Frequently Asked Questions
We are an online financial trading company incorporated in Melbourne, Australia. We specialise in offering Forex and CFDs trading to both retail and institutional clients via the popular MetaTrader 5 trading platform.
Please see our Company Background page for more details.
Yes. We are regulated by the Australian Securities and Investments Commission (ASIC) and hold an Australian Financial Services Licence number 514425.
Unfortunately we cannot accept any clients who reside in the US due to CFTC regulations.
We offer our clients the most popular trading platform to trade with, the MetaTrader 5 along with its mobile platform counterpart so you can trade on-the-go.
Our pricing is derived from several top-tier liquidity providers who stream prices to our platform.
Yes. We allow full scalping and hedging.
Yes. We allow the use of EA on our MT5 trading platforms.
We do not provide support for these automated strategies however as they are available from third-party providers and suggest you contact the source directly should you experience any difficulties related to the settings or methodology of your chosen EA.
Leverage in trading generally means borrowing a certain amount of money needed to gain exposure to a particular market, with a relatively small deposit.
Leverage allows you to take a position of much higher value than the monies deposited in your account and is commonly expressed as a ratio.
For example, if you have a balance of $100 and a leverage of 1:30, you essentially have up to $3,000 worth of instruments across all active trades.
While there are no account keeping fees, there are various costs/fees to consider when trading. For example, if you trade a CFD/Forex contract, there is a spread. Or you may choose to use our Raw account which has a fixed monetary cost per trade. There are also financing (Swap) costs to consider. Refer to www.focusmarkets.com/accounts/ for more information.
General Information
We are an online financial trading company incorporated in Melbourne, Australia. We specialise in offering Forex and CFDs trading to both retail and institutional clients via the popular MetaTrader 5 trading platform.
Please see our Company Background page for more details.
Yes. We are regulated by the Australian Securities and Investments Commission (ASIC) and hold an Australian Financial Services Licence number 514425.
Yes, we accept applications from clients all over the world, with exception to a few countries due to the local jurisdiction laws and regulations.
Currently, we cannot accept applications from applicants in the following countries:
Afghanistan, Azerbaijan, Belgium, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Burundi, Canada (British Columbia, Quebec and Ontario), China, Congo, Côte d’Ivoire, Ethiopia, Eritrea, Egypt, Gaza Strip, Haiti, Iran, Iraq, Israel, Japan, Lebanon, Libya, Myanmar, North Korea, Pakistan, Puerto Rico, Sierra Leone, Somalia, South Sudan, Sudan, Syria, Trinidad and Tobago, the Central African Republic, Tunisia, Ukraine, Vanuatu, Venezuela, the United States of America, West Bank, Yemen and Zimbabwe.
We will also require you to provide identification documentation to support your application.
Yes, our Client Services team are available to help 24 hours a day, 5 days a week. You can reach us on +03 8609 0133 or email us at customerservice@focusmarkets.com.
We offer our clients the most popular trading platform to trade with, the MetaTrader 5 along with its mobile platform counterpart so you can trade on-the-go.
Our pricing is derived from several top-tier liquidity providers who stream prices to our platform.
Yes. We allow full scalping and hedging.
Yes. We allow the use of EA on our MT5 trading platform.
We do not provide support for these automated strategies however as they are available from third-party providers and suggest you contact the source directly should you experience any difficulties related to the settings or methodology of your chosen EA.
Leverage in trading generally means borrowing a certain amount of money needed to gain exposure to a particular market, with a relatively small deposit.
Leverage allows you to take a position of much higher value than the monies deposited in your account and is commonly expressed as a ratio.
For example, if you have a balance of $100 and a leverage of 1:30, you essentially have up to $10,000 worth of instruments across all active trades.
We do not charge any fees on our FX or CFD products. However, financing implications may apply to open positions held overnight.
Trading Accounts
Our Demo and Live accounts have the exact same trading conditions including the same price feed.
