Fusion Markets Review

If you are a retail trader look for a low-cost broker with an excellent selection of forex pairs, then Fusion Markets is certainly worth taking a look at.

In this broker review, we will discuss all the crucial factors you need to consider when you decide whether you should be trading with Fusion Markets.

Key Pros and Cons

If you looking for a quick snapshot of Fusion Markets, here are a few key pros and cons.

Company Information

Fusion Markets is an Australian forex broker that was founded in 2017 when it was granted its first trading licence in Australia. Fusion Markets is a trading name of Gleneagle Asset Management which was founded in 2010.

The CEO of Fusion Markets, Phil Horner started the company to service clients with:

• A lower-cost structure for trading
• Friendly customer service
• Cutting-edge technology to improve the trading experience

The company has its headquarters based in Melbourne, Australia. It has a postal address in Vanuatu and is also looking to expand by opening more offices around the world.

Fusion Markets may be a young company having only had a trading licence for four years, but with a commitment to low trading costs, it is making headway in a crowded market.

Why Trade with Fusion Markets?

Here is a quick list of the important features that we like about Fusion Markets.

Regulation

The general rule with regulation is that the more regulatory licences that a broker holds, the better. Fusion Markets is currently regulated in just two jurisdictions. Compared to other brokers you may encounter, just two regulators are not very many however, on the plus side, one of them is a tier-one regulator.

A trading license under the Australian Securities and Investments Commission (ASIC) is top-level regulation. This means that Fusion Markets will be required to uphold the highest regulatory standards to maintain its all-important trading licence. This should give an added level of reassurance for traders.

Its second regulatory licence is in Vanuatu, with the Vanuatu Financial Services Commission (VFSC). Although Vanuatu is not considered to be a top tier regulator, it is also important as this allows clients of Fusion Markets access to much higher levels of leverage.

Here is a breakdown of the regulators that Fusion Markets is covered by:

It is certainly worth noting that Fusion Markets is a relatively new company and therefore has a limited track record. This means that it is an arguably higher risk for traders and is always worth consideration.

Additionally, the limited regulation also means that some clients are prohibited from trading with them. Traders in notable countries such as the United States, New Zealand and Japan will not be allowed. Furthermore, not having a licence from other jurisdictions such as the FCA (UK jurisdiction) or in the EU means that there is no investor protection in the event of the broker going bust.

It will be interesting to see how Fusion Markets looks to grow in the coming years, as more regulatory licences will open for more clients and allow greater protection.

KYC Procedure for Account Creation and Depositing

You can create your Fusion Markets account and login to the client portal in about a minute. Just add your email contact details and choose a password.

Once inside the client portal, you can begin to use the services such as Trade Ideas and News.

However, this is only a temporary account. To start trading you will need to add additional profile details. The process took us around 10 minutes and here are the steps that we needed to take:

1. Enter Your Details – your name, address and date of birth

2. Choose Your Account Settings – choosing the account (either Classic or ZERO), Trading Platform (MT4 or MT5) and the Base Currency. You also get to choose a security question

3. Personal Information – add in your data of birth and address

4. Verify Your Identity – you must upload a copy of either your passport, drivers licence or ID. Also proof of residence (utility, bank/credit card statement)

You do not need to fund the account with a minimum deposit to start trading with a demo account. You are free to go. However, once you are verified, if you want to trade live money, you can link a bank account and/or fund your account to start trading.

The sign-up process is all very easy.

No Suitability Test to Pass

However, it is also worth noting that there is no suitability test to pass. This means there are no immediate questions regarding your sources of funds, the level of your trading experience or a need to demonstrate an understanding of the use of leverage.

This makes it easier to sign up, however, the jury is out over whether this is a positive.

Most other brokers will ask suitability questions. This is an interesting omission in the due diligence process by Fusion Markets. We signed up from outside Australia and were automatically placed under the Fusion Markets EN (Vanuatu jurisdiction) umbrella. This gives you potential exposure on trades of up to 1:500 times leverage. Outside Australia, there is no negative balance protection for traders.

