequence of giving up the European licence in 2024. The exclusion criterion is citizenship, not just residence; persons on international sanctions lists are also excluded.
| Regulatory authority | Country | Legal entity | Licence no. | Check in the register |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| TIER 1 — TOP-LEVEL REGULATION | ||||
| FCA — Financial Conduct Authority | United Kingdom | HYCM Capital Markets (UK) Limited — identificator LEI 213800VXEUCGD61KDH27 | 186171 | register.fca.org.uk |
| TIER 2 — MID-LEVEL REGULATION | ||||
| DFSA — Dubai Financial Services Authority | United Arab Emirates | HYCM Limited | F000048 | dfsa.ae |
| TIER 3 — OFFSHORE (GLOBAL) LICENCES | ||||
| No declared regulatory authorityThe row without an authority indicates a group entity with no declared financial supervision. We include it for transparency — not because we recommend it. A company's number in the commercial register is not a financial authorisation. | Costa Rica | HYCM Capital Markets S.R.L. | — | — |
How client money is protected
The protections below depend on the rules of each entity and we explain them at length, for all our partners, in the guides of the Brokers section; here — briefly, for orientation:
Negative balance protection — the account does not stay below zero: if a sudden price move takes the balance into negative territory, the company covers the difference. In the European Union, the United Kingdom and Australia the protection is imposed by regulation, at trading-account level. On the group's global licences there is no authority to impose it — there it is the company's own policy, set out in the client agreement.
Compensation scheme — on the group's global licences, on which clients from the Republic of Moldova register, there is no such fund — which is why the reputation and regulation of the whole group matter so much. We have explained what a compensation fund is in the Glossary.
The official documents, straight from the source
- The company's licences pageThe group's licences and authorisations, published by the company — the starting point for verifying the entities in the official registers.Open
- Legal documents centreThe client agreement, the commercial terms, the execution policy, anti-money-laundering and the privacy policy.Open
Chapter 03
CFD trading
At HYCM you trade contracts for difference exclusively — you do not buy the real assets. A contract for difference is an over-the-counter (OTC) agreement through which you gain or lose the difference between the opening price and the closing price, without owning the share, the gold or the currency in question. The contract is concluded directly with the company, not on an exchange, and a position opened with it is closed with it as well.
The tables below show the main conditions. The button adds the detailed rows — technical specifications, useful if you already know what you are looking for.
General conditions
| Asset classes | Currency pairs, precious metals, energy, agricultural commodities, stock indices, shares, cryptocurrencies |
|---|---|
| Number of assets | Over a thousand |
| Order execution | The company is the sole execution venue, and trades are over-the-counter. Prices come in a feed from third-party liquidity providers and are adjusted by the company. On instant orders, if the price has moved, you receive a new quote which you have to accept. Price slippage applies in both directions and is acknowledged as normal practice. |
| Order typesFULL SPEC SHEET | Market, limit, stop, take profit, trailing stop. No guaranteed execution: when triggered, the order is executed at the next available price. The company states in its own documents that the risk of loss cannot be limited through protective orders. |
| Platform time zoneFULL SPEC SHEET | Greenwich Mean Time (GMT). The week starts on Sunday at 23:01 GMT in winter and 22:01 GMT in summer and ends on Friday at 21:00 and 20:00 GMT respectively; there is a daily five-minute break. If you trade from Chișinău, the difference from local time is two hours in summer and three in winter — worth setting in the platform before the first order. |
| Maximum leverage | Forex 1:500 · indices 1:200 · commodities 1:133 · shares 1:20 · cryptocurrencies 1:20. Under British regulation, the cap for non-professional investors is 1:30 on major currency pairs. |
| Margin call / stop-outFULL SPEC SHEET | The maintenance margin is 20% under normal conditions. From Friday evening to Sunday night the threshold rises to 50% — an account that holds up during the week can be liquidated on Friday without the market moving. The company may send a margin call or may close positions without notice; the call is not guaranteed. The position with the largest loss is closed first, then the next one. |
