Gerchik & Co Review: Legit Broker or Just Another Scam?

Here is our Gerchik & Co review‌ — ‌a look at a company that modestly claims to offer “Everything You Need to Trade Forex.” Indeed, it highlights the well-known (within certain circles) name of its founder, claims to operate under full regulation (with an offshore license), and advertises attractive trading conditions (including leverage of up to 1:500). As you have probably guessed, we had no intention of taking these claims at face value. Instead, we conducted a thorough investigation of the broker to warn you if it turned out to be a fraudulent operation. Below, you will find the results of our research.

Does Gerchik & Co Show Any Risk Factors?

To be considered a legitimate broker trusted by clients, it is far from enough to promise order execution in 1 millisecond, zero trading costs, or access to more than 1,500 trading instruments. What matters far more is whether the company has official registration, a license to provide brokerage/dealing services, a solid operating history, and an impeccable reputation. That is exactly what we set out to verify in the first stage of this gerchik.co review.

A quick look at the official website immediately suggested that there was little need to question the company’s legal registration. It offers traders access to the MetaTrader 4 and MetaTrader 5 platforms, and we know that the developer’s policy does not allow unregistered legal entities to obtain this software. Moreover, the list of trading server owners contains all the necessary information, including the registered address and licensing details.

Incidentally, the website provides Gerchik & Co’s address in Vanuatu (in fact, two addresses: one for registration and one for its office). We found the corresponding entry in the country’s business registry.

The registry even includes a link to a scanned PDF copy of the company’s Articles of Association. Naturally, we reviewed it. The document specifies the registration number (40512), the registration date (August 30, 2018), and the company’s authorized business activities.

Since the company is incorporated as an International Company, it is not permitted to conduct business within Vanuatu itself. However, it is allowed to engage in almost any business activity outside the country, with the exception of trust, banking, and insurance services. That alone is not sufficient to legally provide brokerage services, although we are aware of many projects whose creators are not particularly concerned with such formalities.

However, the creators of this platform do not appear to disregard legal requirements. According to the register of the VFSC, Gerchik & Co has held a valid Financial Dealer license covering Classes A, B, and C since December 30, 2022.

Such a license authorizes the broker to trade Forex currency pairs and debt securities (Class A), commodity and stock market assets (Class B), and derivatives, including CFDs (Class C).

Important! The company’s website states that traders are offered 105 cryptocurrency CFDs. However, the Financial Dealers Licensing Act introduced an additional Class D license back in 2021, making it mandatory for any transactions involving digital assets. As we can see, the company does not hold a Class D license. At the same time, the VFSC interprets the distinction between license classes strictly: if any financial product (including non-deliverable CFD contracts) references cryptocurrency, the activity falls under Class D regulation.

It appears that the broker operates within the law, but only in those countries where a Vanuatu license (or, in some cases, any financial regulator’s license) is recognized as sufficient to provide brokerage services, or where no licensing is required at all. In all other jurisdictions, its operations are technically unauthorized. Nevertheless, the platform may still serve clients by relying on the Reverse Solicitation mechanism, provided this is not expressly prohibited by the laws of the client’s country of residence or citizenship.

For example, the company’s founder, Alex Gerchik, despite having lived in the United States for many years and even appearing in the 2006 television show “Wall Street Warriors,” where he was recognized as one of the “safest day traders,” clearly targets a Russian-speaking audience. This is evident from the language options available on the broker’s website. In Russia, however, the company is not legally authorized to provide brokerage services because it does not hold a license from the Central Bank of Russia. Moreover, it was added to the regulator’s blacklist in February 2021. Nevertheless, a Russian client may still trade through the platform if they open an account on their own initiative and at their own risk. It is also worth noting that even maintaining a Russian-language website and customer support may, under certain circumstances, be regarded as unlawful marketing.

In fact, traders everywhere should exercise caution. If Gerchik & Co does not hold a brokerage/dealer license in your country, you may still register and trade on your own initiative. However, you should remember that you will not be covered by any government compensation schemes, and your local financial regulator will be unable to protect your rights or interests — even if your funds are outright misappropriated. It is also important to remember that not all of the broker’s trading instruments fall within the scope of its current license.