Account Types

The ambition to keep trading costs low for its clients is a key feature of the trading accounts that Fusion Markets offers. It has two main account types:

• The Classic Account – where trading fees are baked into the spread
• The ZERO Account – where spreads are much tighter but commissions are charged on each trade

Let’s now have a look at each of these accounts.

Here are a few other account aspects that you may be interested in:

Fusion Markets Pro

This is the premium account at Fusion. The account comes with all the same low trading costs but with higher leverage availability and added extras. Here’s what you get:

• Higher leverage availability, up to 1:500 times on forex, gold and other commodities
• Priority support
• Dedicated client manager
• Volume and referral-based rebates

However, there is a downside too, as you lose the negative balance protection that retail clients are afforded.

As is often the case with other brokers, to qualify for Pro account status, traders need to meet certain criteria, including net assets of at least $2.5m AUD and be able to pass a sophisticated investor test.

Multi Accounts Manager – MAM/PAMM

Professional traders managing money for clients have Fusion Markets MAM system available. This account through the MetaFX platform allows managers to trade with the flexibility of order types and allocation methods, various trade sizing. There is a 0.1 pip execution cost added on all products on the MAM platform.

Mini and Micro trading available

It is also worth noting that there are also Mini and Micro pip values available. The full account exposure gives access to 100,000 of the base currency (or $10 per pip), whereas the Mini exposure is 10,000 of base currency ($1 per pip) and the Micro pip value gives exposure to 1,000 of the base currency (or $0.10 per pip).

Demo account

Demo accounts are available to try out the Fusion Markets accounts with the use of virtual funds. Any new demo account will expire after 30 days, however, the demo account size can be set to unlimited upon request once an account has been funded. This leaves you free to try out multiple trading strategies without time restrictions. As ever though, the demo account is supposed to be seen as a gateway to a live trading account.

Account types missing with Fusion Markets

During our review of Fusion Markets, we noticed that there were some accounts that it are not offered. Here is a list of a few features that might be available through other brokers that Fusion Markets lack. These may be part of your decision making in choosing a broker:

• Islamic accounts – Many brokers will offer trading accounts that comply with Sharia Law which prohibits interest payments. Swaps-free trading is not offered by Fusion Markets.
• Guaranteed Stop Loss Orders (GSLOs) – some brokers will offer GSLOs to traders (for an added cost per trade). Fusion Markets does not offer this service.

Trading fees and other costs

One of the most important factors in choosing a broker is the fees that you will incur. Ultimately, when looking at fees, the lower the better. In that regard, Fusion Markets scores extremely highly with on fees.
In trading with a broker, you will incur two types of fees:

• Trading fees – spreads, commissions and overnight financing charges
• Non-trading costs – account fees, inactivity fees

Let’s break these down and then see how Fusion Markets fare.

Spreads

Fusion Markets runs two different pricing models for its accounts:

• Classic Account – is spread only
• ZERO Account – has extremely low spreads (and can be tight as zero) + a small commission

The two accounts use the same spreads taken through an ECN broker type model, but the Classic Account adds on +0.8 pips to cover the cost of trading.

The website notes the average spreads on major forex:

*added to the Average Spread to cover the costs of trading

** a round trip commission of $4.50 for the trade is also charged

So let’s compare the trading costs for the two accounts. According to Fusion Markets, traders tend to start on the Classic Account, but the ZERO spread account is the most popular. When you compare them on trading costs, you can see why traders appear to migrate over. For the sake of comparison, the example assumes you open and close the trade at the same price.

For a 1 lot trade on EUR/USD (where 1 pip = $10), using average spreads here are the trading costs for the two accounts:

Classic Account

• Spread – 0.89 pips (0.09 pips + 0.8 pips markup)
• TOTAL COST – 0.89 x $10 = $8.90

ZERO Account

• Spread – 0.09 pips
• Spread cost – 0.09 x $10 = $0.90
• Commission – $4.50
• TOTAL COST – $1.90 + $4.50 = $5.40

The Classic Account calculation adds a fixed markup of +0.8 pips to the spreads that are gained from the ECN trading with the ZERO Account. Let’s compare the Fusion Markets Classic Account average spreads with those of other brokers on the three biggest major forex pairs.

