The question the market is actually pricing on TMGM is not whether the broker is regulated. It is which of its four regulators a retail client actually ends up dealing with. TMGM answers that question on its own website, in a place most readers never open: the trading-conditions page, where the leverage column is headed "VFSC Leverage (Fixed)" and the note above it reads "Countries: All countries under VFSC's regulation". The 1:1000 ceiling that the account pages advertise is a Vanuatu product, issued by a company that has held its licence since December 2022. The Sydney address in the footer, the Australian phone number and the AFSL from 2013 belong to a different company under a different rulebook, and that rulebook caps a retail client's leverage on a major currency pair at 30:1 and on gold at 20:1. Neither page says so, and both are served from one domain, in one template, to the same reader.
Here is the part no comparison table carries. TMGM serves that account page in twenty language and region variants, linked from the page itself, and the European variant has been stripped. Fetched side by side at 07:45 UTC on 25 September 2026, tmgm.com/en/trading/account-types lists "Leverage up to 1:1000" inside both the EDGE and CLASSIC account cards and carries a Leverage row in the comparison table. The en-eu version of the same page has every one of those lines removed, while the commission figures, the minimum deposit, the 20% stop-out and the entity disclosures in the footer are byte-for-byte identical. The leverage claim is geo-targeted. The disclosure underneath it is not.
Key facts, each with its source
- EDGE account commission is $7 USD per round turn on FX and $5 USD per round turn on precious metals, on MT4 and MT5 — TMGM account types page, retrieved 25 September 2026.
- Maximum leverage of 1:1000 applies to "All countries under VFSC's regulation", on MT4 Live 2 to Live 12 and MT5 servers — TMGM trading conditions page, retrieved 25 September 2026.
- ASIC caps retail CFD leverage at 30:1 on a major pair and 20:1 on gold, under an order running to 23 May 2027 — ASIC releases 20-254MR and 22-082MR.
- Trademax Australia Limited holds AFSL 436416 from 21 May 2013; Trademax Global Limited holds VFSC licence 40356 from 22 December 2022 — ASIC dataset afs_lic_202609 and the VFSC licensee list, retrieved 25 September 2026.
- Swap-free accounts pay $2.00 per lot per night on the seven major FX pairs and $20.00 per lot per night on gold, silver and platinum — TMGM swap-free terms, retrieved 25 September 2026.
- Gold CFDs were about 80% of a record USD 3 trillion monthly volume in March 2026 — TMGM press release, 23 April 2026.
- Financial Commission cover is €20,000 per complaint, about US$22,734 at the ECB euro reference rate for 24 September 2026 of 1.1367 — member page, retrieved 25 September 2026.
Four licences, one legal library
Start at the registers rather than the broker. The ASIC AFS Licensee dataset on data.gov.au, file afs_lic_202609, downloaded this morning, returns one match: TRADEMAX AUSTRALIA LIMITED, AFS licence 436416, ACN 162 331 311, Barangaroo NSW 2000, licence start 21 May 2013. The authorisations run to issuing and dealing in derivatives and FX contracts for retail and wholesale clients, custodial services, and the line worth reading twice: "Make a market for a financial product" in both derivatives and foreign exchange contracts. That is permission to be the counterparty, not a broker passing orders on.
The Vanuatu entity checks out too, on a shorter history. The VFSC Financial Dealers Licensee List retrieved on 25 September 2026 carries 66 active names. One row reads: 22-Dec-22, company number 40356, Trademax Global Limited, classes A, B and C, Active. The Seychelles FSA capital markets register lists Trademax Global Markets (SE) Limited, trade name TMGM, at Providence Estates Abis Centre, Mahé. The Mauritius licence GB22201012 appears in TMGM's own footer.
Two things follow from that. The "Since 2013" badge on the account page is carried by the Australian licence; the entity that actually sets the headline leverage has held its licence since the end of 2022. And the legal documents page tells the same story more bluntly. TMGM's legal document library on the English site lists nine documents — client agreement, risk warning, conflicts policy, best execution, complaints, hedging counterparty policy, swap-free terms and two others. Every one of them sits under a single heading: "Trademax Global Limited - Vanuatu Entity". There is no Australian product disclosure statement, no financial services guide, no Seychelles or Mauritius set. The page says the applicable documents "will be made clear during the application process", which means the contract you are actually offered is not readable before you apply.
