EFX Group_Introduction

Hello Everyone,

This is Justin LeBlang from EFX Group.

I am not here to promote EFX Group, but rather invite anyone who has questions to ask them. I look forward to hearing from you soon.

Sincerely,

Hi Justin,

I tried to use your system but it seemed me a difficult. I can not purchase euros or dollars before doing this I have to fill some blanks on every trade. and second there is no live chat means if someone have problem can contact instantly. Third there is no charts in your system. Would you please explain you are behind as compare to other brokers, for example FOREX.COM, they have live chat, they have charts that help to their customers…Hope you will explain. Fourth I tried MBtrading as well, you both are using the same software this also I could not understand…If you do not want to answer here you can reply me here <[email protected]>…I think you can better explain about your system…

Hello wasim ~

Thank you for your post, I hope you find my response helpful.

  1. I’m not quite sure what you mean by ‘fill some blanks on every trade’?

Have you had a chance to watch one of our recorded webinar’s that I hosted; this will offer you a complete walk-through of our trading station.

Here is the link for the webinars; http://www.efxgroup.com/events.php.

  1. Chat services are available through the Navigator under the tab ‘Navigate and Support’.

  2. Charting is now available through Intellicharts � advanced FOREX charts featuring the EFX Datafeed.

There are two available options for traders;

[ul]
[li]Online application � EFX Clients $25.00 (non EFX $50.00) a month
[/li]
[li]Desktop Version � EFX Clients $50.00 (non EFX $100.00) a month
[/li][/ul]
Click here for more info: http://efx.tradesecuring.com/Misc/EFX.asp

  1. EFX is the arm of MB that specializes in Forex. MB Trading offers all asset classes (stocks, options, futures, Forex) and thus offers software solutions that suit traders for all markets. Many of the owners of MB also own EFX, but EFX is set up to train people that are largely Forex-only traders.

� MB and EFX both use the same execution technology and pricing.

� Both have the same Help Desk for off-hours support.

� Both EFX and MB have the Navigator software as a front-end option.

� Only EFX has the Forex Pro software as a front-end option.

� EFX�s daytime help desk and on-line tutorials are designed to help you learn how to use our platforms. We�ll spend as much time as possible walking you through how to trade on the system.

� Any upgrades to the overall execution platform that MB implements will also apply to EFX.

� EFX may add software upgrades, new front-end, or even advanced Forex-only order routing via our front ends that MB may never offer.

That�s pretty much the way to look at it.

I hope you find this helpful. I am actually going to follow this post up with another that I wrote for another forum, I think you’ll find it very useful and informative, especially when trying to figure out how were different from a broker like Forex.com.

Sincerely,

How Does a NDD Actually Work?

There are many keys to understanding the Forex markets, and there are many parallels between the Forex markets today and the stock market back in 1995 and 1996 when ECN technology like ISLD and ARCA were coming about. The non-deal-desk system is the really the beginning step of the process of making the Forex markets a truly �transparent� market with �best pricing� available electronically straight to the customer. In order for there to ultimately be a true market for Forex (such as exists for stocks and futures); companies will need to take several steps to move away from the traditional (and rigged) deal desk systems. I�d like to discuss many of those steps now.
I do want to say up front that I work for a non-deal-desk platform (EFX GROUP / MBTF). I don�t want there to be any confusion about that. If someone thinks that any of my points are biased because I work for a NDD platform and not a traditional deal desk platform, I�d be happy to discuss it with them here or in private, and I will respond to any comments/questions.
These are the things that I think separate a true NDD platform, such as ours, from other platforms, and then I have some comments about the Forex market and the average Forex trader beyond that.

  1. Direct access to the biggest piece of the market possible. This is really the key to it all. A deal desk is basically a trader trading against a professional on a desk who can decide when and when not to sell to them. An NDD platform, before everything else, has no one working for the platform whose job and income are based on making money against the clients of the firm. When we execute a trade, it is executed purely electronically, without bias, without human intervention, and at the best price that our system could find at the time. I think this little fact is something that people overlook. We are paid on the commission on the trade, just like in the stock, futures, and options markets. Our incentive is therefore to get the best price possible to keep the customers happy. Deal desk platforms operate in an entirely different manner. They only make money when the clients lose money. Playing with a deal desk is like gambling in Vegas. It always favors the house because of the spread. They control if and when you get executed. We have interest in the spreads being tight and the executions being the best that they can be. In fact, the better that we do for our clients, the better that we do overall.

  2. Execution should be no different whether you are closing or opening a trade. Many of the traditional deal desk platforms separate positions as �open� versus �closing,� which is what leads to something like �hedging.� The reason that they do this is because they believe that the average Forex client loses 6.7% per month in Forex (NOTE: that is the average based on their system, which means some people make and some people lose). Therefore, when someone is closing a position, they usually just accept the other side. When someone is entering a position, they might not. Why should this be the case? Why should someone who is long the EURUSD and selling it get a better fill than someone who is shorting the EURUSD at the same moment? They shouldn�t. I�ll talk about hedging in a moment.

  3. A related point here is therefore anonymity. The system should not care where the trade is coming from. It should not care whether that person is starting a new position or closing an existing one in the same direction. Try opening an account with a deal desk platform and trading for six months. If you are making money, then open a second account under a different name. Try to buy in both accounts at the same time. The new account will get filled, while the account that is making money might get slipped or requoted at the same moment. Why is this the case? Because the platforms (all of them) profile their clients, trade against them, and make sure that the clients who are making money start to get worse fills. Remember that if you were the guy on the desk and you took the opposite side of every trade, you would want to slow down the people that were making money too because they are making money against you by default. A true NDD platform shouldn�t care who the trade is coming from when it executes. I can tell you right now that when it comes to the EFX GROUP / MBTF system, a sell order to close a long position and a short order that are put in simultaneously on the EURUSD will be filled at the prevailing market price together, period.