| Swap | Applies to positions held overnight, as an annual rate per instrument. On EUR/USD: −3.25% on the long position and +0.25% on the short one. On gold: −4.50% and +2.00%. On share and cryptocurrency contracts the cost is negative in both directions. The three-day rollover charge applies once a week. The full grid is published by the company and changes several times a year. |
| Inactivity fee | 10 USD per month, after 90 consecutive days without activity. Worth knowing, although, if you come to trade rather than just park your money, you will never meet it: a single trade before the deadline cancels it. If you were charged anyway, the company can refund one month, at most three times a year, if you notify it in writing within 30 days and fund the account. |
| Demo account | Available, free of charge. The demo account reproduces the live account's conditions and is opened without funding. |
| Account without overnight interest (Islamic) | Available on all account types, with proof of religious affiliation if requested. The exemption from overnight costs applies for the first fourteen days after opening the position; after that the normal costs come back into force. |
| Prohibited trading practices | The client agreement lists them by name: exploiting price delays and technical errors, placing buy and sell orders simultaneously, hedging exposure across several accounts or through other persons, hiding your location through virtual private networks and automatically copying another trader. The company calls the first practice "scalping", but its definition refers to exploiting latencies, not to the short duration of the trade — trading on small timeframes does not, in itself, breach the clause. The sanctions provided range from switching to manual quotes with prior approval to closing all accounts and cancelling profits. |
Who is on the other side of the trade
The company is the counterparty to every trade. Its execution policy says that it is the sole execution venue for client orders, that trades are over-the-counter and that a position opened with it can only be closed with it. Prices come in a feed from third-party liquidity providers, and the company adjusts them to obtain the spreads it considers appropriate. The model is legal and supervised by the authorities that granted the licences.
Why it matters
The model is legal and supervised by the authorities that issued the licences. It says nothing about the fairness of execution. It does mean, however, that the price you see is quoted by the company, not taken from an exchange, and that the markup included in it is the company's revenue.
Accounts for cfd trading
| Specification | Fixed | Classic | Raw |
|---|---|---|---|
| Minimum deposit | 20 USD | 20 USD | 20 USD |
| Minimum volume | 0.01 lots | 0.01 lots | 0.01 lots |
| Cost model | Fixed spread, no commission | Variable spread, no commission | Raw spread + commission |
| EUR/USD spread from | 1.5 pips | 1.2 pips | 0.1 pips |
| Commission per lot | — | — | 4 USD round turn on forex · 5 USD on metals · 0 USD on the rest |
| The commission applies toFULL SPEC SHEET | — | — | Lot traded, round turn |
| Platforms | HYCM Trader, MetaTrader 4, MetaTrader 5 | MetaTrader 4, MetaTrader 5 | MetaTrader 4, MetaTrader 5 |
| Opposite positions on the same instrumentFULL SPEC SHEET | Can be held simultaneously (hedging) | Can be held simultaneously (hedging) | Can be held simultaneously (hedging) |
| Robots and algorithmsFULL SPEC SHEET | Not allowed | Allowed | Allowed |
| Who it is for | For those who want to know in advance how much they pay on every trade and accept a higher cost in exchange for predictability | For those who trade occasionally and prefer a single cost, included in the price, with no separate calculations | For those who trade often and in larger volumes, where the fixed commission becomes cheaper than the widened spread |
The demo account is available for all the types above, with the same conditions and virtual money.
The account without overnight interest is obtained by converting an existing account, on request.
Chapter 04
Platforms and tools
Three platforms: the two MetaTraders and the company's own app. The fixed-spread account also works on the own app; Classic and Raw are traded on MetaTrader 4 or 5.
| Platform | What for | Where it runs |
|---|---|---|
| MetaTrader 4 | The market standard for forex. Average execution time declared by the company: around 12 milliseconds. | Desktop, browser, iOS, Android |
| MetaTrader 5 | A multi-asset platform, with more timeframes and more order types. | Desktop, browser, iOS, Android |
| HYCM Trader | The company's own phone app, available on the fixed-spread account and on part of the instruments. | iOS, Android |
Seasonality analysis
A third-party tool included free of charge with an active account: analysis of seasonal patterns across tens of thousands of instruments — for those who build their trading ideas on the historical statistics of the markets.
