Founded in 2012, Darwinex has grown to be trusted by thousands, and it also has innovative features that I have reviewed in this article. Aside from the general brokerage services, it offers some other services that would help traders and investors; these features are mentioned below.
Overview
Darwin was founded in 2012 by Javier Colon, Juan Colon, and Miguel Angel Gonzalez to make the financial markets more meritocratic and democratic. The fintech company provides brokerage and asset management services to its clients.
The brokerage service allows its clients to trade in futures, commodities, forex, and stocks with the option of quoting Darwins. It also serves as a manager controlling investors’ market exposure, replicating strategies timing, with a constant VaR common to all DARWINs.
The company is funded by eight investors, of which Javier Colon and Stefan Jaecklin are the most recent. It has raised €6.5M in funding over three rounds; the latest of which was done on July 28, 2021, from the Series Unknown round. It has thousands of clients that generate more than 350,000 euros monthly income, operating from the United Kingdom and Spain (where it has its offices). The platform has attracted many people over the years and averages a monthly 10.98% visit growth.[1]
The broker has the vision of giving traders equal opportunities where merit alone drives outcomes. The broker categorizes a trader as someone who invests effort and capital into capital markets. It aligns traders’ incentives with its and those of their fellow traders and combines them to form a pool of talents, information, and capital for private and social benefits.
The company seeks to provide a quality education through Darwinex and its community members, reliable information, and favorable terms for opening and closing trades, making customers have the highest profit participation on the market.
The broker is regulated by the United Kingdom Financial Commission Authority, making it a safe place to trade in.
| Pros | Cons |
| Low trading cost and tight spread Advanced trading platform Strict regulation (plus FSCS insurance) Algorithmic trading is available | $500 minimum deposit Understanding the website might take time Education is limited |
Who Darwinex is for
The provisions of multiple trading platforms give traders the flexibility of choosing the one that works for them. The trading conditions and tight pricing value also meets up with industry standards. The provision of the broker is for professional and retail clients. That is, institutions and individuals can trade comfortably in conditions that have been tailor-made to meet their specific needs.
The investment mode also encourages individuals (traders and nontraders) to make money. All they have to do is choose a Darwin that they are comfortable with and follow guidelines on how to make it work. This method of investment is available for both the web trader and the mobile app.
Rating: 4.5/5
Is Darwinex Safe?
It is safe to trade with Darwinex. It is authorized and regulated by the Financial Conduct Authority in the United Kingdom. The FCA is a reputable regulatory body. It ensures that the broker functions well and meets its operational objectives like securing an appropriate degree of protection for clients, protecting and enhancing the UK financial system’s integrity, and more.[2]
FCA regulating the broker means that it has to periodically verify its solvency and internal procedure on how it manages both clients’ money and data. The broker also holds MiFID passports to deliver its services to EU countries.
The broker holds client funds in a segregated account with a Tier-1 bank in the United Kingdom.Aside from the standard FSCS GBP 85k cover, the broker has extra insurance for its clients. The clients are also protected against insolvency with extra Llyod’s coverage for up to GBP1 million. The broker bears the entire cost of the additional insurance.
| Year founded: | 2012 |
| Publicly traded: | No |
| Licenses: | FCA |
| Backlist: | No |
Offering of Investments
Currencies: the provision of currency pairs is large, and you can get the opportunity to trade forex major, minor and exotic pairs.
Commodities: as common to a lot of brokers, aren’t so much. The commodities available are quoted against the USD. They are XAGUSD, XAUUSD, XNGUSD, XTIUSD.
Stocks and futures: The stocks are limited to US stocks though they combine the available large and medium company stocks. It provides 244 US stocks.
Indices: index stocks are also available on the platform.
Even though the broker has varieties of assets to choose from, it does not meet up in terms of the provisions compared with some other brokers. This is not a negative comment anyway, as the trading conditions are okay, but you might not want to trade with the broker if it does not have your preferred assets like non-US stocks and cryptocurrencies.
Rating: 4/5
| Forex: Spot Trading | Yes |
| Currency Pairs (Total Forex pairs) | 41 |
| Social Trading / Copy-Trading | Yes |
| CFDs instruments | forex, stocks, indices, futures, commodities |
Commissions & Fees
The commissions and fees charged on this platform vary depending on which platform you are trading on. The cost of Darwinex is different from the cost of trading on MT4 or MT5. The average spread for EURUSD is 0.3 pips. These spreads are variable, but they are usually zero spread.
The broker charges commission per trade also. For the pairs with EUR as their quote currencies, the commissions are usually around 2.5EUR per standard lot. For those with AUD as the quote currency, it is charged as 2.5AUD, and this pattern follows for USD and GBP also.
The commission charges for trading futures are smaller than that in forex, while stocks are a little higher.
For every Darwin (a strategy subscribed to), an investor pays a quarterly performance fee of 20%, especially if the performance of Darwin reaches a new high. Professional clients get monthly volume-based rebates for the commission charged.
