What is HFM (HotForex)? An HFM review: legal entity, accounts, fees, deposits and withdrawals

HFM (HF Markets, formerly HotForex) is a brand of HF Markets Group and has been in business since 2010; in 2022 the HotForex brand was renamed HFM. This review was written in 2022 and rewritten in full on Sep 14, 2026 from the international HFM website, the Client Agreement (the July 2026 version) and the insurance certificate the broker publishes.

Many people choose a broker on the strength of its advertising, its awards or its offices. The more important questions are: which company signs the agreement and holds your money, which authority licensed that company, and what rights the agreement gives the broker. This article follows exactly those questions.

How to choose a safe Forex broker

Quick summary (Sep 14, 2026):

• International clients who sign up through the HFM website contract with HF Markets (SV) Ltd, a company registered in St. Vincent & the Grenadines, which holds no brokerage license. The FCA, FSCA, FSA and CMA licenses belong to other companies in the group.
• Five account types: Cent, Premium, Pro, Zero and Top-up Bonus; leverage up to 1:2000; margin call 50%, stop out 20%.
• Platforms: MT4, MT5, HFM WebTrader and the HFM app; copy trading is available.
• The deposit page is built per country; for Vietnam it quotes minimums in Vietnamese dong, from 120,000 to 300,000 VND depending on the method. Money you withdraw has to go back to the source you deposited from.
• In Vietnam, trading Forex through a foreign broker is not protected by law.

See also: How to open an HFM account

An overview of HFM

According to the About Us page of HFM, the group was founded in 2010, renamed the HotForex brand to HFM in 2022, passed the 4 million client accounts mark in 2024 and records more than 100 awards. In 2026 HFM became an official partner of the Arsenal football club and launched the HFM WebTrader platform.

The Trading Products page states that HFM offers contracts for difference (CFDs) on more than 500 markets: Forex, metals, energies, indices, shares, bonds, commodities, cryptocurrencies and ETFs. The actual number of products differs by platform: the MT4 page gives more than 250 instruments, the MT5 page more than 3,000.

The Contact page lists two addresses under head office: HF Markets (SV) Ltd in Kingstown, St. Vincent & the Grenadines, and HF Markets FinTech Services Ltd in Larnaca, Cyprus (the company that provides payment services to the companies in the group).

Awards and sports sponsorships are promotion. They tell you the broker invests heavily in its brand; they tell you nothing about how far your money is protected. You can look at the international HFM website for yourself through the HFM sign-up link.

The legal entities and licenses of HFM

HF Markets Group is made up of several subsidiaries. From the Licenses & Regulation page, the FAQ and the footer of the international HFM website on Sep 14, 2026:

The 2022 version of this article also listed licenses from the FSC (Mauritius) and the DFSA (Dubai). The current Licenses & Regulation page no longer carries those two; the About Us page mentions the Mauritius license only as a 2010 milestone.

Which legal entity do you contract with?

The Client Agreement downloaded from the international HFM website opens with this statement: these terms govern the relationship between HF Markets (SV) Ltd, a company incorporated in St. Vincent & the Grenadines (no. 22747 IBC 2015), and the client. The agreement is governed by the law of St. Vincent & the Grenadines, and any claim has to be brought before the courts there (section 47). The Top-up Bonus program terms are issued by HF Markets (SV) Ltd as well.

The financial regulator of St. Vincent & the Grenadines has stated on several occasions that it does not license and does not supervise Forex brokerage. Registering a company there is company registration, nothing more.

What that means in practice:

• The protections that come with a license, such as the investor compensation fund in Cyprus (up to 20,000 EUR) or the arrangements of the FCA in the UK, apply only to the clients of the particular licensed subsidiary. They do not apply to an account held with HF Markets (SV) Ltd.
• In a dispute, what you rely on is the complaints procedure of the broker and the terms of the agreement.
• How to check: when you sign up, read the name of the legal entity in the Client Agreement; if it is not clear, email support (supportvn@hfm.com) to ask which company your account belongs to, and keep the answer.