Real-time market events
The second third-party tool included free of charge with an active account: real-time tracking of the events that move the markets, directly from the account.
What it lacks: copy trading. The client agreement explicitly forbids automatically copying another trader and coordinated trading between accounts. If that is what you are looking for, HYCM is not the right partner — tell us and we show you which of the partners offers it.
Chapter 05
Deposits and withdrawals
The rules follow the standards of the field: money comes in and goes out only through cards or bank accounts opened in your name (an anti-money-laundering rule). Below you have the conditions for transactions with bank accounts from Moldova.
| Method | Deposit / duration | Withdrawal / duration | Keep in mind |
|---|---|---|---|
| Bank transfer | 20 · no fee from the company · 1–7 business days | processed within a maximum of 7 business days from the written request | Under 300 USD, the company withholds an administrative fee of 30 USD. Above this threshold, no fee. |
| Visa / Mastercard card | 20 · no fee · up to one hour | up to 7 business days | Funding is almost instant, withdrawal is not — worth knowing in advance. The withdrawal first goes back to the method used for the deposit; profit can go out to a bank account or another method, strictly in your name. |
How a withdrawal is made
Withdrawal requests are processed, after the account has been verified, usually much faster than the official deadlines indicate. The withdrawal first returns to the method used for the deposit; the profit can go out to a bank account or another method, but strictly in your name.
These are not obstacles — they are exactly the rules that make the difference between a financial institution and a scam.
Note for Moldova — read before you deposit
Some banks in the country may delay or even reject transfers to brokerage companies. The reason is not you: the stock market field is only now coming under local regulation (Law 177/2025), and the banks, faced with the wave of frauds in which criminals pose as “brokers” or “investment firms”, still do not have clear procedures for telling a regulated brokerage company apart from a scam. In developed countries, stock market investing is integrated directly into online banking; here, the banks are only just learning that a regulated brokerage company is, like them, a supervised financial institution. The good news: if you understand what you are doing and can explain to the bank where the money is going — your own trading account, with a regulated company, verifiable in public registers — the situation is usually cleared up quickly. You have the same support for withdrawals: if the bank asks about the origin of the money, trading and stock market investing are legal activities, and our partner companies issue official activity reports (account statements) precisely for this kind of transparency.
Your bank may charge its own conversion or currency transfer fee — check its tariffs before your first deposit, and if you want, we will work out the cheapest route together, free of charge.
Chapter 06
Customer support
| Phone | +44 207 816 5902 |
|---|---|
| support@hycm.com | |
| Channels | Phone · E-mail · Chat |
| Hours | During the trading sessions, from Sunday evening to Friday evening — the schedule declared by the company on its official contact page |
| Languages | English, Russian — no Romanian, but that is exactly what you have us for |
| Trading.md support | In Romanian and Russian, at the office in Chișinău, str. Pușkin 26, or online, free of charge for clients who opened their account through the links on the Trading.md pages · 078 080 840 |
The complaints procedure
Complaints are first filed with the company's support team, and if the answer does not satisfy you, they are escalated to the complaints manager; the response deadline published in the documents is fourteen days. Beyond that, you can turn to the authority supervising the licence your account was opened on — the contact details are in the company's documents. But first of all, tell us what happened and we try to help: most of the time the trouble comes from some services and procedures not being well enough known. And if the complaint really is necessary, we help you word it correctly — it is part of our support.
Chapter 07
How to open the account, step by step
Six steps, in their natural order — and if you get stuck somewhere, ask us for help, it is free.
Open the registration form
Through the button on this page, so that the registration is linked to us and you receive the support and the conditions of Trading.md clients.
Fill in your personal details
Name, country, e-mail, phone — exactly as they appear in your identity document. One different letter delays the verification.
Answer the experience questionnaire
Questions about income, savings and your experience with leveraged instruments. Answer honestly: the questionnaire establishes what can be offered to you.
Upload the documents
The identity document and the proof of address, in the Client Cabinet. Clear photographs, the corners visible, the document within its validity period.
Create the trading account
You choose the platform, the account type, the currency and the leverage. You can change them later by opening a new account — you are not locked into your first choice.