However, please keep in mind that it is not possible to replicate a real trading environment on a Demo account due to technical limitations. Trades placed on Demo accounts are not passed into the real market. Therefore, their execution will not directly be comparable to trades placed on a Live account. Demo trading accounts are specifically designed to allow traders to become familiar with the trading platform itself and will never be able to provide an identical trading experience to a Live account.
Our Demo accounts expire after 30 days.
Opening an account with us is easy and only takes a few minutes.
You can apply online through our website by clicking on any ‘Open’ or ‘Create Account’ buttons and follow the prompts.
Yes. As a regulated financial services provider, we are required to comply with Australian rules and regulations relating to the identification of our customers before they open an account with us.
Identification must be provided in the form of photo ID and proof of address to verify your identity.
Photo ID – Driver’s Licence/Passport/Government-issued ID
- Must be clear and visible
- Must be issued by a government agency
- Name, Signature and Expiry Date must be clear
Proof of Address – Bank Statement/Utility Bill>
- Must not be older than 3 months
- Must show the same name and address as your account application
You will be asked to upload your identification documents during your live account application process online. If, for any reason you cannot provide the documents during your application, you can also send the documents to us via email.
Our demo account takes less than a minute to set up whilst our live account application may take approximately 5-10 minutes to complete.
Provided that all required documents are submitted (ID, proof of address etc.), your live account can be set up within 24 hours (during normal business operating hours) of you submitting your application.
We offer two types of accounts, Standard Account and Raw Account.
Both of them provide the same trading conditions, extras and features, however clients will get to enjoy tighter spreads on the Raw Account and there is a commission for every trade you place on that account.
It is completely free to open a live account with us. However, we do require a minimum deposit of $100 (account base currency) when you fund for the first time.
No. It is completely free to open a live trading account with us – we do not charge any fees or commissions.
There is a maximum of five (5) trading accounts per entity.
An entity is identified as either an individual trader, joint account traders, company or trust trader. For example, as an individual trader you can open up to a maximum of five trading accounts but if you wish to open a joint trading account between yourself and another trader, you will have the option of another additional five accounts under this entity title. Provided that all documentation has been presented and approved for each entity type, there is no limit to how many entities clients may wish to trade under.
Under special considerations and approval by management, clients may be able to request beyond the five account limit.
We currently support the following major currencies: AUD, USD, GBP, NZD, SGD and EUR.
You will be asked which currency you would like your Focus Markets trading account to be held in during your application. Note the currency you have selected is also the currency you will deposit funds in.
If you have not yet funded your live account, you can apply to have the currency of your account changed. To do so please contact our Client Services team directly at customerservice@focusmarkets.com.
If you have funded your account but have not yet traded, you may change your account currency with some potential costs and a time delay. Please note however that you may be subjected to bank transfer fees and the market foreign exchange rates as we put in the request to transfer from one currency account to another bank where the other currency accounts are held. Please contact us if you wish to put in this request.
If you have already started trading on your account, unfortunately you will not be able to change the currency in your account. If you still wish to trade in another currency, the best option we recommend is to open an additional live trading account.
If you wish to make changes or update the details on your trading account, you may request this by emailing customerservice@focusmarkets.com.
We don’t want to see you go however, if you wish to close your live account with us, simply call or submit your request to us by emailing customerservice@focusmarkets.com.
We don’t want to see you go. However, if you wish to close your live account with us, simply call or submit your request to us by emailing trading@focusmarkets.com.
Funding & Withdrawals
We offer a number of payment methods to fund your trading account including instant funding through credit/debit card, Skrill, Poli and China Union Pay (for clients residing in China) as well as international/local bank transfers.
For further information, please see our Funding page.
No, you do not need to deposit right away. However, access to live trading is only available upon the financing of your account.
Most of our payment options are instant. If you have funded via credit card, funds will usually be available in your account within seconds of completing the transaction.
If you have funded via bank transfer however, funds will need to clear before they appear in your trading account. This can take 1-3 working days, depending on your location.