A license is a necessary condition, but it is no assurance that you will not lose money trading. And the number of licenses held across the group matters less than the license held by the company that actually holds your account.

How HFM protects client money

From the Fund Safety page and the documents HFM publishes:

• Segregated accounts: client money is held in separate accounts, apart from the money of the company. The page does not name the bank.
• Negative balance protection: under section 20.4 of the Client Agreement, the total losses of a retail client do not exceed the total funds in their accounts at HFM, so a client will not lose more than the account balance; when a balance goes negative, the broker brings it back to zero “as soon as possible”. The broker may also combine a client’s accounts when one of them goes negative, so a negative amount on one account can be covered out of the money in another.
• Insurance: a certificate dated Jul 15, 2026, issued by the insurance broker Marsh Insurance Brokers (Cyprus), shows that HF Markets (SV) Ltd is covered for professional indemnity under the group insurance policy, for the period Jul 8, 2026 to Jul 7, 2027, with a limit of 5,000,000 USD each claim and in the aggregate (costs of defense included), placed 100% at Lloyd’s. The Fund Safety page, on the other hand, says “5 million EUR”. This insures the operations of the company, it pays out according to the terms of the insurance policy, and the limit may already be lower if a claim has been paid; it is not an undertaking to refund individual clients.
• Audit: the “Why choose HFM” page states that the broker is audited by Deloitte, but does not say which subsidiary or which financial year.
• The broker is the counterparty to your trades: under clause 6.1 of the Client Agreement (the version read again on Sep 25, 2026), HFM is the sole execution venue for a client’s trading, and even when it passes orders to outside liquidity providers “the Company remains the exclusive counterparty to the Client trades”. Clause 29.2 adds that by accepting the terms the client consents in advance to the company executing transactions without disclosing any specific conflict of interest first. In other words your gain is the broker’s loss and the other way round, and you have no right to be told case by case.

The undertakings on segregated accounts and on negative balance protection come from the broker itself. With a legal entity that holds no brokerage license, no regulator checks that they are carried out.

The trading platforms

HFM offers four platforms. This comparison follows the platform comparison page of HFM:

• MetaTrader 4: the MT4 software is the most widely used platform in retail Forex, with versions for Windows, Mac, Linux and phones, and a very large library of indicators and EAs written for MT4.
• MetaTrader 5: more time frames and more pending order types, a built-in economic calendar, and up to 100 charts on screen. DMA shares and ETFs can only be traded on MT5, WebTrader and the HFM app, not on MT4.
• HFM WebTrader: launched in 2026, runs in the browser, uses TradingView charts (more than 100 indicators, more than 110 drawing tools, up to 8 charts on one screen), and takes both MT4 and MT5 account logins.
• The HFM app: for Android and iOS; it manages the wallet and several accounts in one app, opens live or demo accounts, places orders and shows charts.

One thing to watch when you install: download MT4/MT5 and the app only from the official HFM website or the official app stores, and never install a copy a stranger sends you. See also the guide to using MT4 on a phone.

The 2022 version of this article introduced MT4 MultiTerminal and HotForex Rapid Trader FIX/API (which required an account from 200,000 USD). At the time of this update, the Platforms section of the international HFM website no longer has a page of its own for either product; MT4 MultiTerminal is mentioned only on the “Why choose HFM” page.

The trading tools

From the trading tools section of the HFM website:

