By Zachary Storella, CountingPips.com

Today, I am very pleased to bring you our latest forex interview with Shoaib Abedi from ICM Capital. Shoaib is currently the Director and a co-founder of ICM Capital with a background as a forex trader. ICM Capital is a Forex, Commodities and CFD brokerage company that is registered in England and Wales with financial regulation from the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA). Features of ICM Capital include the Metatrader 4 platform, trading championships and segregated client funds. In this interview, Shoaib shares his thoughts on his company’s strong points as well as his views on the forex industry.

Q: Can you give our readers a brief history of ICM Capital and who are the ideal candidates to use ICM Capital?

ICM Capital is a multi-national Forex and CFD trading company with headquarters in Canary Wharf, London, and offices in Europe, the Middle East and Asia. Since being founded, the firm has been authorized and regulated by the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) and has ever since been built on the principals of compliance, integrity and transparency in trading.

Our ideal candidate is practically anybody with an interest in trading, whether he or she is an absolute beginner or an experienced professional, we cater for all traders at all levels. ICM Capital’s services are designed to be flexible and we ensure we offer something unique to accommodate every kind of trader with all capabilities.

Q: What can a trader expect when using ICM Capital?

Upon completing the simple online registration form traders will be contacted by an ICM Capital team member, in less than 24 hours from pressing the submit button. A client’s registration usually doesn’t take longer than 5-10 minutes and from start to finish the application is 100% electronic. Account numbers and passwords are typically issued within a few minutes from when the application has been reviewed by our compliance department and the account registered with our Client Services team.

After an initial consultation and account activation the client will be introduced to a representative for 1-on-1 personal training if required. Experienced traders will be briefed on all products and services and offered additional assistance if required. Once the administration is out of the way the trader has access to a diverse product portfolio with fixed tights spreads, low margins and outstanding execution.

Q: What do you feel makes ICM Capital stand out from your competitors? What do you feel are the best features or greatest strengths of ICM Capital?

We have multiple advantages over other brokers; ranging from some of the most competitive fixed spreads on the market (even during major news announcements), fixed low margin requirements as well as award-winning support. The key focus of everything we do goes back to making the trading experience for our clients as straightforward and convenient as possible. We are continuously developing new applications, online portals and user-friendly add-ons to enhance our clients’ day-to-day life as a trader. Most of our experience enhancing software is developed in-house, so we are sure it ticks all the boxes of what we need to improve our clients trading experience.

Q: If a trader is interested in finding out more about ICM Capital, testing and maybe trading on the platform, what would be your advice?

I have always been captivated by the financial markets so I understand the needs traders are looking to fulfill. My vision was to open up the regulated world of trading to everyone, not just experienced traders and this is what I have done.

My advice would be to open up a demo account to test our MT4 platforms execution and product portfolio. I am sure that new traders will be as impressed with this as our existing traders  and will not be disappointed. Once a test period has been completed I am very confident that traders will quickly move on to opening and trading on a live platform. As mentioned earlier our client base is diverse and we cater for a wide range of profiles. We ensure we provide a first class regulated trading environment to both retail and institutional clients who wish to trade Forex, Commodities or CFD’s.

Q: Is there any other aspect of ICM Capital that you feel is important that we may have not touched on? Is there any feature that may get overlooked?

I would like to touch again on our regulation. We pride ourselves on being regulated and therefore offer the security and transparency which traders are looking for these days. There is an unfortunate reality in our industry that traders are still being taken advantage of by some unregulated brokers. We would like to see an end to this and stop individuals being victimized. We place great emphasis on educating traders about the dangers of opening an account with an unregulated company and provide information on how to avoid falling prey to any scams which could affect them in a negative way. We realise that these practices are a rival to reputable organisations, such as ourselves. Our overall objective is to educate traders from the very first second they hear the name ICM Capital right through to when they submit their application and start trading with us.

Q: What do you see in the future for ICM Capital? Do you have any thoughts on the future of the Forex industry?

I, myself, am a trader and I think it is important for traders to understand what moves the markets. The FX market has remained resilient during the financial crisis and volumes continue to grow. Today up to 5.3 trillion USD is traded daily. More traditional asset classes have suffered or have grown at a significantly slower pace.

A recent example of how other asset classes such as the stock markets have been affected by major news can be seen in the Malaysian Airlines plane crash in eastern Ukraine. This disaster made many traders sell off stocks, especially of airlines. Fears over international foreign affairs plus tensions between Ukraine and Russia have been revived. Markets tend to temporarily over-react in geopolitical events. In this case, the dollar dropped against most major currencies and its future could be dependent on how the crisis in Ukraine and Russia plays out from now.

This has caused for many investors to move into traditional safe-haven asset classes, like gold. The precious metal is often seen as a hedge against risk. Ultimately knowledge is power and when traders can’t predict what will affect the markets they tend to stick to safer haven investments.

Thank you Shoaib for taking the time to share your thoughts and information in our latest forex interview. To find out more about ICM Capital and to check out their services, please visit ICM Capital at www.icmcapital.co.uk.