Today’s review is about Live Trades, a new website that masqaurades as a legit copy trading platform where people can spy on the most profitable traders to make money.
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But questions arise whenener faced with a task to review a platform that accepts big deposits from investors, purporting to trade on their behalf, yet they are not licensed to act in this capacity.
Who are these profitable traders? Where is their address? Can we see their audited trading performance and trust them to manage our hard-earned money?
Unfortunately, Live trades (livetrades.com) is unable to provide this much needed information.
Instead, the anonymous investment hustlers have opted to distract the financially naive using a fancy website. And the financial puffery is sickening.
I can smell the strong odor of fakery in all corners of this website, and this will be the basis for our review today.
Livetrades Review: the genesis of this investment scam
Their website is located at the livetrades.com address.
The domain of livetrades.com was registered in 1999, and has been used for purposes of peddling financial and investment products in the last decades.
In fact, the current owners of this website purchased that domain for thousands of dollars in 2021.
The reason investment scams prefer purchasing old domains is because they want to create the impression of time and building of reputation.
Nobody will trust an overnight “investment company” whose websites is accepting deposits as high as €25,000.
But if this company is 20+ years old, it is easier to market and promote it as something that is worth investing in.
One of the ways that scammers achieve the impression of time is by purchasing old domains. They hope that you will not look them up on the Internet Archives library.
The people who own livetrades have a long and sad history of scamming investors. Other domains that they have or used to have include:
- BlueTrading.com (now defunct domain that was put up on sale when it closed down and ran away with millions of dollars)
- Worldmarkets.com (abandoned website with a mountain of complaints from every corner of the web)
- There are a couple of others that I may not be aware of (use the comment section to add if you know any)
Looking at their previous websites, I find that the modas operandi is still the same. It involves marketing the platform and convincing investors to deposit millions in Crypto and fiat before doing a runner.
LiveTrades Aggressive Promotion and reviews across the internet
They’ve listed several awards that LiveTrades.com supposedly won in the financial industry. They’ve also provided us with a sneak peek of their classy “premises in Iceland”.
But seriously folks, the internet is the largest source of information out there. A spotcheck reveals that the Iceland premise in question has never been occupied by Livetrades, and there is no company called Live Feeds in that location.
These investment chalartans just outsourced the services of a skilled web designer with some photoshop experience.
They also purport that Live Trades partnered with several reputable Forex brokers and Crypto exchanges.
I even found the logos of Octafx and XM broker listed on their website as some of the best Forex brokers that they are working with.
Part of the scheme also involved inviting suckers to compete for an imaginary €10,000 prize. They would start by opening an XM broker account and deposit funds.
Actually, bringing these brokers onboard is a new twist that serves to confuse the financially naive as I found out that no brokers were involved.
Now, based on their business plan and “trading experience”, the vendor believes that they can help us invest automatically — meaning we just have to deposit the minimum amount required and profits can be generated on auto-pilot.
At this point, I am curious to know whether their copy trading will be as profitable as portrayed on their website.
I therefore embarked on thorough background investigations and to my surprise, I found a can of worms.
The displayed profits from their supposed traders is mere financial puffery. The investment charlatans who run LiveTrades.com use this allure of fake returns to insult your intelligence.
They pitch tent on Google with fake positive reviews. How do they obtain good reviews anway?
Well, kickbacks is the answer. Websites like Trustpilot are known for this. And scammers continue to lure suckers into their marketing funnel, ultimately convincing them to deposit amounts ranging from €500 to €25,000.
The scammers are clever. Once their game is basted, they abandon ship or kill the website in favor of a new project.
It is a wash, rinse and repeat, every year!
Live Trades Account Types, Fees and Fake ROI
They are dishonest and pathetic. They put up ridicilous performance claims on their website. They lie that investors will be treated to expensive vacation stays, yacht rides and even gifted with luxurious cars.
All of this pomp and glam is created by a silver-tongue investment marketer. The content looks like below:
- The copy trading investment opportunity is for traders with no experience.
- LiveTrades.com has also provided a section labeled “top traders to copy”. One of the traders being advertised here has an average return of +333.29%.
- Authenticate trading results from some of their best traders.
- LiveTrades.com has account types suitable for seasoned investors. This would require at least €25000.
- All accounts will be converted to USD/USDT.
- For the self-trading customers, the company is supposedly going to provide the following trading conditions.
- 1.Leverage of 1:500
- 2.Spreads of 0.1 – 1.0
- 3.Flat rate withdrawal fee of €25
- Investors who choose self trading accounts are not entitled to access any trading strategy.
- As for the managed accounts, which require a minimum deposit of a least €3000, investors of Live Trades will be treated to all kinds of benefits ranging from low spreads, zero withdrawal fees to free monthly subscription.
Inside Live Trades Trading platform
I was able to sign up into their “trading platform” for purposes of writing this review.
I discovered a customized user interface where clients could access market summary and charts but not execute any trades by themselves.
At first, I thought the reason I could not place a trade was because I was signing up as a managed account customer instead of one that wanted a self-trading account.
To cut the long story short, this is sort of a trading simulator with third party data feed integrated therein.
There are many templates on sale today that provide this kind of thing to investment scammers.
I believe if I signed up as someone wanting to trade using my own skills, I would be presented with a dashboard that does not allow me to place trades either.
Unfortunately, LiveTrades has also put conditions where they prohibit arbitrage trading and hedging.
Occassionally, investment scammers want to sound legitimate, so they will put rules similar to those of a Forex broker.
The Conclusion
It can be tempting to ask whether Live Trades is regulated or not.
The truth is that they are not licensed, but their business model suggests that they accept deposits from investors.
ROIs are paid out of initial deposits. So if any payouts are going to be reported, these will have come from recycled funds, not trading.
This is how they used to run their business when they scammed people using BlueTrading.com and Worldmarkets.com.
Ultimately, history will repeat itself. Livetrades will eventually stop responding to their customers’ emails and close down with investor funds still intact.
I would like to hear your feedback regarding this matter. Thanks for reading.
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Hi,
so far I have sent 3 messages to this “so efficient 24/7 customer service” and have not received any answer.
Also this company is not registered in Iceland and has no office on Borgartun 27, Reykjavik.
same here, i have sent them 5 or 7 emails but no answer. thanks for the heads up.
I am trying to withdraw my funds but it’s still pending and they’re not responding.
You can’t withdraw funds from a scam!