HYCM (Henyep Markets) Review

While its storied history is impressive, when it comes to trading forex and CFDs across its global brands, HYCM fails to impress. Effective spreads are high across all account options, and research and education are sub-par when compared to industry leaders.

Top Takeaways for 2021

Here are our top findings on HYCM:

• Founded in 1977, HYCM is regulated in two tier-1 jurisdictions and two tier-2 jurisdictions, making it a safe broker (average-risk) for trading forex and CFDs.
• Compared to pricing leaders such as CMC Markets and FOREX.com, HYCM is expensive and not recommended for discount traders or active investors. Research and education continue to improve at HYCM, yet still fails behind industry leaders.
• HYCM is a plain-vanilla MetaTrader broker. Compared to industry leaders such as IG, CMC Markets, and Saxo Bank, HYCM left us unimpressed.

Overall Summary

Is HYCM Safe?

HYCM is considered average-risk, with an overall Trust Score of 84 out of 99. HYCM is not publicly traded and does operate a bank. HYCM is authorised by two tier-1 regulators (high trust), two tier-2 regulators (average trust), and one tier-3 regulator (low trust). HYCM is authorised by the following tier-1 regulators: Securities Futures Commission (SFC) and Financial Conduct Authority (FCA). Learn more about Trust Score.

Regulations Comparison

Offering of Investments

HYCM offers a total of 347 tradeable markets. The available markets vary by account type and depend on the entity that houses your account across its global brands.

Product range by platform: HYCM's range of markets is higher on its MT5 offering than on MT4. Also, HYCM's Cyprus entity doesn't offer cryptocurrency CFDs and has a narrower field of share CFDs. Comparably, the broker provides over 60 cryptocurrency CFD pairs via its offshore entity in Saint Vincent & the Grenadines (SVG), helping it finish Best in Class in 2021 for its crypto offering.

Cryptocurrency: Cryptocurrency trading is available through CFDs, but not available through trading the underlying asset (e.g. buying Bitcoin). Note: Crypto CFDs are not available to retail traders from any broker's UK entity, nor to UK residents.

The following table summarizes the different investment products available to HYCM clients.

HYCM offering of investments:

Commissions and Fees

The forex trading costs at HYCM depend on which of the three account types you choose, ranging from the Fixed, Classic, or Raw account. Overall, pricing is expensive.

Accounts comparison: Average spreads for the EUR/USD stand near two pips for the fixed spread, and Classic account, making them less attractive options at HYCM. The Raw account has more competitive pricing, with 0.7 pips average spreads on the EUR/USD for July 2020. That said, with the commission of $4.00 per round turn trade, the effective spread on the Raw account is 1.1 pips, which is not as competitive as Tickmill, whose effective average spread on its Pro account is 0.57 pips after including commissions.

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HYCM pricing summary:

Platforms and Tools

HYCM is a MetaTrader-only broker offering the MetaTrader 4 (MT4) and MetaTrader 5 (MT5) platform suite, for desktop and web. Compared to the best MetaTrader brokers that offer platform enhancements beyond the default MetaTrader experience, HYCM falls short in this category.

Asia: Henyep Securities offers a separate platform for its Hong Kong and China exchange-traded securities offering. However, we did not test that platform for this review as it is not available across all the firm's entities, including HYCM.

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HYCM trading platform:

Research

HYCM provides slightly more than the bare minimum for forex traders to conduct FX market research. No question, HYCM trails far behind the best forex brokers for research.

Trading Central: Traders can access Trading Central - a popular service for automated technical analysis – which is available as an MT4 indicator, a daily newsletter, as well as via access to a dedicated web portal. Trading Central also streams the Forex news headlines within the MetaTrader platforms at HYCM.

Video content: HYCM streams daily market analysis videos and provides access to an economic calendar on its website. It is worth noting that some content shown on the broker's site is outdated. For example, in the Daily Market Review section, the last video has not been updated since July 2019. That said, HYCM did launch a new series titled Market Mood, which produces a daily update with market analysis.

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HYCM research:

Education

When it comes to education, like research, HYCM left me wanting more. While HYCM provides a dedicated education section on its website, improvements are needed.

Videos: Many of the videos in its beginner courses are no longer available (i.e., appear disabled on Vimeo). Beyond this, there are over 20 interactive videos from MTE-Media and four eBooks.

Courses: There are several videos per level of experience, with just five in the beginner course and ten covering strategies, including an advanced technical analysis video covering candlestick patterns. While this is a start, HYCM should add more videos to expand the scope of content across topics and experience levels.

Written content: Adding more written content to HYCM's educational offering is a must, as the eBooks are not as convenient to access, even though I found some of the content useful.

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HYCM education:

Mobile Trading

Since HYCM is a MetaTrader-only broker, it provides both the standard iOS and Android versions of the MT4 app and MT5 app.

Proprietary trading app: HYCM app aside, which is set up only for accessing the client portal, HYCM does not offer a proprietary trading app. Like other MetaTrader-only brokers, providing just the standard MetaTrader app will always leave HYCM at a disadvantage when compared to competitors such as Saxo Bank, CMC Markets, and TD Ameritrade.

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HYCM mobile trading:

Final Thoughts

HYCM brings over 40 years of operations and a lineup of global brands. Despite its respected history, HYCM struggles to differentiate itself beyond a basic MetaTrader experience.

About HYCM (Henyep Markets)

Founded in 1977 and headquartered in Hong Kong, HYCM has a long-standing reputation for providing financial services across global capital markets.

Henyep Securities, regulated by the Securities Futures Commission (SFC) since 2004, provides retail and institutional stock market investors access to the Hong Kong Stock Exchange (HKSE) and regional exchanges in mainland China.

2021 Review Methodology

For our 2021 Forex Broker Review we assessed, rated, and ranked 27 international forex brokers over a three-month time period resulting in over 50,000 words of published research.

Each broker was graded on 108 different variables, including our proprietary Trust Score algorithm. This innovative scoring system ranks the level of trustworthiness for each broker based on factors such as licenses, regulation and corporate structure (read about Trust Score here).

As part of our annual review process, all brokers had the opportunity to provide updates and key milestones and complete an in-depth data profile, which we hand-checked for accuracy.

Ultimately, our rigorous data validation process yields an error rate of less than .1% each year, providing site visitors with quality data they can trust. Learn more about how we test.

Forex Risk Disclaimer

"There is a very high degree of risk involved in trading securities. With respect to margin-based foreign exchange trading, off-exchange derivatives, and cryptocurrencies, there is considerable exposure to risk, including but not limited to, leverage, creditworthiness, limited regulatory protection and market volatility that may substantially affect the price, or liquidity of a currency or related instrument. It should not be assumed that the methods, techniques, or indicators presented in these products will be profitable, or that they will not result in losses." Learn more.