FAQS

How do I do a currency conversion in the account management?

1. Log into your account management.
2. Open the menu using the three lines in the upper left corner.
3. Select the item "Convert currency".
4. In the next step, select the original currency in the "FROM" field.
5. In the "TO" field, select your target currency.
6. You now have two options.
   a. Enter a fixed amount of the original currency to which you want to convert.
   b. Enter a fixed amount of the target currency that you would like to receive.
7. You can then use the “Preview” button to see the effects of your order.
8. Finally, you submit the order and the currency exchange will be carried out.
9. You can see the new cash balances under the heading "Your Cash Balances".

Instructions for creating a paper trading account

1. Log into your account management.
2. Open the menu via the three “lines” in the upper left corner.
3. Then click on "Settings" and then on the sub-item "Account Settings".
4. You will now find on the right-hand side under “Configuration” the item “Paper Trading Account”, which you can open by clicking on the gear symbol.
5. On the next page, you assign yourself a username and password for your paper trading account. Then click on “Next”.
6. In the next window you will receive a confirmation that your order has been received and that it is expected to be processed by the next business day.
7. The next day you can log into the TWS with your new paper trading logins.

Internal position transfer from IBIE to FXFlat

1. Log into the account management from which you want to transfer positions.
2. Open the menu via the three "lines" in the upper left corner.  
3. Then please click on the point "Transfer & Pay".
4. In the submenu that opens, select the item "Transfer positions".
5. The selection options "Incoming", "Outgoing" and "Internal" are available here.
6. Please select the option "Internal".
7. The "old" account should already be selected for the original account. For target account, please select your “UXXXXXXX” account at FXFlat. Then click on “Next”.
8. You will now see an overview of your assets on the new page. Please select the assets to be transferred. Then click on “Next”.
9. The next step is to confirm your identity. Please enter the login data of your target account.

Your positions will then be transferred from IB.

Creation of the TWS Deposit Note

Once your TWS account has been successfully opened and you have received the login data for your trading account, the next step is to capitalize the account. Please follow the instructions below to create the deposit note before making the transfer

1. Log in to the account management with your access data.
2. Open the menu using the three lines on the top left
3. Click on the menu item "Transfer & Pay"
4. Then click on the sub-item "Transfer credit"
5. Now click on the point Make a deposit
6. Then select the currency in which the payment should be made. Please use your stored base currency for deposits
7. After selecting the currency, click on "Information on bank transfers"
8. Fill in the form that is now open and enter the "deposit amount"
9. Next, click the button "MAKE DEPOSIT"
10. An overview of the planned deposit opens. On this page you will find the data required for your transfer.
11. Make the transfer (the deposit note created so far does not trigger an automatic transfer!)
12. After a successful transfer click on the button "COMPLETE"

Instructions for TWS trading permissions

1. Please log into the account management
2. If necessary, complete the necessary steps such as changing the password, etc.
3. When you are on "Your Portfolio" on the start page, open the menu using the three lines in the upper left corner
4. Open the item "Settings" and call up the item "Account settings"
5. The third field is now "Trading Experience & Permissions". In this field, click the gear in the upper right corner.
6. In the new window you can now select the trading authorizations that you would like to apply for
7. Then click on "Next"
8. Check your entries again on the next page. Then click on “Next” again.
9. As the next step, you will see a few notes on the selected authorizations. Scroll down and sign (type your name) your selection. Then click "Next".
10. You will now land on a thank you page and the permissions are to be requested. The activation takes place within 24 hours

Market data for the Stuttgart stock exchange

Here you can find the instructions for subscribing to the market data for your TWS account:

1. Please log into the account management.
2. When you are on "Your Portfolio" on the start page, open the menu using the three lines in the upper left corner.
3. Open the "Settings" item and call up the "User settings" item
4. Via the point "Market data subscriptions" you can access your current market data.
5. By clicking on the gear next to “Current GFIS Subscriptions” you can select the market data to be subscribed to.

You can find the market data "Stuttgart Boerse including Euwax (SWB)" under Europe> Level 1.
Further information on market data and instructions with images can be found here.

Withholding tax for customers liable to taxation in Germany

The following information is only relevant for private customers who are subject to German tax Law.

In the year 2021, it is uo to our customers to carry out the correct taxation with regard to the profits generated from forward transactions, taking into account the tax regulations of § 20 paragraph 6, sentences 5 and 6 of the Income Tax Act (new version) applicable from 01.01.2021 as part of an annueal tax return.

You can find more information about the Income Tax Law here.

