Got Questions? We have you covered. These FAQs are comprehensive! Each time we get asked a question – it gets listed here. If you don’t see something you are looking for, then drop us a line and we will get back to you fast!
Getting Started is quite simple. Please see our how it works page here for a good explanation. It basically boils down to taking a bit of initiative, opening your own trading account at an FCM (Brokerage House), selecting some professional FX funds to trade on your behalf for you (or asking us for advice on which ones), and then (easily) configuring these to suit your personal risk tolerance and financial goals. Then all you need to do is go about your life. The rest is on auto-pilot. To apply, you can click the Apply button up top which takes you through a quick and easy digital application.
Our belief with the Forex market is that money is never really made nor lost, but only changes wallets. Diversifying heavily into one major asset class such as Forex, is in our view, one of the few markets that will work with this type of diversification strategy. Non correlated strategy diversification is important from one FX strategy to another to take advantage of this concept. However, currency markets are unique in that they are the only asset class that has never experienced an across-the-board bear market, or even a boom or bust like real-estate markets. In our collective opinion, although volatile, the market itself is as close to “crash-proof” investing as one can come. This makes currencies a unique asset class for diversification. When one trader is down, another is up. Experienced traders can always find a profitable trend to ride somewhere in the foreign exchange markets, as long as they understand the key factors that move world currencies.
Broadly speaking, our minimum investment is $5,000 USD or equivalent in EUR, GBP, AUD, (JPY, NZD, and HKD coming soon!). This can be allocated in to any number of funds, as the minimum does not apply to a single fund. Thus, you could invest $5,000 and invest $1,250 in to 4 different funds. Note that in some cases however, some of our funds may have unique minimum investment restrictions imposed on them. This is clearly displayed and made transparent to investors prior to joining.
This is good ‘ol technology coming to save the day again, and is in our opinion, an industry game changer! We utilize custom software which is very, very, very important for investors. It is called a Custom Stop Equity tool. Investors can now set their own stop-loss equity levels at the simple click of a button. This ensures an investor never needs to worry about a rogue trader breaking rules, or technical problems with an algo, or black swan market events and crashes. It’s a “safety net” that catches ALL and lets investors sleep easy at night knowing that they will never lose a penny more than they decide. So investors can now easily cap their downside risk, and leave the upside open-ended. It’s basically safety – taken to a whole new level.
Sure, here is an example: if an investor’s initial deposit for participation in a managed account is $100K USD, and they decide that they do not want to ever lose more than $10K USD, they can set their own personal kill switch (Stop Equity) at a value of $90k USD. So if account equity reaches as low as $90K their account will systematically be disconnected from our trading software service (called a PAM), and any open trades will be closed. At this point they are disconnected and their funds are safe from incurring any further losses. They can then decide to join back in (or not) at their own discretion and on their own time frames.
Investors need to be realistic of course when setting this and allow for drawdowns to occur, as these are a normal and an inevitable part of trading. Setting these stop losses to tight on your account, means they may be triggered more often than they should be. Most investors set this at a value slightly higher than what we ever expect to encounter naturally and use it as a safety brake (and thus, hopefully it never actually gets triggered, ever). Some investors get clever with this, and use it as a “trailing stop” and increase or decrease it each month based on profit or losses incurred on their account over time. If investors need any help setting these, just let us know. We are here to help, and we provide general best practice guidelines on using this for each strategy to help keep your investment safe.
Have you ever looked an an investment and thought “I like it, but it’s too conservative for my risk appetite, or alternatively, it’s too aggressive for my taste?” Investors participating with our Managed Forex Accounts, can now simply focus on a strategy’s risk-adjusted rate of return, and set their own risk level on their account to their own specific preference.
This is extremely valuable, as risk is like beauty … it is in the eye of the beholder! What we have learned over the years is that every person has their own unique perception of risk. What one person finds risky, another may not see as risky at all. This can depend on many factors such as age, experience, financial savings, investment amount, investment goals, and net worth. This can all impact ones perception of risk. Now, investors have the ability to customize any of our funds (using a multiplier) to their preference which best suits their own specific risk tolerance.
