Which is your best broker?

I hope such traders will be banned in future either!!!

guys, i am astonished by the lack of knowledge on this forum. so let me please help clarify so that this issue can be put to rest once and for all.

the question is: ‘Which is your best broker?’

the question should be: ‘How do you determine which broker is best?’

FACT1: the majority of retail traders will lose everything.

FACT2: a brokerage is a business, therefore not a charity, therefore exists for one reason only: NOT TO HELP YOU, BUT TO MAKE MONEY FOR THE BROKERAGE.

FACT3: knowing FACT1, many brokers are tempted to pocket the client losses as a profit for the broker instead of passing the orders straight through to the LPs and let someone else make the profit.

knowing all this, the ANSWER is:

[B]—>[/B] A BROKER THAT WILL NOT BE TEMPTED TO POCKET THE PROFIT COMING FROM ITS CLIENTS’ LOSSES KNOWING THAT MOST OF ITS CLIENTS WILL LOSE ANYWAY [B]<—[/B]

so whether the broker offers an ECN venue or not, whether it is STP or not, is all irrelevant because underneath, the broker software keeps track of statistics on all its clients. this helps the broker categorize its clients and decide which client should be on the B-book (market maker model) and which client should be on the A-book (agency model, also sometimes DMA model but DMA could be implemented differently than the agency model, but either way, the broker is never the counterpart to your trades, whereas it is in the B-book model; now, you can have ECN brokers that have to be the counterpart to each of your trades (for hedging purposes and/or legal requirements between them and their prime broker who is extending the credit lines to your broker so that you and other retail trader can trade) but will not act as a market maker; so you see, you can have ECN with thee also broker the counterpart to all your trades, in which case the question becomes: will the broker be tempted?)

so if you can determine whether your broker will be tempted, then you will know. if you cannot, then you will not know if they trade against you. unless, of course, they tell you in the legal documents.

also, having the broker on the other side of the trade does not mean it is a problem. it becomes a problem if the broker becomes tempted to cheat you because they lose too much money and don’t have a way to hedge the trade risk.

so there are market makers who will not cheat the client. instead, once they realize their clients become to good and win more than the broker, the broker will hedge this client risk with external LPs (liquidity providers) BUT if they do not have the software infrastructure or prime broker/bank relationships to access external LPs, then they cannot and will have to cheat the clients by manipulating the price feed to either trigger stop losses, margin calls, requotes, and so on.

now, i hope this whole issue is clear once and for all.

well, i had tried some of brokers , but i think only forexmart is suitable for me
no risk for 1st time tried them because their no deposit bonus, and they are regulated too
good fixed spreads, and great trading conditions with their zero spread account

I haven’t had problems with FreshForex. But I am very sure there are tons of best brokers out there, this is just my personal experince with this broker, you have your own experience with your broker!

please explain to me why would anyone want fixed spreads? that’s not how the real market behaves.

how long have you been with them?

also, i was going to but didn’t have time yet, to read their legal docs. i assume you have. does it say anything about where they source their liquidity from? Integral? LMAX? Fortex? etc…

also this is the 3rd broker i notice is located in St-vincent and the Grenadines: the other 2 being OctaFX and Tallinex.

any concern with how FF or the others might be regulated considering how friendly Caribbean islands are to creative banking structures?

In periods of high volatility and low liquidity when the spread can grow very big, maybe its better to have fixed to a stable number?

PS: The best broker is the broker you can actually make a withdrawal, here is my 18 000$ Skrill withdrawal from XM = my-18000-XM-withdrawal - Free & Detailed Image Hosting

LOL excellent. yes indeed. but i would add, the best broker is also a broker that does not manipulate the price feed when trading against you.

for ex, XM does not allow the trader to use AI code to decide when to enter or exit a trade —> a huge red flag right there.

also, you should read section 68.3 of XM’s Client Agreement where it basically says they might execute your trades at prices significantly different from the prices you saw on the quote feed and from the real market.

who in their right minds would want to trade with a broker like this?? do you believe they can stay honest?

for those who do not know: all B-book brokers, ie market maker brokers, trade against the clients. here is a list, by no means exhaustive—please note i also do include brokers using a hybrid model, that is, A-book and B-book, and who will move a trader from the B-book to the A-book once it becomes clear that this trader wins more than he loses:

AxiTrader
CMC
Dukascopy
eToro
Forex.com
FXCM
FXDD
FXFinPro
FXPro
GAIN Capital
IG
OANDA (but at least they are upfront about it and seem not to cheat even though they are a market maker)
Pepperstone
SAXO Bank
Silicon Markets
Swissquotes
TitanFX
XM

and the list goes on.

point is: most of them still B-book their clients: if you are puzzled, you should read the interview given by the CEO of FxPro last year after the SNB even in which he clearly states that to mitigate the risk of events such as the SNB de-peg, FxPro will be going back to a hybrid A/B-book business model from the agency only or A-book model they had before the SNB hit. if you understand these words, it’s all you need to know to understand how the retail industry operates.

now, the problem is not whether the broker uses B-book only, or A-book, or a mix of both.

the problem is that when the broker uses only B-book, ie market maker, will the temptation to take advantage of clients be too great to resist:

1- the broker does not flip the trade on to the real market and thus is not hedged, meaning that if your trade is making money, the broker is losing money. multiply by perhaps 100, 1000, or 10000 clients like that, and the broker will lose big and fast.