In case you are liable for taxation in Germany, dutiable profits will be deducted form your account with the beginning of the following month. For a loss incurred at a later point of time, excessively paid taxes will be refunded to your account. You will receive a tax assessment note after the first quater of the current year. A confirmation of losses can be requested until the 15th of December of the current year. Losses not asserted will be carried info the following year. Important: If your MetaTrader account is liable to flat rate withholding tax, please make sure that your account always has sufficent liquidity. Please be aware of open positions, as tax payments can lower your margin cover. Customers are responsible for losses due to tax payments. If you would like to have an immediate church tax deduction, please fill out the following form and send it to [email protected]:

Form for immediate church tax deduction

Slippage
The FXFlat Bank makes an effort to always offer the possibly best prices and executions. Yet price variances, negative ones as well as positiv ones, may occur at any time, especially in so called "Fast Moving Market" situations, i.e. after the announcement of economic data. 

Realtime conversion
Profits and losses in another currency are automatically converted to your account's base currency, according to the current exchange rate. 

Account statement
An account statement is provided after every active trading day. A monthly statement will be sent in the beginning of the following month. Additionally, this data will be provided in your platform, you can find it under "Trade History". 

Leverage
Under the following link you will find information about the leverage of your account type - Standard and Professional account.

NON-FIFO
The MetaTrader is not FIFO based. You may close any position - and not necessarily the chronologically first order. 

Trailing-Stop
Trailing-Stops will only operate as long as you are logged-in to your platform. As soon as you log out, your last trailed stop will become your active stop loss. 

Negative balance protection
Standard account users have negative balance protection. 

Professional Classic account have no negative balance protection.

Risk-Controlling-System
All accounts, in particular before weekends and holidays, are subjected to risk-based screening. FXFlat reserves the right to reduce positions in the event of an imminent shortfall of the net margin requirement unless you provide for compensation yourself. 

Margin Call
A forced liquidation of opened positions will start when the system's displayed level reaches 100%. At next all positions will be closed, whose reference market is opened. A partial close of single CFD positions is not possible. The forced liquidation my lead to a negative account balance. Worst case, going below the minimum margin can lead to evening out the customer's positions. This, as well as great market movement will not prevent you from additional payment liabilites.

Margin adjustment for the weekend (Prof-Classic).
The margin requirement for holding a position over the weekend increases to the margin requirement in the standard account. The increase will take place for DE and NL equity CFDs and DETEC30, HK50 and ES35 index CFDs on Friday at 16:30 CET and for all other product groups on Friday at 21:00 CET.

At market opening the margin requirement will be reset to normal.

Important note about ETF-, Asia- and US-share CFDs
ETF-CFD, Asia-shares CFDs and US-shares CFDs must be closed one day before Ex-Day until 09:30 p.m. CET. If there are open positions after the deadline, FXFlat will close them after 09:30 p.m. CET. Depending on the trading software, this can lead to complications, as an existing position can no longer be closed by an offsetting position. Closing is still possible, for example via the trading terminal in MetaTrader or the order manager in the AgenaTrader. In an emergency, a position closure by our trading department is also possible.

Forex Spot
Forex Spot is the foreign cash market (interbank market). Forex Spot is tradable exclusively intraday between 06:00 a.m. - 10:00 p.m. CET. Positions are not transferable to the next dealing day and must be closed during trading hours, otherwise FXFlat will close the open positions from 10:00 p.m. CET. Please avoid the closing of open positions by FXFlat.

Futures Trading (only possible with a MetaTrader 5 account)
Please notice: Customers with a Standard account do have a negative balance protection. FXFlat offers you free EUREX realtime courses if you generate commissions in the amount of €300 as private customer per month with EUREX futures. For free CME realtime courses you have to generate €300 as private customer per month with CME futures. If you do not reach this minimum commission, we will charge the full amount of fees to your trading account. Please notice: Open positions will be closed 1 hour before maturity. 3 days before maturity futures will be put on "close-only". Margin adjustments for overnight positions take place at 09:45 p.m. CET from the Feb 1, 2021 and are set back at 07:45 a.m. CET to normal conditions. Via Hedge you can reduce your needed margin cover. Please note: Open futures positions will not be closed or partly sold through opening positions. 

Inactivity
Since FXFlat is not a bank to hold deposits, cash will be transfered back to your reference bank account after 30 days of inactivity. By transferring funds back to your trading account within a year, your trading account can be reactivated.

Financing costs on CFD positions
Financing costs are charged on long, as well as on short positions. Excluded from this are future-based CFD products on WTI, Brent or the EURO-BUND.

Mailbox
Please be aware, that all important news regarding MetaTrader are sent to your mailbox. 

Maximum order quantity
The maximum number of orders and open position is 250 in common on MetaTrader 4. On MetaTrader 5 only the numbers of pending orders is limited to 250.

System failure
In this case call FXFlat immediately, you can reach us via our international number: 0080 000 39 35 28.

Deposit by credit card
For the first deposit with your credit card FXFlat requires a copy of the credit card bill. When the credit card bill does not show the credit card number, please send a copy from the front of the credit card. In both cases it is important that only the first 4 and the last 4 digits of the credit card number are recognizable. If no copy is available for verification, there may be a delay in booking the funds on your trading account. Of course, you can make bank transfer details and account balances unrecognizable. 