Sure, here is an example: if a client really likes a fund from a risk-adjusted return perspective, but wants it traded with more aggressive risk than what is traded by their fund manager at the default risk level, they can chose to set their account “Position Multiplier” to a value higher than 1, to receive trades at increased risk.
So an investor could set this at 2x (or double) risk for example. This means that for every trade a fund makes on its default account, you as an investor will receive it at double the risk and double the reward. This happens for every trade until changed (i.e., if a fund makes +2% in a month, you would make approximately +4%. Likewise if they lost -2%, you would lose approximately -4%). The monthly result is an approximation as the multiplier is set on a “per trade” level, so can compound throughout the month on higher frequency trading strategies.
Alternatively, if an investor prefers less risk, they can chose to set their account position multiplier to receive trades at a lower value, such as half risk (0.5x) for example. So if a fund made +5% in a month, you would then make +2.5% in this example. Likewise if it lost -5% in a month, you would only lose -2.5%.
Each client has the ability to set this per their own individual preference at any time and to any position multiplier they prefer (* within reason – being mindful of risk – please be careful not to get carried away and set these too high). If investors need any help setting these, just let us know. We are here to help, and we provide general best practice guidelines on using this for each strategy.
Under the US Dodd-Frank Act, unfortunately we cannot accept “retail” US resident clients. US persons are classed as this based on residency not citizenship. So US citizens residing outside of the USA are permitted. Clients resident in the US, who qualify as an ECP (Eligible Contract Participant) may also be accepted as applicants. An American ECP is essentially a “high net worth” or “sophisticated investor” generally having verifiable liquid investment capital in the amount of $5-$10M USD. This is unfortunate, as we have many great friends in the US, but it may change in the future should some of the restrictions around FIFO and hedging be lifted in the USA.
For the most part – yes! This generally depends on our FCM’s and Broker’s policies. Generally speaking, clients from OFAC sanctioned countries cannot open accounts at most brokerages. A recent list of OFAC sanctioned countries includes… Afghanistan, Guinea Conakry, Sierra Leone, Botswana, Iran, Syria, Burma (Myanmar), Iraq, Togo, Cambodia, Lesotho, Yemen, Cote d’Ivoire (Ivory Coast), Liberia, Zimbabwe, Cuba, Libya, Tanzania, Democratic Republic of Congo, Mali, Bolivia, Niger, Angola, Gambia, North Korea, Kyrgyzstan, Belarus, Guinea Bissau, Senegal and Lebanon.
The Managed Account structure is the best in the entire investment industry. Period. Don’t let anyone tell you anything different. Most investment vehicles require you to send to your money away to someone, get limited access/transparency, and just hope for the best!
Not with a Managed Account. This is YOUR account! You simply give us permission to trade it for you by way of a signed LPOA / Limited Power of Attorney (which can be revoked at any time). Funds stay segregated in your own personal trading account(s) at all times, in your own name, at highly reputable and regulated FCMs. You remain in full control of your funds, in full control of your risk, and can close at any time and with no lock in periods!
What we are trying to say here, is that you keep the keys! Your investment is always fully secure, in your sole control, fully transparent, and liquid at all times. No other investment vehicle brings together so many favorable conditions for an investor.
Please read through each trading program’s profile carefully. We provide much more due diligence on the strategy itself with our core funds, than we do with our market place funds. We have included as much information as humanly possible to make it easy for prospective investors to make an informed decision.
We offer detailed prospectuses, detailed performance analysis, 3rd party CPA audits, 3rd party analysis via social trading and verification utilities like myfxbook, and finally live forward trading results on real money. If there is anything more we can do, please contact us and we will be happy to help get you the comfort level you are looking for.
In our experience, many people coming from the traditional investment space often over-analyze alternatives, and do so improperly. We advise any paranoid or fearful investors who may interested not to invest if it provides any feelings of discomfort. This type of investment may not be suitable for all people.