*unconfirmed

The table shows that the spreads on the Classic Account at Fusion Markets are extremely tight measured against competitors. The only broker that comes out slightly better is IG Markets.

Commissions

On its ZERO Account, Fusion Markets will add a commission of $4.50 per lot for the round trip of the trade (in and out).

This means that:

• for a 1 lot trade (100,000 units) you will pay a $4.50 commission to open and close the position
• for a 0.1 lot trade (10,000 units) you will pay a $0.45 to commission open and close the position

For a 1 lot trade, the round cost of $4.50 commission is very low. With an equivalent trade on a zero spread account with XM, traders pay $3.50 on both sides of the trade, meaning $7.00 in total. For HF Markets the equivalent trade on a zero spread account is a round turn of $6.00. Even taking the average spread of a EUR/USD trade (0.09 pips), the total trade cost of $5.40 at Fusion Markets are much better.

We believe that the commissions that Fusion Markets charge are extremely low.

Financing charges

If you hold a currency position overnight, you will be charged an overnight financing charge, or swaps fee. This is a fee that accounts for the interest rate differential between the two currencies of a pair. You can either gain or lose from swaps fees.

Fusion Markets do not set this charge, as it is calculated by its prime broker and liquidity partners. Some brokers might add their own markup fee on top of the financing charge but to its credit, Fusion Markets do not.

Calculations for swaps tend to be derived from “tom-next rates”.

Deposit fees

Fusion Markets has zero deposit fees which is fairly standard amongst brokers in the industry – for more details see Deposit Methods

Withdrawal fees

Fusion Markets also has zero withdrawal fees on all of its payment methods. This is positive as many brokers will charge either for second withdrawals in a month and bank wire transfers. Fusion Markets does note that they are not in control of any fees that international banks may charge for wire transfers though – for more details see Withdrawal Methods

Inactivity fees

There are no inactivity charges with Fusion Markets. This is very rare amongst brokers. Most will charge some sort of inactivity fee (and some also add an administration charge too) for accounts being dormant for some time. In this regard, Fusion Markets score top marks.

Overall on Fees

Fusion Markets scores excellently across the board on fees. Spreads are tight, commissions are low, and there are no hidden extras on overnight financing charges and non-trading fees.

The only reason that Fusion Markets does not achieve top marks overall for fees is that the spreads at one competitor that we used as a comparison (IG Markets) were slightly tighter for the spread-only Classic Account. Aside from that, for fees, Fusion Markets is one of the best brokers you will find.

Desktop Trading Platforms

The main trading platforms that Fusion Markets has available to its clients are based around MetaTrader4 (MT4) and MetaTrader5 (MT5). You will find most of the big brokers will look to set themselves apart by offering a proprietary trading platform. There is no proprietary platform option with Fusion Markets.

Here’s what’s available:

• MetaTrader 4 – MT4 is still considered to be the benchmark platform for retail traders
• MetaTrader 5 – MT5 is the upgraded version of MT4
• WebTrader for MT4 – no need to download MT4 to your desktop, traders can use the browser version. This allows access to a trading account anywhere that has an internet connection.
• MetaTrader 5 – MT5 is the upgraded version of MT4.

Although there is a lack of variety with regards to platform options, MT4/MT5 is pretty much ubiquitous in the world of forex brokers.

MT4 & MT5

Any trader that has shopped around will have come across MT4 and will likely be familiar with its design and functionality. It is considered to be the industry benchmark for platforms and now also has an upgraded version, MT5. Brokers will look to get traders on to MT5 as there is better functionality and more traded instruments (such as Share CFDs) are available.

MetaTrader 4 (MT4) – is available in over 40 languages and is good for charting and technical analysis indicators. The platform also translates very well across mobile devices, meaning desktop, tablet and mobile versions interact very well. MT4 also supports full EA (Expert Advisor) functionality.

MetaTrader 5 (MT5) – MetaTrader upgraded MT4 giving a wider selection of asset classes, including Share CFDs. Other improvements include:

• Increased order types (6 on MT5 versus 4 on MT4),
• A larger number of timeframes (21 to choose from on MT5, there are just 9 on MT4)
• 38 technical indicators (there are 30 on MT4)
• 37 graphical drawing and annotation objects (versus 24 on MT4)

Copy trading with Fusion Markets

Fusion Markets also offer two copy trading services.