Deposits and withdrawals with PayPal
Deposits and withdrawals with PayPal are free of charge. A withdrawal can only be made if PayPal has been used before for depositing. 

Verification of your reference account
When no deposit is made from your reference account stated in the account application, the account must be verified before a withdrawal can be made. Please send FXFlat a bank statement from your reference account. Of course, you can make bank transfer details and account balances unrecognizable. 

What are the conditions for participation when opening an account?
You must fulfil the following requirements when opening an account:

• You trade on your own account and with own funds;
• You are at least 18 years of age;

How do I open an account?
Click on “Open an account” and complete the online application. Once all required details are submitted, we will review your application and contact you.

How much does trading cost?
There are no costs when trading apart from the spread and the financing costs. Customers are not charged transaction or processing fees.

Is there an option to trade via telephone?
You can pass your orders via telephone. In order to make trading easier, however, the platform enables users to stop losses, take out profits and set higher or lower limits. These orders are executed automatically.

What is a trading unit?
On the FlatTrader platform, 1 'lot' equals one unit in the base currency of a currency pair. For example: 1 lot USD/CAD, USD/CHF or USD/JPY equals U.S. $100,000. 1 unit EUR/USD, EUR/CHF or EUR/AUD equals €100,000.

Which kind of financial analysis are available through FXFlat?
FXFlat offers financial analysis for foreign currencies, stocks, stock indices, commodities and other CFD contracts. These types of analysis address investors that are looking for new trading ideas for stocks and foreign currencies as well as investors looking for assistance with the management of their portfolio. We offer studies, investment advice and an economic calendar.

Does the system support real time charts?
Yes, the charts are displayed in real time within the chart window of the trading platform and can be viewed in different time intervals. The intervals can be adjusted to ticks, 1 or 2 or 3 or 4 or 5 min., 10 min., 15 min., up to 55 min., 1 hour, 2 hours, 4 hours, 8 hours, 1 day, weekly and monthly.

For example: If you adjust DAX to a 10 second interval, every 10 seconds a new point will be displayed in the chart window and connected to the previous price development. With this, the current chart will be based on prices updated every 10 seconds.

What kind of charts can I use?
You can use: line chart, bar chart, candlestick charts, Heikinashi, Kagichart and the 3 line break chart.

What kind of order types can I use?
FXFlat expands constantly the offer of order types. You can choose between limit order, stop order, OCO order, guaranteed stop order, trailing stop order and a combination of these order types.

How does my broker check my positions against the margin requirements?
Your broker automatically checks the margin requirement of the positions. The account summary that informs about the initial margin and the maintenance margin is updated in real time on the screen.

Are stop loss and limit orders executed at the prices specified?
When placing an order, the platform will show you the current price. You can protect yourself against unexpected price movements by adding price limits to your orders (slippage). The order will only be executed if the price remains within the specified limits.

How much do financing charges cost if I hold a CFD position overnight?
The charge is based on Libor +/- 3.00 %. An example: you buy a Dax CFD (current price 12,000 points) and you hold it overnight. Libor is quoted, for example, at 0.50 %. The financing charge is calculated as follows: (12,000 * 3.50 %) / 360 = 1.17 €. This means that you will be charged €1,17 for each overnight period. 

How much do financing charges cost in Spot Forex?
As for Spot Forex you should remember that you can be at the same time long in one currency and short in the other currency. Let us consider the following example concerning the pair EUR/USD (current price 1,20). If you buy 100,000 EUR of EUR/USD, you would take 100,000 EUR to get 120,000 USD. For the -100,000 EUR you are credited the Libor minus 3.00 % (unless if the rate is under 0, because in this case there could be a charge on the customer account) and for the 120,000 USD you are debited the Libor plus 2.50%. The real rate would be, in this example, about 3.40 % and this corresponds to a charge of approximately 9.44 €. The formula to calculate the financing charges for Forex trading is the following:  F = (S * P * R) / D

F = daily financing charge (swap rate)
S = trading volume
R = average buy and sell price during the roll-over
D = number of days of the hold position

If the first currency has a higher interest rate, then you are credited the interest for running a long position and debited interested for running a short position. If the first currency has a lower interest rate, then you are debited interest for running a long position and credited interest for running a short position.  

When are financing costs charged to the account?
Financing costs are calculated daily at a specific moment, at which each CFD and Forex open position (except future CFDs) is charged with financial adjustments. The specific time can widely vary, but by experience financing costs are normally charged after 22:00 CET (17:00 CT) (+/- 2 hours). This time can however be different in summer and winter. Financing costs will be charged if you have an open position at this particular time and it does not matter whether you have been holding your open position since 10 minutes or 10 hours. On the contrary, if you close your position 10 minutes before this specific time, you will not be charged with financing costs, even if you held your position open for the whole day.