The company’s history — or more precisely, its online activity — is also quite interesting. According to information obtained from the Vanuatu registries, the company was incorporated in August 2018 and received its financial license only in December 2022. This raises an obvious question: for approximately four and a half years, the company apparently operated without obtaining the necessary authorization. Was it providing brokerage services without a license during that entire period? To answer this question, we attempted to determine when the broker’s website first appeared online.

As the WHOIS records show, the gerchik.co domain was registered as early as 2015, well before the company itself even existed. However, snapshots available through the Web Archive demonstrate that the domain remained unused for quite some time. The first archived snapshot displaying the broker’s website dates back to April 11, 2021.

Incidentally, at that time, the company registered in Vanuatu did not display any local financial license (and, in fact, it still does not prominently display it today). Instead, it claimed that its clients’ interests were protected by The Financial Commission‌ — ‌a private self-regulatory organization (SRO) that continues to operate today and claims to resolve disputes between brokers and traders by paying compensation from contributions made by participating companies. In practice, however, the company was providing brokerage services without holding a financial license. Moreover, for the vast majority of its registered users, very little actually changed after the company eventually obtained its Vanuatu license.

In short, we can confidently conclude that the platform has been operating for more than five years — a respectable track record in the industry. However, throughout that time it has provided services either without a financial license or solely under the authorization of an offshore regulator. The company has never even attempted to obtain licenses from the world’s most reputable regulatory authorities, such as those in Europe, the United Kingdom, or Australia. While this may not necessarily affect the quality of its services, it speaks volumes about the level of client protection — or rather, the lack of it.

Despite having been in business for quite some time, the broker’s popularity remains relatively low. The first gerchik.co review on Trustpilot was published on January 21, 2020. It was followed by only a couple of additional comments before activity stopped entirely until 2025. It is possible that the company initially attempted to build its reputation through sponsored reviews, later abandoned the effort, and resumed it only recently. Overall, just 13 reviews over five years create the impression that very few people worldwide are even familiar with the broker.

At the same time, WikiFX indicates that the broker has a fairly broad geographical presence. It is worth noting, however, that the majority of its clients appear to come from countries of the former Soviet Union. This may explain the limited number of Trustpilot reviews, as these traders tend to share their opinions on regional websites instead of international review platforms.

WikiFX assigned the project a relatively high score of 4.7 out of 10, which not many brokers receive. Nevertheless, the platform also warns users that the company is regulated in an offshore jurisdiction, meaning that client protection is minimal‌ — ‌or, more accurately, nonexistent.

Let’s Break Down the Jurisdiction

Several years ago, Vanuatu was widely regarded as a low-cost offshore jurisdiction where countless second-tier and outright scam brokers registered their companies, obtained licenses from the local regulator VFSC, and marketed themselves as regulated financial institutions. However, the Financial Dealers Licensing Act [CAP 70], substantially amended in 2021, significantly tightened the regulatory framework governing Financial Dealers and effectively put an end to the jurisdiction’s reputation as a safe haven for fraudulent brokers.

Today, obtaining a license from the Vanuatu Financial Services Commission (VFSC) requires the following:

• A genuine physical office with leased premises, an archive system, financial software, and basic operational infrastructure. Virtual offices are explicitly prohibited.
• A local Resident Manager or Director. At least one director or other senior executive must reside in Vanuatu for no fewer than six months each year.
• Qualified personnel. Senior management and AML officers must possess relevant professional qualifications and at least five years of verifiable experience in the financial markets.
• A mandatory security deposit of 5,000,000 VUV (approximately USD 42,000–45,000) held in a dedicated VFSC account. These funds remain frozen for the entire duration of the license as security for the company’s obligations.
• Regular quarterly financial reporting demonstrating that the company maintains sufficient capital to process client orders and meet its financial obligations.
• Professional Indemnity Insurance with a minimum coverage of 5 million VUV (Gerchik & Co does not even mention whether it holds such a policy).
• Segregation of client funds, requiring customer assets to be held in bank accounts separate from the broker’s own operational funds and maintained with reliable banking institutions.

