Questions to Ask Before Registering With a Market Platform
You are allowed to interview them. Twelve questions, the answers worth accepting, and what a bad answer actually means.
Registering with an online market service usually takes ninety seconds and feels like nothing. It is, in practice, the moment you hand over your contact details and agree to be contacted. It is worth spending five minutes first.
Below are the questions we would ask. You can send them by email and judge the reply. A service that answers them plainly is telling you something useful; a service that will not is telling you something even more useful.
About the organisation
- What is the exact legal entity name, and where is it established? A brand name is not an answer. If you cannot get an entity name, stop.
- What licence do you hold, with which regulator, and what does it cover? Then look it up on the regulator’s own register yourself. Beware the phrase operates within applicable regulatory frameworks, which means nothing at all.
- Are you the party that will hold my money and execute my orders, or is that someone else? If it is someone else, ask for that party’s name and licence too.
About what happens to your details
- Who will contact me, how, and how often?
- Will my details be passed to any other organisation? Which ones? If the answer is yes, that is not automatically bad — it is how introduction services work — but you are entitled to know before, not after.
- How do I withdraw my details and stop contact? A one-line answer with an email address is a good sign.
About money
- What is the full cost schedule, in writing? Spreads, commissions, overnight financing, currency conversion, payment charges, inactivity fees. No hidden fees is a slogan; a document is a schedule.
- Is there a minimum deposit, and am I required to fund anything to continue talking to you? Being pushed to deposit early is one of the clearest warning signs there is.
- How do withdrawals work, what verification is needed, and how long do they take? Anyone who guarantees a withdrawal timeframe they do not control is guessing.
About the product and the risk
- Is the product leveraged? What is the maximum leverage and is there negative balance protection?
- What exactly does your technology do — does it analyse, or does it place orders? If it places orders, ask who is responsible for its decisions and how you switch it off.
- How are complaints handled, and are you a member of an external dispute resolution scheme? Get the scheme name in writing.
What a bad answer looks like. Long, warm and non-specific. Reassurance instead of documents. An offer to explain it all on a call rather than in writing. A change of subject to how much you could make. Any of those on a question of fact should end the conversation.
Three things that should stop you immediately
- A guaranteed return, win rate or AI accuracy figure. No honest service offers one.
- Urgency. Countdown timers, closing today, limited places, prices rising at midnight. Urgency exists to stop you doing exactly what you are doing now.
- Requests for a password, card details, a wallet key, or remote access to your device. There is no legitimate version of this.
Our own answers
It would be poor form to publish this list without answering it ourselves, so briefly: Murray Capholm is an AI-assisted market intelligence and guided onboarding service. We do not hold an Australian Financial Services Licence, we do not hold client money, we do not place trades and we do not give personal financial advice. We ask for your name, email and mobile number, and we contact you about your enquiry. Where the purpose of your enquiry is an introduction, your details may be passed to the relevant participating provider and we will tell you which one. We charge you nothing. You can ask us to delete your details at any time by emailing us.
The rest is in the FAQ, and the process is set out step by step on how it works. If we have missed something you want to know, ask us.
In summary
- Ask for the legal entity name and check the licence on the regulator’s own register.
- Find out who will hold your money and who will contact you, before you register.
- Get the full fee schedule in writing; a slogan is not a schedule.
- Guaranteed returns, urgency and requests for credentials should end the conversation.
- A service that answers factual questions in writing is telling you something valuable.
Happy to be asked all twelve. Register your interest with Murray Capholm, or email us the questions first — both are fine.