In this case, your deposits will be converted to the base currency of your account by real-time foreign exchange rate determined by your financial institution.
If you want to withdraw funds from your account, please contact your Account Manager or email customerservice@focusmarkets.com.
Note that funds can only be sent back to an account in the same name as your trading account.
We aim to process all withdrawal requests between 9 AM and 1 PM AEST, Monday – Friday. Requests submitted after 1 PM will be processed the following business day.
Note that processing times may vary and are subject to the receiving bank processes. International transfers may take up to 2 – 5 business days to be received.
We do not charge any internal fees for deposit and withdrawals.
However, please note that payments to and from non-Australian banking institutions may be subjected to bank fees from an intermediary bank involved in the transaction and may thus, attract a receiving fee from client’s bank/institution. Any such fees will be the responsibility of the client. Please ensure to account for these fees when making withdrawals of a small amount.
Additionally, any international Telegraphic Transfer (TT) fees charged by our banking institution are passed onto the client (approximately $20).
No. We do not pay any interest on your funds.
Login Problems
Our standard demo accounts last for 30 days only. You won’t be able to access it once it expires. To get a new demo account, please go to File > Open an Account and follow the prompts. You do not need to download the platform again.
If you’ve lost or forgotten your MT5 login password, you may have it reset by calling or emailing us. For security reasons, we will require you to provide us with some personal details in order to verify you.
You can do this yourself by logging into the trading platform. Go to Tools > Options, select the Server tab and click Change Password.
For Live accounts – This is either one of the following errors: incorrect login number or password. If you are still having issues after attempting to re-enter your login details, please contact us.
For Demo Accounts – This means you’ve either entered the wrong login number or password, or your demo account has expired.
This error occurs when the server receives multiple requests for the same order/trade. Please restart your trading platform to resolve.
Yes, our trading platform allows multiple login simultaneously to the same account. You can log into your account from the MT5 desktop terminal on your PC and sign in using your mobile phone while you are away.
Platform Issues
Our MT5 platform automatically updates whenever there is a new version released by Meta Quotes.
Live updates failing to run automatically are commonly due to restrictions in Windows. Users of Windows Vista, Windows 7 or up will need to make sure MT5 is set to Run as an Administrator so that it can perform the live updates automatically as required. To run the platform as administrator, right-click on your desktop icon, and click Run as administrator. When you re-open MT5 you will be prompted to complete a Live Update.
If you can’t find all the Forex, Commodities and Indices symbols that we offer in your Market Watch, they may just be hidden. Simply right-click anywhere on the Market Watch window and select Show All.
Our trading platform is currently set to GMT+3. Trading begins at 00:00 platform time, with daily rollover occurring at the same time each day. This time cannot be changed on the platform.
Simply go to the Market Watch area, right-click and choose Symbols. Then click on the properties for a particular trading symbol and it will give you all the details including the swap rates.
If you would like to install or use your own custom indicator and Expert Advisor, you can do this by going to File> Open Data Folder and open MQL4 folder. There are experts and indicators folders within it and you will need to copy the .mq4 or .ex4 files into their respective folder.
By default you are unable to run more than one MT5 platform from the same place at the same time.
If you wish to run two instances of MT5 platform on your PC, you will need to install a second instance of the platform but in different directories on your PC. When you are running the installer, there is a setting button on the same page of the licence agreement. Click on the button and rename the destination folder and continue. It will then install another copy of MT5 on your computer.
To reset your MT5 chart data, you will need to go to Tools > History Center and select the pair and the time frame you want to reset. Next, select ALL of the data and click Delete twice (to select all – click the first record, hold SHIFT and scroll all the way down to the bottom to select the last record while holding the SHIFTkey).
Simply right-click on your Account History section, select the desired period of time and run a detailed statement. It will then generate your account statements in an HTML format.
Trading
Spread is essentially the difference between the buy (ask) and the sell (bid) price quoted for an underlying instrument.