The broker also offers talent-linked pricing. It rates different consistent strategies to get the D-score (the odds of such strategy winning in the future). It provides a 40% discount on the commissions of traders with a D-score less than 60 and a 20% discount on the commissioning traders with a D-score between 55 to 60.
The broker does not charge for most deposit methods but charges an average of 2% for withdrawal of money.
Rating: 4/5
| Minimum Initial Deposit | $500 |
| Average Spread EUR/USD – Standard | 0.3 pips |
| All-in Cost EUR/USD – Active | 0.3 pips |
Platforms & Tools
The platform has the trading mode and the investing mode. The trading mode has the Metatrader 4 and 5, Workstation, and the Web. The trading platforms provide one of the best industry-standard conditions for trading with tight spreads, fast execution, minimal slippages, fast withdrawal, no requotes, tens of indicators and drawing tools, multiple timeframes, and much more.
The investing mode allows investing in Darwins. However, you have access to thousands of trading strategies. The company’s algorithmic risk manager standardized them to target a reasonable monthly VaR. This transforms strategies into unbeatable assets which could be compared on an apples-to-apples basis.
Darwin: a darwin is a trading strategy. When a trader creates a Darwin, investors can buy and sell such a strategy by selecting the Darwin symbol attached to it. There are thousands of darwin strategies from which investors can create and build their portfolios.
Darwin API: The technology company was built by traders, and the team is aware of the requirement of algorithmic trading, which the metatraders can not provide. The labs’ team made some auxiliary libraries available to complement the MetaTrader and FIX API stack. Click on the links below to check out the Darwinex labs.
- FIX v4.4 Pricing & Trading Modules (in Python)
- ZeroMQ-enabled Python to MetaTrader Bridge (in Python)
- DARWIN API Wrappers in Python & R
- ZeroMQ-enabled MetaTrader Server EA (in MQL)
Rating: 4.5/5
| Virtual Trading (Demo) | Yes |
| Proprietary Platform | Yes |
| Desktop Platform (Windows) | Yes |
| Web Platform | Yes |
| MetaTrader 4 (MT4) | Yes |
| MetaTrader 5 (MT5) | Yes |
| Charting – Indicators / Studies (Total) | 51 |
| Charting – Drawing Tools (Total) | 21 |
| Charting – Trade From Chart | Yes |
| Order Type – Trailing Stop | Yes |
Research and Education
The broker provides videos to teach traders on different advanced aspects of trading like risk management (money management, measuring risk, calculating the risk of a position, how value at risk is calculated, and so on).
It has topics that have to do with algorithmic trading strategies with Python. It also has webinars on some other advanced topics.
There is a blog that can also pass as a research spot. The blog’s content covers analyses of relevant trading fundamentals, trading reports, different views of trading experts, and so on.The blog also contains Darwinex trading hours and amended trading hours.
Investment research: The broker provides the Darwinex platform where traders access configurable parameters of thousands of strategies. Traders can also research their ranking for their performance score.
The research and education are not so much, and they are too streamlined to suit a specific type of advanced trader. There are many videos on algorithmic trading with Python. Newbies won’t be able to get so much from research and education.
Rating: 3.5/5
Mobile Trading
You can download the mobile app on Apple Store and Google Playstore. The android mobile app for investors was created in 2016, while the IOS investors could not use an IOS mobile trading app till 2019.
The mobile app is easy to use. By clicking on the ‘menu,’ you will easily see different strategies you can invest in. The list of strategies contains returns of a strategy; and the drawn-down each strategy has had in a long time. The investor’s capital you see depends on the time limit you place on it, and the one you choose is dependent on your investment goals.
With the mobile app, you can monitor and manage your trades; this gives you more control over your investments through your phone.
The broker accepts post-gathering feature requests on the mobile app to make it serve its clients more.
Rating: 3.75/5
| Mobile devices | Apple, android. |
| Features | allow managing trade, watchlist, charting, alert, etc. |
Final Thoughts
From what I have reviewed so far, it is safe to conclude that the platform might not be easy to use for someone new to trading, though this condition is made better by the broker’s provision of Darwinex research.
The education and research content might also be complex for beginners. The statement is not to say that beginners cannot trade here, but they might need guidance in navigating their way around the platform.
The broker is safe and regulated with a tier-1 financial regulator and has different arrays of assets. Traders can invest in proven trading strategies, making them attractive to retail and professional traders. To check the services, kindly click here.
Overall rating: 4.15/5
Frequently Asked Questions
Is Darwinex a market maker?
Darwinex is a market maker. As a market, Darwinex may have lower entry requirements compared to ECN brokers that gain from a higher volume of trades and have larger capital and minimum trade requirements. Market makers have smaller minimum deposits, lower minimum trade requirements, and usually do not charge commissions on trades.
How does Darwinex work?
It transforms traders’ trading strategies into assets called a ‘Darwin.’ Darwin copies a trader’s strategy when the trader places a trade while Darwinex’s Risk Engine manages the risk. Darwin assets trade between target risk of 3.65 to 6.5 monthly VaR.