They key points to remember is that your investment is always transparent, and liquid, and your risk can be restricted, and your risk level can be customized to your preference. Therefor your risk of loss is defined and “risk-limited” by yourself (you set this). There are no surprises.
Starting slow and dipping a toe in the water is always a smart approach, and we will never give high pressure sales tactics to any investor. Taking a disciplined approach to new investments is an intelligent plan. Smart investors focus their analysis on the data (performance and risk – most importantly the risk adjusted rate of return. Meaning how much risk is being assumed to generate said returns).
Yes it is. It would be irresponsible for us to say otherwise. Because our Managed Forex Accounts are Alternative Investments, they carry a high level of risk and may not be suitable for all types of investors (please see our Risk Disclaimer for more information). This is especially true for the more aggressively traded funds in our FX Marketplace.
We believe the key to a successful investment is exposure to enough risk to generate a decent return, but not so much as to give rise to sleepless nights. A disciplined approach and utilization of risk management technology, restricts the risk and reduces the exposure to volatility in the marketplace.
Our Managed Forex Accounts have been designed to specifically mitigate against many different types of risk as efficiently as possible. We try to first and foremost clearly define, and then protect our downside risk, and leave the upside open ended on a best efforts basis. Rest assured though –risk is still present! So do not use money that your family needs, or money that is needed to pay your bills. We always advise investors to try to feel what it would be like if you encountered any of your worst case loss scenarios and ensure you will be OK with this, in the event that it happens. You need to find your ideal “risk vs. reward ratio” and comfort zone before investing with any type of investment, and Managed Forex is no exception to this. Be responsible with your allocations and don’t be greedy.
Yes. This has been the foundation of this entire project – to make complex alternative investments available to the average investor in a safe, transparent, and simple method. This type of investment is now a solid contender which is available to those who want diversified investment exposure but who previously have only had very limited choices. There is no need to be a professional forex trader yourself to successfully and safely invest in a managed account.
This alone is one of the biggest advantages to a managed account. It gives the modern investor the ability to have their account traded by professional money managers (someone with a significant and established edge in the markets, tons of experience, and who trades for a living). Our team does all of the back ground work and heavy lifting to package these up and offer them as managed investments. That being said, we always encourage prospective investors to educate themselves about Forex trading and different types of Alternative Investments in general. Our opinion is that the best investor is an informed one!
You might, but only if you it was a positive trading day when you were born, and they have a way to prove it 😉
This depends on the program. Some of the funds we have developed “in house”. Others, we are primary stake-holders in, and have full discretion over the trading and management of the trade strategies. Other systems we are partial stake-holders, and other systems we enter into joint venture arrangements with the developers and/or owners of the systems to be able to offer these to our investor base. Many trade teams simply want to focus on the markets and not have the distractions of running a business, acquiring capital, or be client facing. We agree that this is also a good model for success. Keeping traders and coders obsessed with the markets is actually a good thing.
No. We are both the chicken and the egg – we came first when it comes to institutional grade managed forex accounts for investors. Our site content has been ripped off by many others trying to do the same thing (but not fully getting there), so much so that we actually completely revised our site in Q2 2017 to breath some fresh air in to it, and keep a few degrees of separation from those who have mimic’d us over the years.
No. But this is a little different. In some cases we have partners who “white label” our investment products and offer our trading strategies to their network of clients. We always recommend joining through the channel that you first found our products through. Not only is this fair, but contrary to popular belief, there is no additional benefit or cost savings from bypassing any of our introducing partners.
You can expect to see a combination of both winning and losing days, and winning and losing months. This is normal. Usually our winning months out number our losing months (or are bigger than the losing months) over the span of a year (this is our objective), but obviously there are no guarantees, and obviously we do have to contend with losing months since none of us are descendants of Nostradamus 😉
This makes it tricky to “time the market” in terms of a good time to participate. Those who dive in, start early, and let their funds compound over time and from month to month stand the greatest chance of success. In our experience investors who try to time the market or jump from one shiny object to another chasing gains and running away from losses are doomed! Have the conviction to stick to your plan in the best and worst of performance times.