In practice, the current licensing requirements are now comparable to those imposed by top-tier financial regulators. Licenses are divided into four classes (as discussed above). Moreover, VFSC Public Notice No. 5 of 2024 introduced the principle of “license layering.” Under this system, it is no longer possible to obtain a Class C license on its own‌ — ‌a company must first hold both Class A and Class B licenses. Likewise, obtaining a Class D license requires the company to already possess Classes A, B, and C.

However, while the regulatory requirements have become significantly stricter, trading conditions remain largely unrestricted. For example, brokers are free to offer virtually any level of leverage regardless of whether a client is classified as retail or professional. They are also free to set their own spreads, swap rates, and other trading conditions.

As a result, obtaining authorization to operate as a broker or dealer has become considerably more difficult. Nevertheless, once licensed, a company is still under no obligation to protect clients from excessive trading risks and may continue offering conditions under which traders can wipe out their deposits within just a few transactions.

What Does the Gerchik.co Website Reveal?

For some reason, we expected the website of an established broker to look rather different from this company’s official site. The first thing that caught our attention was its remarkably simple design. This is not necessarily a flaw in itself, but we would still expect the pages to look polished rather than resembling a testing environment. Key information about the company, its operations, and its services should be clearly highlighted, and a more logical content structure would certainly improve the user experience.

We have very few complaints about the content itself. The website contains a considerable amount of useful information for both prospective and existing Gerchik & Co clients. That said, there are a few oddities. For example, the List of Assets page displays unusually high Margin Percentage values‌ — ‌for Forex pairs, they range from 100 to 150. Either we misunderstand what the company means by “Margin Percentage,” or whoever prepared the tables incorrectly converted leverage into this metric.

In some cases, the website provides even more information than necessary. For instance, the Legals page includes not only a copy of the company’s VFSC licensing document but also a certificate issued by the FSC of Mauritius to Gerchik & Co MU Limited in 2021. It is unclear why this document is presented here if brokerage services are provided by Gerchik & Co LEB, the entity registered in Vanuatu. Is the Mauritian company also involved in operating the broker? If so, why is this relationship not disclosed on the official website or in legal documents such as the Customer Agreement?

We have already mentioned the website’s organizational issues. For example, information about trading accounts is scattered across four separate pages. In our opinion, this is excessive and makes it more difficult, rather than easier, for potential clients to familiarize themselves with the broker’s offerings.

Overall, the website is reasonably well done. However, after more than five years of operating online, the broker could certainly have invested in making it more convenient, more polished, and more visually appealing. Then again, if the company’s founder — with more than twenty years of experience in the financial markets‌ — ‌is satisfied with the current result, perhaps we are simply expecting too much.

The registration process is also typical of an offshore broker. There is no collection of excessive personal information, no unnecessary questionnaires, and no suitability assessments (the regulator does not require client categorization or restrict access to high-risk financial instruments). Interestingly, users must complete full identity verification before they can fund their accounts and begin trading. This is somewhat unusual for companies registered in Vanuatu, as most of them request identity documents only when the client submits their first withdrawal request.

However, despite these seemingly proper procedures, Gerchik & Co still fails to comply with certain legal requirements. The company accepts deposits in both fiat currencies and cryptocurrencies, despite not being authorized as a provider of digital asset services.

Furthermore, cryptocurrency transactions directly conflict with modern AML principles because they do not allow the company to reliably identify either the sender or the true origin of the funds. That said, this is hardly unusual in offshore jurisdictions, where very few brokers appear to pay much attention to such issues.

Is the Broker Offering Fair or Risky Terms for Traders?

The broker’s presentation of its trading conditions clearly demonstrates that the people behind Gerchik & Co have practical trading experience. They understand that only newcomers choose a broker without paying attention to account features and contract specifications. More experienced traders evaluate these details very carefully. That is why the broker’s website provides virtually all of the information a trader might need.