• Myfxbook AutoTrade – is a social trading platform allowing traders to follow and copy other traders in community-based trading around the world.
• DupliTrade – allows traders to duplicate the actions of other traders on DupliTrade into a Fusion Markets MT4 account.

Mobile Trading Platforms

The MT4 and MT5 platforms are also across mobile devices. Both are available through iOS and Android operating systems.

MT4 & MT5 trading apps

The mobile versions of MT4 and MT5 translate extremely well from the desktop versions, also allowing excellent interaction between devices.

The 3 chart types and 30 technical indicators of MT4 migrate well, whilst there is also push notifications for trading alerts.

Trading Instruments

Assessing the selection of trading instruments it becomes clear that Fusion is predominantly a forex broker. The availability of forex is amongst the best you will come across, however looking at other asset classes, it does seem to be lacking elsewhere. To its credit though, it seems to be looking to branch out and improve its instrument offering.

There are around 160 instruments to choose from, with around half being forex. There is also a batch of US CFDs, with a limited number of indices, commodities and cryptocurrencies ( Bitcoin, Etherium, Dash, Ripple and Litecoin ). There are no sophisticated asset classes available to be traded, with a lack of any ETFs, options or bonds.

Forex

Fusion Markets has 79 forex currencies to trade, which is an excellent selection. Many brokers will offer between 50 and 60 currency pairs, however, the offer from Fusion Markets is far greater.

We would put Fusion Markets right up there amongst leading brokers such as Forex.com and OANDA for the availability of forex instruments. It has an excellent variety of majors, minors and exotics.

Indices

Beyond forex, the offer begins to look a little thin. There are only 11 indices available to trade which is rather limited. There are just the three big US indices, five European markets and three Asian markets.

Other brokers that you come across will tend to offer more. A wider selection of US, European and Asian markets are often available, whilst some brokers will also offer synthetic basket indices too. We would see maybe 15 to 20 indices as being the average amongst peers.

Share CFDs

With Fusion Markets, you can trade Share CFDs (i.e. not the underlying cash equities) of some of the largest companies on the US equity markets. There are 50 to choose from, trading via the MT5 platform.

We see this as a limited number of companies and a little disappointing considering they have decided to have share CFDs available. Furthermore, there are no European or Asian companies to trade with. Unless they are looking to increase this offering it is a fairly token selection and seems to be a bit of an afterthought that could do with being improved upon. Fusion Markets is lacking the research tools and CFDs on stocks is not available.

Commodities

There is mixed news with regards to commodities. Trading instruments include over 80 forex pairs, popular cryptocurrencies, stocks, indexes, precious metals and commodities as CFD. There are four different precious metals (gold, silver, platinum and palladium) whilst gold and silver can also be traded in a variety of currencies too. Additionally, there are five base metals on offer. You can also trade energy products, including oil (both Brent Crude and WTI) and natural gas.

However, when we completed this review, there were no other commodities available. So no soft commodities such as coffee, wheat, cocoa or sugar. However, the website does advertise the potential to trade these softs, all under the banner “Coming Soon!”. How soon this will be is not clear.

Other brokers will often have a better selection, adding more currency trades for precious metals and a wide selection of soft commodities.

Cryptocurrency

There is a selection of five cryptocurrencies that you can trade via CFDs (i.e. on margin and not the underlying asset). The five are Bitcoin, Etherium, Dash, Ripple and Litecoin. The availability of five coins is certainly better than none, but where crypto brokers do offer crypto, there will often be a wider selection on offer.

What you can’t trade

On the whole, we would say this is a limited selection of instruments. It means that at Fusion Markets, there are:

1. No ETFs – which is disappointing as most brokers will at least offer some ETFs through the MT5 platform
2. No Bonds – often only really offered by the larger brokers with proprietary platforms.
3. No Futures and Options – some of the larger brokers will offer more sophisticated products to improve the offering for professional clients options.