You can also expect regular updates and commentary on our systems. You can expect recommendations from us on portfolio adjustments. You can expect full transparency and prompt communication.
Yes! Why should we not reap the rewards of our labour as well? Our incubation phase is intense, and it involves real cash in the real market. It’s not always pretty during this phase. But after it is complete and a finished product emerges, things get much better!
Almost selfishly, Managed Forex Hub was designed originally as a product to be used by ourselves. We continue to invest company and personal capital not only in to our business, but into our investments. We want skin in the game! And thus we have been part of the whole user experience ourselves since the get-go, and we are happy to share this with other like-minded investors (lets ride the cliché).
We work with traders and strategy developers of almost every asset class, although we specialize in foreign exchange trading due to the unique benefits it provides. In time we hope to have multiple offerings including CFD indices, metals and commodities.
Check out our partnership page on how to Trade For Us. If you fit a certain bill, we would love to hear from you.
Generally speaking we require the following:
Serious traders should expect (and be willing) to go through a comprehensive due diligence and analysis protocol, followed by an incubation and testing phase. Those with more easily verifiable data, history, and experience can expect to fast track through this process more than those without it.
If you feel that you have a significant edge in the markets, and that your strategy is dialed in and fine-tuned (and you got some proof in the pudding to go with it), then get in touch with us! Serious inquiries only please as we get a lot of submissions.
We charge a monthly performance fee and only make money if investors make money. Simple. Transparent. Fair. We use this model because we keep our costs down and have confidence that our programs will make money over the long term.
Our operating costs are reduced highly vs. traditional managers as we exist globally and online, which helps to streamline our compliance, negates the need for branch visits, and increases our ability to provide global coverage and fast and efficient support. This also means we don’t set up shop in expensive ivory towers on Wall Street or Canary Row. We don’t advertise on yachts or sponsor football teams. We focus on substance and instead pass these savings on to clients under this business model.
The High Water Mark is truly a measure designed explicitly as an investor-friendly provision that essentially prevents a manager from taking a performance fee on the same gains more than once. Simply put, it ensures that investment managers and advisors are not making profits unless their clients are. We simply can’t think of a fee structure that is more aligned with client interests than that.
High Water Mark Incentive Fees are paid ONLY on NET new rises in asset value. If a temporary decline occurs, it must be recouped before new incentive fees are paid. Thus – profits come first, fees come afterwards.
Sure. There is an excellent article on High Water Marks, and Performance Fees, including an example of the Traditional NAV High Water Mark Performance Fee (which is what we charge) found here.
Generally speaking, here is basic example how it works…
1.) When a Client deposits their initial funds, that balance becomes the first High Water Mark (HWM). In this example the Client deposits $100,000 USD.
2.) After 1 month the Trader/Advisor produces 10% in gross profit (for easy rounding in this example) which brings the Client account up to a gross value of $110,000 USD.
3.) $110,000 USD in equity, minus the last HWM ($100,000 USD) = $10,000 USD in new profit.
4.) In this example the Performance Fee is 30%. So 30% of $10,000 USD new profit is $3,000 USD Performance Fee (PF) which is payable to the Trader/Advisor.
5.) After paying $3,000 USD Performance Fee to the Trader/Advisor, the Client retains $7,000 USD of the profit. His account balance after paying the Performance Fee is $107,000 USD, which is then reset as the new High Water Mark for the following month. There will be no more fees charged to the client if the balance declines in value. Only if the trader/advisor makes profits and brings the account higher than the new High Water Mark of $107,000 USD.
We are always transparent in the results we publish and will never publish a result without the proper disclosures explaining how it was generated (i.e., live, demo, historic, or something different). That said, we do not expect any person to “take our word for it” as trust is something that must be earned.