The logical place to begin is with the descriptions of the available account types. For Forex and CFD trading, the broker offers two options:

• Zero — minimum deposit of USD/EUR 10, spreads starting from 1.0 pip, and zero commissions.
• Premium — minimum deposit of USD/EUR 3,000, zero spreads, but a trading commission of $8 per lot (for Forex pairs).

Both account types support trading through MetaTrader 4 and MetaTrader 5, offer maximum leverage of 1:500, a minimum trade size of 0.01 lot, and Margin Call/Stop Out levels of 100%/50%. Leverage, contract size, price increment, and swap rates for long and short positions vary depending on the selected instrument. Complete contract specifications can be found on the List of Assets page, which effectively serves as the broker’s full contract specification document, with spreads being the only major parameter omitted.

Note! The broker’s owners are somewhat misleading when they advertise zero commissions on the Zero account. In reality, commissions are waived only for Forex currency pairs. Trades involving all other asset classes are still subject to commissions. The applicable fees can be found on the Commissions page under the For Trader section of the website.

The leverage policy is also noteworthy. The maximum leverage of 1:500 is available only to clients whose account balance does not exceed $1,000. As account balances increase, leverage is gradually reduced. For example: up to $3,000 — 1:400, $10,000–100,000 — 1:200, over $100,000 — 1:100.

The reasoning is understandable: wealthier clients are exposed to lower maximum risk, while traders with larger deposits are also prevented from opening excessively large positions and generating correspondingly larger profits. At the same time, traders with relatively small account balances are permitted to use extremely high leverage and assume substantially greater risks.

The broker’s representatives would no doubt argue that a trader who applies proper risk management can preserve capital and remain profitable even with leverage as high as 1:500. We would probably agree with that statement. However, two obvious questions remain. First, how many of the broker’s clients actually follow strict risk management principles or make use of the risk management tools offered by the company? Second, how many of those clients have already lost their deposits‌ — ‌and how long did those deposits actually last?

It is also worth noting that Gerchik & Co offers trading in U.S. stocks (rather than CFDs) through a separate website at https://gerchik-stocks.com/, which is linked from the header of the gerchik.co website. Its single page contains the complete trading conditions, primarily focusing on commission rates. Notably, traders are offered relatively high leverage for stock trading — 1:20 or 1:30, depending on the selected account type‌ — ‌and the company emphasizes that clients are eligible to receive dividends. However, it does not disclose which U.S. executing or clearing brokers it works with, whether ownership rights to purchased securities are formally registered, or other important details that investors would normally expect to see.

The company also offers several additional products, including proprietary trading, available to clients who successfully complete a two-stage evaluation process, and TIMA investment accounts, which essentially allow investors to place their funds under the management of another trader. In short, Gerchik & Co appears willing to generate revenue through virtually every available business model. Whether its clients are equally successful in making money, however, is a much more difficult question to answer conclusively.

Technical Support Analysis of Gerchik & Co

The broker provides a fairly extensive range of contact options for its clients. The website lists:

• An email address.
• A registered office address in Vanuatu.
• Telephone numbers in the United Kingdom, Latvia, and Ukraine.

Interestingly, the broker does not provide a telephone number in Vanuatu. That said, we have little doubt that the office there exists primarily as a formality. Apart from the local personnel required for licensing purposes, it is unlikely that any actual company representatives can be found there. It is far more likely that Gerchik & Co employees are based in Kyiv, London, and Vilnius, where other legal entities owned by the same group are registered.

Users can also contact the broker via live chat, Messenger, Telegram, and Instagram. One detail amused us in particular: the contact page still lists a Skype account, suggesting that nobody has reviewed or updated this section of the website for at least a couple of years.

The company has no shortage of social media profiles. For example, its Telegram channel was created on October 26, 2016, while its YouTube channel appeared in September 2015. The only issue is that the company itself did not yet exist at either of those times.