2- so if the broker does not have the will or the IT to hedge each client’s trade properly in the real market, then temptation arises; if they give in, the conflict of interest will manifest the following symptoms:

  • slowing down or freezing the price feed,
  • triggering SLs with price spikes that never occurred in the real market
  • triggering margin calls to totally kick the trader out of trades
  • freezing the platform, MT4, cTrader, Protrader, most platforms designed by firms catering to retail brokers because usually their service offering also includes a turnkey backend solution (ie server, etc) and the server piece of software let’s the broker control everything about what a client sees and can do–these capabilities are also available of course to firms catering to the professional crowd but they choose not to use it because professional traders have too much $, can get good lawyers and get the regulator on the broker’s ass much more easily that the small trader, and in the end, it is not worth losing such clients, so the prime brokers play nice (i am not addressing the HFT issue here as it would take too long to go in all the details of how this is getting as abused as it is on the equities market).

so in conclusion, i would say the best broker is the one that will not be tempted to control the platform and price feed against you because they don’t have the means to properly hedge their trades, or are just dishonest pure and simple.

so the solution is: how to eliminate any risk of such temptation?

as long as a B-book business structure is in place, even if there’s an A-book, then it is impossible to guarantee the broker will not cheat.

therefore, the only way to be sure is to do business with a broker:

1- that uses the agency model only, or A-book only

2- can provide trade tickets upon request, with the ticket showing all the trade information all the way to how the trade was fullfilled with the LP, so LP name and/or code and timestamps etc should all be included (look for brokers who use Harmony’s Traiana software on the backend)

3- that is well capitalized, beyond the strict minimum and therefore financially strong, that is, not at risk of going bankrupt at any time after you open an account with them

4- that forgave client negative balances last year in the aftermath of the SNB de-peg blood bath and more importantly, survived the event well and was able to handle the crisis properly as in executing client SLs at reasonable levels considering the situation: that was neither the case for IG, nor SAXO Bank; FXCM execution was better but look at how financially weak the event left that company, so much so that now i would hesitate to open an account with them as their future seems quite uncertain: Leucada might sell FXCM this year or next, and then who knows how that might affect business and therefore your account(s).

5- has many counterparty relationships with Prime Brokers, Prime of Primes, Tier 1 and Tier 2 banks, institutional ECNs (Integral, LMAX, FXAll, KCG Hotspot, EBS, Currennex, etc…) so that plenty of liquidity is always available at all times: read the legal docs of Dukascopy and find out who their counterparties and LPs are and compare that to other brokers, such as, for example, JFD Brokers, Invast, GlobalPrime, or Baxter-FX and see how limited one is vs the others.

all this has an impact on the quality of the execution your trades will receive.

so choosing a broker does not just come down to: spreads, commission, withdrawal speediness, funding options, or available instruments. that’s just the beginning. the points above are way more important in the long run.

finally, now that 80%+ of all trading on stock markets is algo trading, and this number is 20%+ on SPOT Forex and increasing, it will become important to see which broker will or already does offer a professional solution to those who want to switch from manual to algo trading.

hint —> professional algo trading is not writing MQL sripts for MT4. i don’t care if your EA makes you money for now.

if you are not using stats and math libraries as available in Python or R, you are not developing professional algos but some chickensh1t. ask yourself: do you think companies like Virtu or Renaissance Technologies or Citadel are able to make money day in/day out with their computers auto-trading because they use MT4’s MQL? they don’t and if you believe that, then you still have a lot to learn.

for those who want to learn, a good introduction to market structure and how the HFT firms game the equities market with their algos is the Nanex site. the founder, eric hunsader, has made available all his reports for free. it’s all there. good stuff to know as it also applies to the Forex market.

Etoro was once again down during the big whipsaw today. A very large number of traders complain on their personal walls about big losses because they were unable to control their trades or open new ones. Happens every time over there :s

Stay away from ATC Brokers, their American branch recently filed for bankruptcy. Does anyone know whether the British branch is reliable or not?

i am new in Forex and was looking a good broker or company to start trading. So i start searching at internet and found Investex company. I went to its website and read about it. I like its promotion where you can get 30% bonus at your first deposit with them.

I personally like IG Markets. They have a lot of instruments and they are properly regulated in the UK (they invented CFDs so they have quite good experience with it :wink:

***Actually joined baby pips just because of this post ***

This cracked me up. Summarizes all of the scammers and bull5*?t artists in the sector.

A Booking = Probably real ECN
B Booking = Fake scamming cretins

How will you know which is real which is fake? Only in places like this where real people speak, because even the brokers are told its true ECN to the banks assets… lied to by their own managers because it helps sales if the broker on the phone believes its true.

When actually its a market maker controlling you asset fluctuations. And will always end in whats “in the best interest of the company”

In case anyone didn’t pick up on it. THEY CONTROL THE CHARTS :slight_smile: :slight_smile: :slight_smile:

Standard business model: let the small deposits get withdrawals. Large deposits will never be returned.

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I like the metatrader platform so I also have account with activtrades…

^^^ Spam post. Promoting company. Not relevant to topic of discussion.

Hi All

This is Roman form Bangladesh I’m trading with Vistabrokers since 2015 and i feel proud to be a member with them,because there service is too friendly.no hazel withdraw and deposit time.there have too many languages supporter and i get support my native language supporter.I know that presently maximum broker have some problem but truly i didn’t face any problem yet.

Bhai
Good Luck to apnake

There seem to be some knowledgeable people in this thread, perhaps they can tell me how reliable Atom8 is as a broker? They claim to be ECN and they seem to be transparant. Anyone have any thoughts?

For me FreshForex is my best broker. They have the tightest Spreads, I like their flexible quantity, don’t charge commission on deposits, no slippage, and an excellent customer care service!