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Matthew Roberts embarked on his journey in the financial industry over two decades ago, starting out as a meticulous accountant at a prestigious firm. His dedication to accuracy and transparency earned him recognition early in his career, leading to several commendations for excellence in financial reporting.
Driven by a passion for fairness and integrity in financial markets, Matthew’s career trajectory evolved as he delved into risk management and regulatory compliance.
When John retired, he founded traderhelpbook.com. His initiative stems from firsthand experiences witnessing the challenges traders face due to misinformation and deceitful practices. Matthew ‘s leadership is marked by a commitment to empowering traders with reliable information and tools, ensuring they can navigate the complex world of finance safely and confidently.
The subject of our MondFx review is a company that modestly calls itself “MENA’s TOP broker.” It offers a wide range of accounts with small deposits, trading on the most popular terminals, and promises unparalleled protection of clients’ funds. This sounds very attractive, especially considering that there are very few platforms online that use Farsi as the primary language. However, traders are equally concerned with the legality of the services provided and the honesty of withdrawals. Does the company have issues in this regard? You can find answers in the material below.
According to the broker, it focuses on serving the Middle East – North Africa (MENA) region and claims to be the best among those working with Farsi-speaking clients. The second claim is hard to dispute, as we are aware of very few broker/dealer companies willing to operate in Iran and Afghanistan (where most of the Farsi-speaking population resides). However, the company also operates in other regions.
It is important for us to understand how lawful the project’s operations are. The broker’s website does not even mention its place of registration or licensing. Still, some information is provided for verification. This primarily concerns the address of the head office in Saint Lucia. It is logical to assume that the company is registered in this Caribbean country. Additionally, the broker lists a support office address in the UAE. It is quite possible that there is a MondFx representative office or subsidiary in the UAE that holds a local license.
As expected, upon verification, we found that Mond Trades Ltd., the company managing the broker, is indeed registered in Saint Lucia as an IBC (International Business Company). This is common practice for brokers planning to operate outside the Eastern Caribbean region.
The point is that to provide services within the countries of the region, a Saint Lucia-based company needs a license issued by the local financial regulator, the Financial Services Regulatory Authority (FSRA), in cooperation with the Eastern Caribbean Central Bank (ECCB). Because the ECCB is actively involved in the regulatory process, the requirements for applicants are strict, and obtaining the license is quite costly.
It is a different story for IBCs that do not operate in the region. Their annual fees are only $200–500, regulators do not issue them licenses for brokerage services, and they impose no requirements. In practice, companies serving traders in other countries do not violate Saint Lucia law; compliance with the legislation of other jurisdictions is a matter for the regulators operating there, the traders, and possibly the broker itself.
It is also interesting to see how long the broker has been providing illegal services. Finding an answer is not difficult. The registration data shows the company was entered into the Saint Lucia registry on February 19, 2024. According to whois data, the domain mondfx.com was registered in November 2023.
However, snapshots from the Web Archive clearly show that the broker’s full website was only launched in March–April 2024. Thus, the platform effectively began operating only after the company’s registration. One could argue that it already had some operational experience by then, enough time to build a reputation.
However, for some reason, MondFx failed to do so. It’s not accurate to say the company is unknown online. For example, there are nearly 40 reviews on reviews.io for this project, and 17 on Trustpilot. Still, for more than a year and a half of operation, this is a very small number. Moreover, the content of these reviews, frankly, is striking.
On reviews.io, almost all comments contain advertisements for chargeback services. It seems the company does not monitor what is written about it on this site or treats the flood of negative feedback as irrelevant. On Trustpilot, the picture is slightly better: about 50% of posts express a negative opinion, while 47% give the company high ratings. Unfortunately, the positive reviews appear to be paid or fabricated.
Interestingly, WikiFX rated the broker relatively high compared to most offshore brokers – 4.61 out of 10. Still, this neutral rating is not impressive, and the broker is far from having a strong reputation.
The 1:500 leverage offered by the broker looks very tempting: with just $200, a trader can control a $100,000 position. Naturally, the potential returns are enormous, but…
Overall, 1:500 leverage is rightly called a “deposit killer.” It increases not profit, but the likelihood of losing the entire deposit in the first trades.
We would have liked to say something positive about the broker’s official website. However, the developers left us with no opportunity to do so. The pages do look somewhat professional, but the design can be summed up in one word: “overdone.”
The content presents a different problem — the amount of necessary and useful information on the website’s pages is almost zero.
What kind of quality content can we even talk about when the website does not even include descriptions of available markets, asset lists, or contract specifications? It gives the impression that the site belongs not to a broker but to a third-rate company that has no understanding of client interests. It is not surprising that after more than 1.5 years, it has earned a negative reputation online. Only a scam platform would neglect traders’ requests to this extent, not a company that operates honestly and cares about its reputation.
As mentioned above, the broker did not provide descriptions of available markets or contract specifications. So, what can a potential client learn about the trading conditions? Practically nothing. Even the account types page contains minimal information, which does not give the slightest chance to evaluate the company’s offerings.
MondFx offers traders nine different account types. Unfortunately, the only characteristics published are the minimum deposit for each and the leverage size.
There is no apparent logic behind the distribution of deposits and leverage, and the homepage even advertises a minimum deposit of just $15. Based on the provided information, we can only assess the potential risks for traders. For nearly a third of the accounts, these risks are extremely high. At the same time, we do not know what leverage users can trade with on the Mondshield and VIP plans.
Other trade characteristics, even on the standard accounts, are described only verbally by the broker. Unfortunately, we do not know what the company means by terms like “Low spreads” or “Low commission.” The issue is that we frequently encounter such statements from offshore brokers, only to find out later that the supposedly “tight” spreads are 2–3 times higher than those of popular regulated firms. Swap sizes are not mentioned at all; MondFx only indicates whether there is a fee for holding positions overnight. We could not find information about trade volume limits, stop-loss trigger levels, or the allowable number of simultaneously open positions.
Another possibility: experienced traders, not receiving complete information, will refuse to trade with MondFx. Only beginners remain — those who lack the knowledge and experience to properly assess (or rather realize they cannot assess) the company’s offerings. Why would the broker want this? Beginners who do not understand risk and money management rules at high leverage are almost certain to lose their invested funds. And that is pure profit for the firm, even if it tries to present itself as using A-book order processing technology.
The project owners clearly wanted the contact information to at least appear like that of a reputable, regulated broker. Therefore, they added the following to the Contact Us page:
We have already discussed the Saint Lucia address. It is used by dozens of companies for registration, so we are confident that there is no actual broker office there. A real or virtual office can be rented at the Dubai address. Judging by the fact that MondFx does not indicate a floor or room number, it seems they opted for a virtual office. This option is also much cheaper — about 2,000 AED (~540 USD) per month. Renting a real office, even a small one, would cost 5–10 times more.
The phone numbers show an interesting pattern. Those listed on the Contact Us page do not match standard numbering plans in the UK or UAE and are likely virtual numbers used in VoIP services. Other numbers listed in the website footer are mobile. It was impossible to determine which numbers actually connect to support, as we did not receive a response to any of the four.
The broker’s social media presence is also underwhelming. For example, the X (Twitter) profile was created in November 2023 (well before the company was registered), but it has only 188 followers. On YouTube, interest is slightly higher, with over 1.8K subscribers. The Telegram channel has the largest audience, nearly 10,000. However, for those who do not understand Farsi, these platforms are largely useless, as only about 5% of the content is duplicated in English.