You can trade as low as 0.01 lot (or 1,000 units of base currency) on all our currency pairs.
Please note:
– 0.01 lot = 1,000 units of base currency
– 0.1 lot = 10,000 units of base currency
– 1 lot = 100,000 units of base currency
Margin is the amount of money required to open or maintain a position. This is not a fee or a transaction cost, it is simply a portion of your account equity set aside and allocated as a margin deposit.
Margin requirements can vary depending on the market you are trading and the size of your trade. If you do not have sufficient free equity available you will be unable to open a position on the trading platform. The free margin amount shown in the trading platform is the amount you have available to use should you wish to open additional positions.
Margin is normally expressed as a percentage of a position size (e.g. 2% or 5%). Margin can be calculated using the following formula:
Margin Requirement = (current market price x volume) / account leverage
For example:
EUR/USD is quoted at the current market price of 1.35645, your account has a leverage of 1:400 and you would like to trade one standard lot. Your margin calculation would be: (1.35645 x 100,000) / 400 = $283.91
In this example the margin on this position would be $283.91, therefore in order to open a position of this size you would require at least $283.91 in free equity in your trading account.
If you have no free margin, you will not be able to open any new positions and/or your positions will be stopped out.
Please note that it is your responsibility to monitor your positions at all times. We do not offer guaranteed stop-loss.
You will be notified on your trading platform screen when your account equity drops to 80% of the required margin. An automated email will also be sent to your nominated email address with the same notification. In this case, you may choose to make further deposits into your trading account in order to keep or open more positions.
Once your account equity falls to or below 50%, we will liquidate your positions starting with those that are losing the most against the market.
Again, you cannot rely on us to close out your positions for you. We strongly encourage that you have exit strategies and stop-loss orders set in place to help protect you against potential market movements. Stop-losses are not guaranteed and may be subject to slippage during volatile market conditions.
Your positions will get liquidated if the account balance is below our margin requirement, which is 50%.
If you are buying a currency or an instrument, you are considered in a ‘long’ position. If you are selling on the other hand, then you are in a ‘short’ position.
For example, if you buy 1 lot of AUD/USD, this means you open a long position for 100,000 of AUD against USD. If you sell 1 lot of USD/GBP this means you open a short position for 100,000 of USD against GBP.
We currently offer cash CFDs which do not have an expiry date. As CFDs are traded on margin, you will only pay or receive an overnight financing rate linked to the relevant benchmark rate for the particular currency in which your position is denominated. This means you can keep them running for as long as you choose.
Swap is the interest paid or earned for holding a position overnight based on the difference between the interest rates of two countries. Each currency or CFD has an interest rate associated with it, which can cause extra profit or cost to your trade.
Our swap rates are calculated automatically in the trading platform, however, for your information, swap rates may be calculated using the following formula:
Current long/short rate * number of lots = swap debit/credit in second currency
If you have any further questions regarding our swap rates, please contact us directly.
We currently offer cash CFDs which do not have an expiry date. As CFDs are traded on margin, you will only pay or receive an overnight financing rate linked to the relevant benchmark rate for the particular currency in which your position is denominated. This means you can keep them running for as long as you choose.
If you hold a position overnight on a Wednesday, the normal financing charges that are credited/debited on a daily basis are three times the normal amount. Charging triple swap on Wednesday roll-over period accounts for the settlement of trades over the weekend, as swap rates are not charged during this period due to the market being closed.
Overnight financing costs are applied during the New York close which equates to 00:00 platform time.
A market ‘gapping’ refers to the price movement of an asset, i.e. currencies, stock indices, commodities, etc. during a period where no trading has occurred.
Gapping in the market is seen as the difference in price of an asset between its closing price at the end of one trading period and its opening price in the next trading period; they typically occur overnight or over the weekend. On occasion, gaps can also occur over shorter time frames.
How to Start Trading with Focus Markets
Open an account in less than 3 minutes