A note on method for the United Kingdom. The FCA Financial Services Register at register.fca.org.uk cannot be read by an automated client here: the request returns a 394 KB Salesforce Lightning shell titled "NewRegister", with bootstrap script and no register records. TMGM does not claim an FCA authorisation, and Companies House, which does fetch normally, corroborates the absence. Searches for both "Trademax" and "TMGM" on 25 September 2026 return no active UK company belonging to this group; the nearest name match, TMGM LTD (company 14875344, Cardiff), was dissolved on 6 January 2026 and is unconnected. Trustpilot, which TMGM cites on its own account page as 4.4/5, blocks automated clients and is not cited here.
What a lot costs, and whose lot it is
TMGM runs two retail accounts. EDGE is raw pricing from 0.0 pips with commission; CLASSIC is spreads from 1.0 pips with no commission. Both run on MT4 and MT5, carry a $100 minimum deposit and a 20% stop-out, and are quoted at up to 1:1000 on the English page. On the EDGE account the commission is $7 USD per round turn on FX, which is $3.50 a side, and $5 USD per round turn on precious metals, which is $2.50 a side.
That FX number is neither cheap nor expensive. It is the modal price of the offshore raw account. Every peer figure below came from that broker's own live page on 25 September 2026, and each is priced by an offshore entity on a global domain, exactly as TMGM's is.
| Broker and account | Entity pricing the page | FX, round turn | Gold, round turn |
|---|---|---|---|
| TMGM EDGE (MT4/MT5) | Trademax Global Limited, VFSC 40356 | $7.00 | $5.00 |
| IC Markets Raw Spread (MT4/MT5) | Raw Trading Ltd, Seychelles FSA SD018 | $7.00 | not stated on the page |
| Pepperstone Razor | Pepperstone Markets Limited, Bahamas SIA-F217 | $7.00 | $7.00 |
| Tickmill Raw | Tickmill Ltd, Seychelles (site default) | $6.00 | $6.00 |
| BlackBull ECN Prime | BBG Limited, Seychelles FSA SD045 | $6.00 | not stated on the page |
| GO Markets GO Plus+ (USD base) | GO Markets Pty Ltd (MU), Mauritius GB 19024896 | $5.00 | commission-free |
Two of those numbers deserve a footnote, because base currency changes them. GO Markets sets a different native rate per account currency: US$2.50 a side on a USD account, but AU$3.00 a side on an Australian dollar account. At the ECB euro reference rate set for 24 September 2026, which was still the latest published fix at the time of writing at 1.4232 Australian dollars to the US dollar, that AU$6.00 round turn is US$4.22 — about 16% below the same broker's USD-account price for the identical trade. TMGM sets its commission in US dollars and converts, which is simpler and, on these rates, worse for AUD clients.
The metals column is where TMGM is genuinely the cheapest of the six. At $5.00 a round-turn lot it undercuts Pepperstone's Razor gold commission by $2.00 and Tickmill's precious metals rate by $1.00. Our reviews of Pepperstone, IC Markets and BlackBull Markets set out how each structures the same charge, and FxPro shows the disclosure problem in a different shape.
Gold is the business, and gold is where the small print lives
In a press release dated 23 April 2026 TMGM said it recorded roughly USD 3 trillion of volume in March 2026, its highest month, with gold CFDs about 80% of it. Read the rest of the site with that in mind and the emphasis changes: this is a gold house that also offers FX.
The gold page opens with the sentence "Trade gold with up to 1:1000 leverage, tight spreads, and zero commissions." The phrase "zero commissions" is true of the CLASSIC account. It is not true of EDGE, which the account page prices at $5 USD per round turn on metals, and the gold page names no account type. Same site, two pages, two answers.