Our core funds typically undergo 3rd party CPA audits and/or 3rd party software verifications. In the latter case, we rely on technology again and have started to use 3rd party social trading and verification utilities for our products, which have been phenomenal in their relevance. These include Myfxbook, FXBLUE and FxStat primarily. These are excellent utilities that verify the authenticity of trading performances, and that also update trading performance live in real time, all while providing some very rich and detailed statistics and analysis tools. Investors love these as a way to follow and track performance and get easy and quick on-demand access to comprehensive statistics. In our opinion these are much better than a CPA audit, however we often do both, to satisfy both the old schoolers and new schoolers alike.
Our programs are offered at strong and reputable brokerages typically domiciled in the UK, Offshore, and Australia but all of which generally service a global client base. Our brokers provide us with the perfect mix of features, liquidity, technology, security, and safety. The top two brokers we trade at are Mt.Cook Financial and Divisa Capital. We have no desire to trade elsewhere at the moment as we are extremely happy with our partner brokerages – so please no external brokerage requests.
This varies from one program to another. Some of our program managers do not wish to have their trades visible to the public for privacy reasons. Others do not mind. Typically it’s the algo crew who are protective and “sensitive” to this, and don’t want their intellectual property protected from being reverse engineered. Ultimately this is a personal decision which we respect for each of our program managers. All invested clients however do receive full real-time access to their live trades transparently at all times.
Oh-oh you are opening a big can of worms now. This is a biggy to answer, and an ongoing debate. However we strongly feel that machine has the edge over man when it comes to trading. Hence we prefer algo’s over discretionary trading strategies. For investors who like human/discretionary trading, we advise building a mixed portfolio of both man and machine.
Sometimes trade histories have been with other brokers which we do not trade at, or they belonged to a self-directed trading account before being moved to a money manager account. Most of our trade histories from other brokers are in the form of trade statements, tear sheets, other myfxbook accounts, or verified CPA audits which we can often provide upon request if not listed on the site.
As part of our on-going analysis, if programs go stale, or break their historical lows, we may look to temporarily suspend the program, or change the program up to something more profitable, with the consent of, or even at the request of investors. Typically for this to happen there is a lot for us to consider such as the history with the strategy and program manager, the cause of events leading to these considerations, and market conditions. We try to be very careful when making changes, as it is very natural for programs to go through periods of ups and downs, and typically after a draw down period there is usually a nice recovery period around the corner. This is especially true with algorithms.
However, be it as it may, there may be times when we need to change a program out. We will never allow a program to continue forever with non-optimal performance on our and our clients’ accounts. What we usually look for in this kind of situation is historical drawdowns being breached, 4-5 losing months back to back, or a drastic unexplained change in trade strategy. We try to limit our odds of being in this scenario in the first place as part of our initial vetting process on all strategies both manual and algo.
Our software is PAM software, but with many unique features similar to a signal service – but without the hardship and downsides that comes with copying and signals such as slippages and latency etc… All orders from all of our invested clients go through to the market together as one single “block order”. There is no complex 3rd party copy or duplication software used. Clients open an account. Set their equity stop losses and risk profiles on their account, and go on about their merry way and receive the exact same trades as every investor. The similarity to trade copying comes from the client tools at hand that empower the investor to manage, customize, and protect their investment.
We certainly can. Contact us and lean on our existing FCM/Brokerage relationships by way of our introductions. We are happy to help other industry professionals with our leverage, and believe in ways of finding true mutually beneficial win/win outcomes! There is no need to reinvent any wheels. Contact us at your earliest convenience, tell us what you are up to, and we will be happy to help formulate a plan to fit your requirements!
Certainly. We make it easy to transfer your existing managed accounts to ours by doing a “Broker2Broker” transfer (often called a B2B). In doing so, we pledge to cover all transfer fees that your broker or bank wants to charge you for this simple process. Why? Because we feel that you shouldn’t have to!
We will add your Qs to the list, if not already on here!