Fund the account and get started
You deposit through one of the accepted methods, in your name. Our recommendation: start on a demo, in parallel, until you understand the platform.
Account verification
In principle, all brokers ask for the same thing: that you prove who you are and where you live. The details differ — which documents they accept, from which institutions, in what format and how long it takes.
Which documents and how many
Two, as a rule: one that confirms your identity and one that confirms your address. They must be within their validity period and legible in full.
Who issues the accepted document
Not every piece of paper with your address on it is accepted. The accepted issuing institutions differ from one company to another, and for Moldova not all the variants work the same way.
Selfie, video or just an upload
At some companies it is enough to upload the files. At others a photograph with the document in your hand or a short video verification is needed.
How long it takes and what a refusal means
From a few minutes to a few weeks, depending on how clear the documents are. A refusal does not close the door: it usually means that additional or clearer documents are required.
An identity document and a proof of address are required; if you funded by card, a copy of the front of the card and a statement confirming you are its holder are added. The identity document must be state-issued; the proof of address — a utility bill or a bank statement, no older than three months; mobile phone bills are not accepted. Everything is uploaded through the client area, and the company may request additional documents at any time. Verification takes from a few minutes to a few weeks; for deposits above 2,000 USD the documents become mandatory before trading, and the maximum deadline is 21 days from the first deposit. You do not have to remember all of this: we go through verification together, free of charge — including if you were refused before, at this broker or at another. Most of the time it gets resolved, and the final decision remains, of course, with the broker.
Documents and account types
| Identity document | Identity card or passport, valid, with all the corners visible in the photograph. |
|---|---|
| Proof of address | A recent document that contains your name and your address. |
| Additional checks for large amounts | The company may ask for documents about the origin of the funds — it is an anti-money-laundering requirement, not a suspicion directed at you. |
| Multiple accounts | You can have several trading accounts under the same client profile, with different platforms and currencies. |
| Company account | The company accepts corporate clients, with the company's documents and identification of the beneficial owner. The detailed procedure is not published — we clarify it together, before you start the registration. |
Chapter 08
Frequently asked questions
Chapter 09
Conclusion: who it suits
It suits
The trader who works on MetaTrader, wants a low entry threshold and understands that they are dealing with an international company, not a local one. The one who holds positions overnight and wants to see the cost grid in advance — the company publishes it in full, per instrument, which not everyone does. And the one who prefers a fixed spread and accepts paying more for predictability.
To weigh up
The account of a client from outside the United Kingdom and the Emirates is opened on the group's global licences, where there is no compensation scheme. The inactivity fee and the withdrawal fee under 300 USD take a serious bite out of a small account — at the minimum deposit, one withdrawal costs more than the deposit. And copy trading, options and futures do not exist: the group's perimeter has narrowed over the last two years, not widened.
Other partners in the same directions
FxPro
A regulated brokerage company founded in 2006, headquartered in London. Offers trading exclusively through contracts for difference (CFDs), with five platforms under a single client agreement.
AvaTrade
A brokerage founded in 2006, headquartered in Dublin, Ireland. It works with a fixed spread and a single trading account type on the contracts-for-difference side, and from the same profile you can also open accounts for FX options and for real futures contracts.
Tickmill
A brokerage company founded in 2014, with its operational headquarters in London and authorised entities in four jurisdictions. It offers a single direction: CFD trading — contracts for difference on the currency market, indices, commodities, bonds, cryptocurrencies, stocks and ETFs.
Disclaimer
CFDs and options are complex instruments, with leverage, and involve a high risk of losing money rapidly. Before you trade, make sure you understand how they work and that you can afford the risk of losing the amount invested. Past performance, of an instrument or of a copied trader, does not guarantee future results. This page is for informational purposes and does not constitute personalised investment advice or a recommendation to buy or sell a financial instrument. Royal Consulting S.R.L., which operates the Trading.md platform, is a consulting, financial education and intermediation company. It is not a brokerage company, it does not execute orders, it does not hold client funds and it is not an investment adviser. The data on this page was verified on 25.08.2026 from the company's official documents and pages. The conditions may change without prior notice; the official version is always the one published by HYCM.