• Premium Trader Tools: a set of utilities installed into MT4/MT5, with data from FX Blue Labs, comprising Trade Terminal and Mini Terminal (placing orders, working out position size, managing orders), Connect (news, economic calendar), Sentiment Trader (sentiment based on real open positions), Alarm Manager (alerts, automation), Excel RTD (feeding account data and prices into Excel), Market Manager, Correlation Matrix, Correlation Trader, Tick Chart Trader and a package of indicators (Renko, pivot points, candle countdown and others). The page describing them states no conditions of use.
• Autochartist: recognizes chart patterns, Fibonacci patterns and key support and resistance levels automatically, is integrated into MT4/MT5, and comes with a position size calculator based on a risk level. The page states it is currently free for HFM clients.
• Advanced Insights: big-data news sentiment analysis and a timeline of upcoming events, used on MT4/MT5, free for clients.
• Traders Board: the volatility of the major currencies, trading volumes and sentiment based on the positions of clients on each symbol.
• VPS: provided through Beeks Financial Cloud, in three paid packages at 25, 50 and 80 USD per month. The lowest package (1 virtual CPU, 2,560 MB RAM, 30 GB SSD) is free if you have a net deposit of at least 400 USD in the last 30 days and traded 2 standard lots in the previous month; the higher packages have conditions of their own. A VPS is only necessary if you run an EA continuously.
• SMS service: free for clients who trade from 5 standard lots per calendar month.
• Daily market analysis, an economic calendar and calculators: risk percentage, pivot points, pip value, position size, swap, risk and reward, Fibonacci, notional value.

Signals, automatic patterns and analysis pieces are information to consider, not orders you have to take. What lets you judge a signal for yourself is a grounding in technical analysis.

The trading account types

At the time of this update HFM has five live account types. The Micro, Auto, Zero Spread, PAMM and HFcopy accounts of the 2022 version of this article are no longer in the range.

All five have a margin call at 50% and a stop out at 20%. HFM allows an unlimited NUMBER of demo accounts, but each individual demo has a life: the Demo Premium version lasts 60 days, and a demo left inactive for 29 days is deleted (clause 28 of the Client Agreement). For the detailed comparison, the real conditions behind “swap free” and behind the deposit bonus, and a suggestion on which to choose, see HFM account types.

Copy trading

PAMM and HFcopy have been replaced by the Copy Trading program:

• Two roles: a follower, whose account the system copies the trades of a strategy provider into.
• A separate account: you have to open a dedicated Copy Trading account; to follow and provide a strategy at the same time you need two accounts.
• Minimum deposit: 25 USD for a follower and 100 USD for a strategy provider; on an account denominated in cents, 10 USD and 25 USD.
• Fees: no administration fee; a follower pays the strategy provider a performance fee on a profit, up to 50% of the profit.
• The volume copied: worked out from the ratio of the equity of the follower to that of the provider, multiplied by an allocation ratio the follower chooses; the smallest volume is 0.01 lots.
• The rights of a follower: adjust the volume, set a stop loss, withdraw money or stop following at any time; when you stop, open positions are closed. Available on MT4, MT5 and the HFM app.

Copying trades does not reduce risk: if the strategy provider loses, your account loses with them, and HFM states plainly that past performance is no indication of future results. Before you copy anyone, look at how long they have been running, their maximum drawdown and the size of their positions relative to their capital, and start with a small amount.

Leverage and trading costs

Leverage

The maximum leverage by account type is 1:2000 (Cent, Premium, Pro, Zero) and 1:1000 (Top-up Bonus). The maximum also depends on the product group, according to the product pages of HFM on Sep 14, 2026:

Under the Client Agreement (section 18), you can change the leverage yourself in myHF up to 30 times per account; there is no limit on increasing it, while reducing it is only possible when no margin is in use or the margin level is above 100%. HFM also states that leverage may change.

Leverage of 1:2000 combined with a stop out at 20% means one large position can take almost the whole account after a few dozen pips. Pick low leverage as soon as you open the account, and work out your position size from the amount you accept losing. See “What is leverage? How much leverage should you use”.