The leverage on that page is not a constant either. TMGM's trading conditions set out standing reductions: an hour before the Friday close gold drops to 1:50 and oils to 1:10; an hour before the Monday to Thursday close gold is capped at 1:200; and from fifteen minutes before to five minutes after major releases including non-farm payrolls, CPI and FOMC, the same 1:200 cap applies to new gold positions. A trader who sizes from the headline number and meets the real one at 22:00 on a Friday has a margin problem, not a pricing one.
The swap-free account matters disproportionately given where TMGM's volume comes from. In place of swaps it charges a flat administration fee. On AUD/USD, EUR/USD, GBP/USD, NZD/USD, USD/CAD, USD/CHF and USD/JPY that fee is $2.00 per lot per night. On XAU/USD, XAG/USD and XPT/USD it is $20.00. Ten times the major-pair rate, on the instrument that is four-fifths of the order flow. New accounts get a five-day grace period, and non-USD accounts have the fee converted at the prevailing rate. A swap-free gold position held for a fortnight costs $280 a lot in administration fees before spread and before the $5 commission.
The 2024 stop orders, and what ASIC found across the sector
On 23 May 2024 ASIC made two interim stop orders against Trademax Australia Limited, preventing it from opening trading accounts or dealing in CFDs or margin FX to retail investors. The regulator's concern was the onboarding questionnaire, which in ASIC's words "did not adequately enquire into the prospective clients' financial situation, risk tolerance and investment objectives" and had "significant design flaws, including warning messages prompting clients to review their answers, allowing prospective clients to submit alternative responses so they would meet the target markets". The orders were extended on 13 June 2024 and lifted from 25 June 2024. Existing clients could always close positions.
ASIC's Report 828, "Risky business", published 20 January 2026, reviewed 52 licensed CFD issuers between October 2024 and December 2025. TradeMax Australia Limited is on the Appendix 1 list of reviewed issuers, alongside IG, Pepperstone, OANDA, GO Markets and most of the industry. ASIC flagged that some issuers "used ASIC regulation and compliance with obligations as a marketing tool either on their Australian website or on offshore related entity websites", and that remediation included "making changes to the websites of offshore affiliated entities to remove misleading statements which suggested that the products issued by the offshore entity were subject to Australian regulation". One issuer amended almost 1,000 webpages.
ASIC does not say TMGM was one of them, and neither do we. What it establishes is that the regulator now treats the gap between an Australian licence and an offshore product page as a supervisory problem, not a marketing quirk. Commissioner Simone Constant put the underlying economics plainly when the report landed: "These are complex, high-risk products, where most investors face losses, and even profitable trades can be entirely eroded by trading costs," she said in ASIC's media release 26-004MR. The sector arithmetic behind that sentence: in the 2024 financial year 68% of retail CFD investors lost money, more than $458 million in total, of which $73 million was fees.
The leverage cap itself is not going away before the middle of 2027. Announcing the five-year extension in April 2022, Cathie Armour, then a Commissioner at the Australian Securities and Investments Commission, said the extension "will ensure that the leverage ratio limits and other protections can continue to reduce the size and speed of retail clients' CFD losses", in media release 22-082MR. The order runs to 23 May 2027. Anyone onboarded to Trademax Australia Limited gets 30:1 on EUR/USD and 20:1 on gold until then, whatever the front page says.
Where the money sits if something goes wrong
TMGM's regulatory supervision page makes three protection claims. Client funds are held in an Australian authorised deposit-taking institution with an AA rating, named as National Australia Bank, described as an obligation "under our licence". Professional indemnity cover is quoted at up to AUD 10 million per claim, arranged through an insurance partner. And Trademax Global Limited, the Vanuatu company, is a member of the Financial Commission.
The third is the one to size. The Financial Commission's member page for TMGM, retrieved on 25 September 2026, shows registration on 22 September 2022, status Active, and a compensation fund of €20,000 per complaint. Converted at the ECB euro reference rate published for 24 September 2026, 1.1367 US dollars to the euro, that is US$22,734. It is real external dispute resolution, capped at a level that covers a retail argument about a stop-out and does not cover a failure. An Australian client of the AFSL entity has a statutory route through the Australian Financial Complaints Authority instead; AFCA's current compensation caps could not be retrieved for this piece, because afca.org.au returns 403 to automated clients.
