Forex.com Promote Hedging in the UK

I received an email this morning from Forex.com promoting the benefits of opening a MetaTrader account with their FSA regulated UK operation. The headline read:

Total control of your trading strategies. – Don't let hedging restrictions affect how you trade your account.

When I clicked on it I didn't receive lots more information about how hedging restrictions might affect my trading. Instead I found myself looking at an online application to open an account at Forex.com UK

Already feeling rather frustrated I returned to read the email in full. Amongst other things it told me that the benefits of opening an account with Forex.com UK include:

• No hedging restrictions
• Spreads as low as 1 to 2 pips on the most widely traded currency pairs
• FSA regulated firm and segregated accounts
• Micro lot trading, free EA Hosting and more

The "more" seemed to include an account opening bonus of "up to $200". Apart from that a "free" VPS sounds like something worth having, so I phoned the UK freephone number Forex.com helpfully provided on their online account application to try and discover more.

The call was answered, as is so often the case in these circumstances, by a telesales representative with an American accent. I told him I was from the UK and then I asked him where my VPS would be located if I opened an account with Forex.com UK. He went away to find out, and eventually came back with the answer – New York. It also seems as though Forex.com UK's own servers are in the United States too, so despite my initial surprise maybe it's not such a bad thing to have your VPS in New York rather than in London?

Then I enquired about the "free" nature of the EA hosting on offer. According to the guy on the phone it is provided by Forex.com themselves, and requires keeping $5000 in your account plus a minimum monthly volume. When I asked how much the VPS would cost if I didn't meet those minimum requirements I was told I would lose my hosting. It wasn't possible to rent it separately. I said that seemed like a major restriction to me, and I'd have to go away and think about it. Before I did that I browsed around the Forex.com website for a while and discovered that the EA hosting is actually provided by Gallant Partners, and the minimum volume requirement is "10 round trip mini lots or the equivalent per calendar month".

After that the thought did occur to me that maybe FXDD were thinking of Forex.com when they recently referred to "dealers [that] have decided to use the rule changes as a selling point for their offshore service centers"?