Trading costs

• Spread and commission: the spread starts at 1.4 pips on Cent, Premium and Top-up Bonus, and at 0.6 pips on Pro. The Zero account has a spread from 0 pips on Forex and charges a commission of 6 USD per 100,000 units of currency and 10 USD per 100 ounces of gold, counting both the opening and the closing of the trade. The Premium and Pro pages state that no commission is charged “except on some products”.
• Swap (overnight fee): HFM charges no swap on a list of symbols (the major currency pairs and many cross pairs, gold, some indices, and the USOIL.S oil symbol). Symbols outside that list are still charged swap; share CFDs held overnight are charged a financing fee. The Client Agreement gives the broker the right to charge an extra fee on a position held for more than a month on a swap-free account, and to withdraw swap-free status at any time.
• Deposit and withdrawal fees: HFM charges no deposit or withdrawal fee; the sending bank, an intermediary bank or the payment provider may still charge one of their own.
• Dormant account fee: an account with no deposit, withdrawal or trade for 6 months running is charged 5 USD per month (up to the one-year mark), 10 USD (one to two years), 20 USD (two to three years), and then 10 USD more each year, until the balance reaches zero.

How to measure your real cost on a demo account: “What is spread?” and “What is swap?”.

Deposits and withdrawals

HFM uses the myHF wallet: money is deposited into the wallet, then transferred to a trading account; on a withdrawal, the money goes from the wallet back to the payment method. According to the FAQ, a deposit only reaches the account once your verification documents have been approved.

Deposits (the deposit page on Sep 14, 2026). HFM builds this table from the country on your profile, so the methods and the limits below are the ones the page gives for Vietnam, in Vietnamese dong; open the deposit page in your own client area to see the table that applies to you:

• Bank transfer: minimum 250,000 to 300,000 VND depending on the channel, maximum 300 million VND, credited instantly.
• Credit or debit card: minimum 120,000 VND, maximum 235 million VND, up to 10 minutes.
• Alternative methods: minimum from 100,000 VND, instant or up to 10 minutes.
• One transfer channel has a minimum of 2,350,000 VND and takes 2 to 7 business days.

Withdrawals (the withdrawal page):

• Bank transfer: minimum 13 USD, processed in up to 2 to 3 business days depending on the channel; the channel that goes through an intermediary bank has a minimum of 100 USD and takes 2 to 10 business days.
• Card: minimum 5 USD, 2 to 10 business days depending on the bank.
• Alternative methods: minimum 5 to 10 USD, instant or up to 24 hours.

The rules to know:

• Money goes back to the source it came from. HFM refunds the original source first; money deposited by card has to be withdrawn back to that card (a card used for a deposit in the last 6 months), and only once the deposited amount has been refunded in full can you withdraw through another method. An expired card cannot receive a withdrawal; a canceled card needs a confirmation letter from the bank.
• The processing times are not stated consistently. The withdrawal page says withdrawals are processed 24/7, while the general FAQ says a request submitted before 10:00 server time is processed the same working day, and one submitted after that moves to the next working day.
• Cancelling a withdrawal is done through live chat, before the payments department processes it.

Transferring money from a bank account in Vietnam to fund a foreign Forex broker may breach foreign exchange control rules, and the bank may refuse or hold the transaction. For the deposit and withdrawal steps themselves, see the HFM deposit and withdrawal guide.

Customer support and trading hours

• Support: email supportvn@hfm.com, telephone +44-203 097 85 71, and live chat on the website and in the app. The “Why choose HFM” page says support is available 24/5 in more than 20 languages, while the app page and the FAQ say 24/7.
• The dealing desk (execution problems, closing a position by telephone): tradingdesk@hfm.com, +44-203 097 85 75, 24/7.
• Trading hours: from 00:05 Sunday to 23:59:59 Friday server time (GMT+2 in winter, GMT+3 in summer). Cryptocurrencies trade 24/7, except for roughly 09:00 to 09:30 Sunday server time.

The support team answers questions and handles paperwork; in a dispute, how it is resolved depends on the complaints procedure of the broker and on the agreement you signed.

The strengths and weaknesses of HFM

Strengths

• Several account types, with no minimum deposit required on Cent, Premium, Zero and Top-up Bonus (the minimum of each deposit method still applies).
• Four platforms, including MT4, MT5 and WebTrader with TradingView charts; copy trading available.
• A fairly complete set of published documents: the Client Agreement, the order execution policy, the conflict of interest policy, the complaints procedure and the insurance certificate.
• Many tools free, or free on conditions: Autochartist, Advanced Insights, Premium Trader Tools, a VPS.
• A dedicated support email address and local deposit methods.