RelatedFOREX.com Review 2026: The 10% Interest Rate Stops at $20,000
One smaller inconsistency sits on the page most prospective clients read first. The account types page states a $100 minimum deposit twice, then answers its own FAQ with "TMGM does not require a minimum deposit, so you can start with an amount that suits your trading strategy." The deposit page lists method minimums from $50 to $1,000, with zero fees on every method shown.
The verdict: who this broker fits, and on what evidence
TMGM earns 3 out of 5 here, and the score is a blend, not a compromise. The licences are real and checkable at four registers. The commission is mid-pack on FX at $7 a round-turn lot and the best of the six compared houses on metals at $5. Deposits and withdrawals carry no broker fee. The Australian entity's market-making authorisation is on the public register rather than hidden, and the segregation and insurance arrangements are stated with specifics rather than adjectives.
What pulls it down is that the offer a reader sees and the entity a reader gets are described in different places and never in the same sentence. The 1:1000 headline belongs to a Vanuatu company licensed in December 2022. The only client agreement published in English belongs to that same company. The Sydney tower, the AFSL from 2013 and the NAB account belong to a different company operating under a 30:1 cap, and that company was stop-ordered by its own regulator in May 2024 over how it decided who was allowed in.
On that evidence, the broker suits a non-Australian, self-directed trader who has already decided that an offshore counterparty is acceptable, who trades gold or metals in size where the $5 round turn and the 24-hour metals session are worth real money, and who will read the Vanuatu client agreement before funding rather than after. It fits poorly for anyone whose reason for shortlisting TMGM was the word ASIC, because the ASIC entity is not what the English site sells. It fits poorly for a swap-free gold trader holding for weeks, where $20 a lot a night dominates every other cost. And it fits poorly for a European Union resident: the en-eu page carries no EU-authorised entity, only the same four non-EU licences with the leverage claims removed.
Frequently asked questions
Which TMGM entity will I actually be a client of?
It depends on residency and is decided during the application. The English site publishes only the Vanuatu entity's client agreement and prices its product schedule under "VFSC Leverage (Fixed)", which indicates Trademax Global Limited is the default counterparty outside Australia. Australian residents deal with Trademax Australia Limited under AFSL 436416, which is bound by ASIC's 30:1 retail cap on major currency pairs.
Is the 1:1000 leverage available everywhere?
No. TMGM's trading conditions restrict it to "All countries under VFSC's regulation", on MT4 servers Live 2 to Live 12 and on MT5. Gold and oil leverage is cut further around the daily and weekly closes and around major data releases, to 1:200 and 1:50 respectively, and to 1:50 on gold in the hour before the Friday close.
What does one standard lot actually cost on the EDGE account?
Commission is $7 USD per round turn on FX and $5 USD per round turn on precious metals, quoted on the account types page retrieved 25 September 2026, on top of a spread starting at 0.0 pips. The CLASSIC account charges no commission and starts from 1.0 pips instead. Both are MT4 and MT5 and both take a $100 minimum deposit.
Has TMGM been subject to regulatory action?
Yes, in Australia. ASIC made two interim design and distribution stop orders against Trademax Australia Limited on 23 May 2024 over an inadequate onboarding questionnaire, extended them on 13 June and lifted them from 25 June 2024. The company appears in ASIC's Report 828 list of 52 CFD issuers reviewed between October 2024 and December 2025.
What dispute resolution covers a TMGM account?
The Vanuatu entity is a Financial Commission member, registered 22 September 2022, with a compensation fund of €20,000 per complaint, about US$22,734 at the ECB reference rate for 24 September 2026. Australian clients of the AFSL entity instead have access to the statutory external dispute resolution scheme that an Australian financial services licence requires.
This article is analysis, not financial advice. It reports pricing, licensing and disclosure as published by the named companies and regulators on the dates stated, and those terms change without notice. CFDs are leveraged products, most retail accounts lose money trading them, and your capital is at risk.