What is foreign exchange trade?
Foreign exchange trading – also FX or Forex – refers to trading one country’s currency against another country’s currency. When it comes to the trading volume, the global foreign exchange market is the largest market. This means that the order volume in the foreign exchange market is larger than in the federal or stock exchange market. As an example, the New York stock exchange has a daily trading volume of only a very small percentage of the traded volume at the Forex market.

Which are the most commonly traded currencies?
The most commonly traded currencies are: USD, EUR, JPY, GBP, CHF, CAD and AUD. The most commonly traded currency pair is EUR/USD.

Why trade currencies?
Currencies are traded, for example, to secure currency differences (hedging) and for speculative purposes. Currency markets are ideal for speculative trading. The last years showed, that long and clear trends are more often in the forex markets than in the stock markets or other exchanged.

What is the purpose of a technical analysis?
The technical analysis is a systematic approach to analyze the market developments based on historical and graphical data, which means that the technical analysis, can be used to decide whether a financial product is oversold or not. Another advantage of the technical analysis is the detection of crucial trend reversals in the markets or in connection with a product and the anticipation of new tendencies.

What is a fundamental analysis?
The fundamental analysis uses economic data and news to analyze the market situation.

What is bid and ask?
Bid (money) is the price at which customers sell. Ask (brief) is the price at which customers buy. For example: EUR/USD is traded at a price of 1.2250/53. The bid price is the first price (on the left): 1.2250. This price is the conversion rate when selling EUR and buying USD. The ask price is the second price (on the right): 1.2253. This price is the conversion rate when buying EUR and selling USD.

What is a “tom next trade”?
The present position is closed at the end of the day and continued on the next day at the opening price - also called “tomorrow next procedure”.

What does the term “leverage” mean?
Through the leverage, the capital invested is multiplied or reduced disproportionately.

What is a spread?
The difference between bid and ask – buying and selling rate.

What is the difference between an order, a trade and a position?
Order is the intention to trade with fixed conditions.
Trade is the execution of an order.
Position is the total of all trades for a specific market.

What is the difference between a market order and a limit order?
Unlimited stock market orders are executed immediately at the next available market price. Limit orders are orders at which a trade will be executed in the future as soon as the market price reaches a specific level. A limit order is a restriction placed by the customer on the maximum buying price or the minimum selling price.

What is the leverage?
Leverage refers to the relation between margin and trading position. You can use a leverage of 10:1, 30:1, 100:1 or 400:1 on the FXFlat trading account. If you choose, for example, a leverage of 30:1, you will be able to trade a position that is 30 times larger than your actual capital investment.

How do I manage the trading risk?
FXFlat offers its customers different options to limit their risk:

Can I classify for any risk category or do I have to provide proofs?
You are self-responsible for the classification in a specific risk class. Please always consider your actual experience in the security trade to prevent financial losses. New customers are generally classified by us as retail customers.

How do I set an indicator alert in the chart?
You will find the "Alert sound" setting under File -> Configuration -> Parameter, in the menu item "Sounds".

What is the difference between spot forex and forex CFDs?

At FXFlat you have the great possibilty to trade in the forex market either with CFDs or cash through spot forex trading. The quotes are absolutely identical. The difference is, that spot forex positions kept overnight will sold and bought back at 10 p.m. to charge the rollover costs. For CFD position the interests will be charged separately on the account. The buying rate for CFD positions won´t change until the position is sold while for spot forex positions the price changes every night.

The margin requirements for spot forex trading vary between 0.25 % and 1 % and can be choosen by the client at any time. Forex cfds always have a margin requirement of 1 %.  

How are transactions secured by FXFlat?
FXFlat makes use of state-of-the-art security technologies. All information exchanged between your computer and our servers is encrypted: Transmitted data is therefore not accessible by others. All transactions made are confirmed on screen. If you are not connected to the computer at the time, this confirmation will appear at the start of the next session.

How are my funds secured?
Customer funds are held segregated, which is covered by the german EdW for 20,000 Euro per client. The main bank account for customer wires, is at Sparkasse.

How much does a withdrawal by bank wire cost and how long does it take?
The payment is normally within 2 working days on your private bank account and is free of charge.

Is trading with micro and mini lots possible?
Yes – not a problem. You can choose between 1,000 (micro lots), 10,000 (mini lots) and 100,000 (standard lots).

What is the commission rate when trading indices (e.g. Dow Jones)?
No commission is charged when trading CFD on indices, spot forex or forex cfds, commodities, bonds or inflation rates. Only cfds on individual equities are charged a commission of 0.09 % for EU equities and comission free for US equities.

You have not yet found the right question or answer? Please contact us and help us to further improve our services.