Weaknesses

• International clients who sign up through the HFM website contract with HF Markets (SV) Ltd in St. Vincent & the Grenadines, which holds no brokerage license; a dispute goes to the law and the courts of St. Vincent.
• The broker is the counterparty to a client’s trades, even when orders are passed to outside liquidity providers (clause 6.1).
• Leverage up to 1:2000 and a stop out at 20% make it very risky for a beginner.
• The swap-free and bonus terms give the broker a lot of unilateral rights, and there is a dormant account fee.
• The website states some information inconsistently with itself: the currency of the insurance limit (EUR or USD), the minimum deposit on the Zero account, withdrawal processing times, and the support hours.

Frequently asked questions about HFM

Is HFM a scam? Can it be trusted?

HFM has been in business since 2010, the group has subsidiaries licensed by the FCA, the FSCA, the FSA in Seychelles and the CMA in Kenya, and it publishes its legal documents and an insurance certificate. Even so, the accounts of international clients who sign up through the HFM website belong to HF Markets (SV) Ltd, a company with no brokerage license, and in Vietnam you have no protection in law in a dispute. No broker is “completely safe”; read the agreement, start with a small amount, and try withdrawing part of it to find out the real timings and fees. Be wary of anyone claiming to be an employee or an “expert” of the broker who offers to run managed accounts or asks you to transfer money into a personal account: see how to spot Forex scams.

What is the difference between the myHF account and a trading account?

The myHF account is your wallet, created automatically when you register with HFM. You use the wallet to deposit, to withdraw and to move money back and forth with your trading accounts; through the myHF area you also create live and demo trading accounts. A trading account is a live or demo account created inside myHF, which you place orders with on a platform.

What documents do I need to open an account at HFM?

For a live account, HFM needs at least two kinds of document:

• Proof of identity: a color scan, still valid (PDF or JPG), of your passport; if you have none, another photo ID such as a national identity card or a driver’s license.
• Proof of address: a bank statement or a utility bill no more than 6 months old, showing your full name and address clearly.

The name on both documents has to match. According to HFM, documents are checked within 48 hours.

What is the minimum deposit?

By account type: 0 USD on Cent, Premium, Zero (the FAQ on the Zero page says 25 USD) and Top-up Bonus; 100 USD on Pro. Each deposit method has a minimum of its own: bank transfer from 250,000 to 300,000 VND, card from 120,000 VND.

How do I withdraw money?

Sign in to the myHF area and choose “Withdraw”. The money goes back to the source you deposited from first (whichever card you deposited with is the card it returns to), and only then can you withdraw through another method. The minimum withdrawal and the timing of each method are in the deposits and withdrawals section above.

Are there any extra fees?

The HFM FAQ states that there are no extra fees, and the broker charges nothing for a deposit or a withdrawal. But you still have to count: the spread, the commission (on the Zero account and on some products), the swap on symbols that are not swap-free, the fees of your bank or payment provider, and the dormant account fee if you leave the account inactive for 6 months or more.

Legal status in Vietnam

Whichever country a broker is licensed in, trading Forex through a foreign broker is not among the foreign-currency transactions permitted under Vietnamese law. It risks being treated as a breach of foreign exchange control rules, and in a dispute Vietnamese law does not protect you. See Is Forex trading legal in Vietnam?.

Conclusion

HFM is a long-established brokerage group, with several licensed subsidiaries, a full set of platforms and tools, and reasonably clear published documents. The point to remember above all is that international clients who sign up through the HFM website contract with HF Markets (SV) Ltd in St. Vincent & the Grenadines, which holds no brokerage license, and that the agreement gives the broker a lot of rights over swap-free accounts, bonus money and dormant accounts.

If you have weighed all of that up and still want to try, open a demo account first, pick low leverage, deposit a small amount through the HFM account opening link and follow the guide to opening an account. To pick the account type that suits you, see HFM account types.