Trade Execution

Fusion Markets is a no dealing desk model broker. Its method of trade execution comes via an Electronic Communications Network (ECN) form, although the broker does not refer to it as such. This helps to improve not only trust but also allows extremely fast execution speed.

1. ECN execution improves client trust – Dealing desk brokers can either take on the risk of their clients’ trades or push it on to their liquidity partners. Effectively, this means that a dealing desk broker can be taking the other side of a trade to the client. This can sit uncomfortably with some traders. Fusion Markets does not do this. Instead, they run an ECN type broker model that improves the level of trust that some traders are looking for.
2. Fast execution – Being effectively an ECN broker means that Fusion Markets can offer extremely fast trade execution through its Virtual Private Server hosting service. This is available either through a Sponsored MetaQuotes MT5 VPS or through third party providers New York City Servers and FXVM.
3. Market Execution – Fusion Markets executes its clients’ trades via Market Execution, meaning that orders are filled at the next available price offered. This means that there are no requotes. There is a maximum lot size of 100 lots for a trade, but it recommends less than 50 lots to avoid unnecessary slippage.

Deposits

As part of the inclusivity that Fusion Markets tend to project, there is no minimum deposit to start trading. Also, there is a reasonable selection of six different available base currencies:

• Australian dollar (AUD)
• Euro (EUR)
• British pound (GBP)
• Japanese yen (JPY)
• Singapore dollar (SGD)
• US dollar (USD)

Fusion Markets also does not charge any fees for depositing money into an account via debit/credit cards and also no charges for bank wire transfers within Australia. Whilst it also does not charge for international transfers, it does warn that banks may incur a fee of between $20 to $30.

Deposit Methods

There is a wide selection of deposit methods available:

• Debit/Credit card – Visa/Mastercard
• Bank wire transfer
• e-payments – Skrill, Neteller, Fasapay, Jeton Wallet, Perfect Money
• PayPal

Funds will clear into your account instantly via Visa or Mastercard. However, international bank wires will typically take 2 to 3 days to clear (but could be as long as 5 business days).

There are no deposit bonuses available with Fusion Markets.

Withdrawal Methods

Getting money out of your trading account can be a hassle with some brokers. With Fusion Markets, we like the fact that there are no restrictions on withdrawals and can be done at any time.

As is standard practice now with brokers, due to money laundering regulations, withdrawals will first be matched to your depositing method.

Withdrawals are processed within one business day (and same day if before 11am AEDT). This is a prompt service that reflects the strong customer support with Fusion Markets. The funds will then appear within 1 to 5 business days for debit/credit cards and 2 to 5 business days for wire transfers.

We are also encouraged by the fact that Fusion Markets does not charge fees for withdrawing funds. It is fairly common to find brokers charging for multiple withdrawals within the month, in addition to a fee (often $25) for wire transfers out. However, whilst Fusion Markets does not charge fees (and internal transfers within Australia are also free), some international banks may still charge between $15 to $25 for bank transfers. For this reason, there is a minimum bank wire transfer of $30 to cover this eventuality. Credit Cards and Skrill/Neteller are also free of charges.

Customer Support Contacts

Strong customer service is one of the fundamental tenets of what Fusion Markets is looking to achieve. The website refers to it being a broker that changes people’s expectations of their broker, striving to have “friendly support” for any experience level of trader.

One of the core values is to “Smile” and for them to not take themselves too seriously. To help engender this, “White Glove Support” where live account holders have their own trading specialist available to help navigate the trading platform. This is a great service that beginners would certainly benefit from. Fusion Markets Pro clients also have a dedicated account manager.

The only downside that we found is that to get a human response it would appear that you may need to ask them during Australian business hours.
Customer support is available through several channels:

1. FAQs

   As is often the case, the website contains an extensive list of Frequently Asked Questions. Help queries covered include account openings, deposits/withdrawals, trading queries, platform questions, general information and Fusion+ Copy trading.

2. Fusion Markets Live Chat

   No matter where you are on the website, clicking on the green icon at the bottom right of the page will open the LiveChat box. This is a responsive service that is available with a lot of information, even if the responses appeared to be scripted.

3. Telephone contact

   If you prefer to speak to someone on the telephone, you can call the Australian office number. However, outside of Australian business hours, the response time was longer (a potential downside especially if you are a trader in Europe).

4. Email

   You can also contact via the email help@fusionmarkets.com whilst also having the option to “Send Us a Message” on the Help page of the website, where you can enter your details and they will either email you or phone you back.

Research and Educational Materials

With Fusion Markets, the content that traders have to generate trading ideas and improve their knowledge is a mixed offering. On the research side, logging into the client portal there is a wide selection of useful content to wade through. However, when it comes to education, they are lacking somewhat.

Let’s have a look at what they offer traders.

Research

Logging into the client portal you will find an array of third party content to help clients with their trading decisions. Much of the content is very useful. Here’s what’s available:

• Analyst Views – a white labelled (third party) system of generating trade set-ups on forex, commodities, indices and shares. Giving you insight into market direction and scenarios, support and resistance levels, whilst also being available as a Custom Indicator for MT4/MT5 platforms.
• Technical Insight – another third party content system (via Trading Central) giving trading outlooks for markets and helping to explain technical setups.
• News – the Market Buzz service is an Artificial Intelligence tool that helps to sift through content across the web on certain markets and to generate a sentiment gauge. You can also filter for news providers or bloggers that you prefer to read.
• Economic Calendar – scheduled fundamental economic data events to watch for. This comes with an added feature over other economic calendars where you can gauge historical volatility of data on certain markets.

It is, however, worth noting that Fusion Markets rely on third party providers for their research content. There are no views or market strategy pieces written by any in-house analysts. This is an area where Fusion Markets is lacking.

Education

With no apparent in-house analysis content, there is also no education content for traders (aside from extremely limited content on “Our Blog”). Often brokers will buy in third party content, either in the form of video or written content, to cover basic trading education. This is not present with Fusion Markets (perhaps it is something they will look to provide as they grow).

For now though, this means that there are:

• No eBooks / educational material – no written content or pages for traders to learn from
• No Video content – helping to explain the concepts of trading and financial markets
• No Client webinars – which can be a good way to interact with the broker
• No Client seminars – another way of feeling that the broker is looking to help traders improve their knowledge.

Therefore, we believe that the lack of educational content is disappointing. This is not ideal for beginner traders starting on their journey and wanting to learn.

Security and Money Guarantees

At bestbrokers.com we always believe that one of the most important factors in choosing a broker should be the protection of client funds. We believe that Fusion Markets is not a scan and is a broker that your money is safe with. Here’s why:

• Top-level ASIC regulation
• Full segregation of client funds
• Negative balance protection for clients under ASIC regulation

Let’s look at these in more detail.

The ASIC regulation is a key feature of trading with Fusion Markets. ASIC is a top-tier regulator which means that Fusion Markets are required to run a responsible, ethical and compliant company in servicing its clients.

Fusion Markets are required by law to keep client funds fully segregated from company funds to run the day to day business. Funds are not technically guaranteed under Australian Law but under ASIC regulations they have to be fully segregated and therefore are effectively protected. All client monies are deposited into segregated accounts with National Australia Bank (ranked in the top 50 banks in the world for total assets).

Clients trading under the ASIC regulation are also afforded negative balance protection to their accounts. This means that clients cannot lose more money than they have deposited. This is great protection and gives reassurance, especially for beginner traders.

However, professional clients (Fusion Markets Pro) or clients trading under the Vanuatu regulation do not get negative balance protection. Some brokers such as XM will extend this safety across the client base.

Conclusion

At BestBrokers.com we believe that whilst Fusion Markets may be quite new to the market, that does not mean it should be quickly dismissed. We believe there is much to admire about Fusion Markets:

• ECN broker
• Market-beating low costs to trade
• Excellent selection of forex pairs
• Low non-trading costs

So if you are a forex trader looking for low costs for your trading, then Fusion Markets is an excellent choice for a broker. Also given their stated intentions to grow the business, we see strong upside potential to improve their offering in other areas too.

However, their education content is lacking and this is not helpful for beginner traders (although a platform specialist is on hand for MT4/MT5 queries).

R. Perry