  4. No requoting. Deal desks mark certain accounts as �A list� clients. This means that the clients are good traders that are showing signs of being successful. �B list� clients are the rest of the client base. �B list� clients are set to auto-execute against the platform because they lose on average. �A list� clients are not. In fact, “A list” clients in a fast market are often shown pop-up windows that say �The price is no longer here, would you prefer to pay this price.� NDD platforms never requote. Either the order is marketable, or it isn�t.

  5. A non-deal-desk system lets you know everything that they are making off of you. Would I rather trade on a deal desk, where I spend 3 pips to buy the EURUSD, and then later, 3 pips to sell the EURUSD, or would I rather trade on a system that lets me get executed by the true market, which includes customers and banks, with the narrowest spreads possible, and get charged a fee. The answer is the latter.

  6. ECN vs. STP vs. Deal Desk. It needs to be made clear that there are really more than two types of platforms. A deal desk is a fixed spread platform where the desk makes their money in the spread trading against all of their customers. This rigs the market against the retail trader because they aren�t seeing true market quotes. The platform can move their quote wherever they need if they want to fill the client. STP (Straight Through Processing) platforms execute directly from the retail client to the banks. The more banks and liquidity in the system, the better the fills for the customer. ECN (Electronic Communications Network) platforms let customer orders interact with other customer orders. Non-deal-desk (NDD) platforms are either the second or third type of platform. EFX GROUP / MBTF are both. We have over a dozen banks in our network which customers execute against directly (STP), but we now also allow customers to hit other customers (ECN) inside of the standard pip increments of the banks. We do not shave anything against customer executions.

Having said all of that, I�d like to make a few additional points about the Forex markets, execution, and our platform. In reality, the retail Forex world is made up largely of unsophisticated traders who have not traded anything before. You can usually recognize these people because they are looking to trade at higher margin levels and expect executions that the market cannot provide. The Forex markets are more highly leveraged than the futures market. We offer 100 to 1 leverage. Professionals rarely use 20 to 1 leverage. Retail traders with no experience are constantly looking for higher leverage, up to 400 to 1, which shows their lack of experience. Few of these traders last long in the Forex markets. In addition, there are many people who think that they are �entitled� to fills because they want to buy at certain prices. This happens most commonly on �news spikes� due to economic data. People try to place market orders on the news and then are surprised if their fills arrive within a split second, but 30 or 40 or 50 pips away from where the market was before the news. Few of these people actually understand what they are trading. Let�s consider a few points.

In exchange rate terms, $0.01 of movement between the Euro and USD is 100 pips. That means that if news comes out and the EURUSD moves 30 pips in a second, that�s $0.003. In other words, it is not measurable in real terms. However, a trader trading at 100 to 1 margin may expect that they should be filled at a price that existed before the news hit. When I ask traders if they would be willing to sell the EURUSD at the price it was trading at before news hit that caused a 30 pip spike, they say no. But they expect that banks will make those prices available. In other words, they aren�t willing to accept the consequences of a �market.� Trading on economic news in the Forex world is the most dangerous type of trading that one can do. Having said that, let�s consider what the various platforms offer to protect the trader.

Traditional deal desk platforms offer very little in this regard. The trader is either buying or selling or doing nothing. Orders are largely market and stop (market) orders. However, STP and ECN platforms (which are both NDD platforms, and EFX handles BOTH of these types of orders) execute any marketable orders instantaneously. That means if you are a buyer at the market and there is a seller at a price and no one has bought from him/her ahead of you, you are filled at that price. It is a true market. There is nothing that says that you deserved to get filled 20 pips back because that would have made you money.

The Forex market has come a long way in the last two years. Traders should look for platforms that offer the following:

  1. Fraud protection in the form of Fidelity bonds.
  2. Segregation of client money.
  3. True executions.
  4. Lots of liquidity.
  5. A good variety of order types, which professional traders should use to control their risk. No one should EVER place a market order when they can limit themselves to fills 5 or 10 pips above the market.

On a true STP/ECN Forex platform, no trader that understands executions should ever have issues with getting extremely bad fills (slippage). Everything should be in-line.

I have spent a lot of time watching thousands of people trade the Forex markets. Forex is a very exciting market with massive liquidity. With platforms like EFX GROUP / MBTF, which offer true STP and ECN technology, it should be a true �trader�s market,� as long as that doesn�t suggest to traders that they are entitled to fills that don�t exist in fast markets or that reckless use of market orders should always be rewarded.

When the exchange rate between the Euro and the US Dollar moves $0.01 in a day, that�s 100 pips. This is a microscopic move that is only remotely tradable because of the leverage used in the Forex markets. I think a lot of people have expectations that go well beyond reason when it comes to the Forex markets. I think that things are moving closer to a centralized market place with good regulation about the limits to which a seller or buyer can price themselves away from the market but still fill a retail client. I think within a year or two, platforms like EFX GROUP / MBTF will have completely altered the landscape of Forex just like ISLD and ARCA did in the US stock market back in 1995-7. In the meantime, stick to the platform that safeguards your money, gives you the most options, and provides you with direct, unhindered access to the liquidity that is out there. Make sure that your funds are secure from fraud and protected from co-mingling with your platform. Make sure that your funds are held on-shore, not off-shore. With all of that, it�s just about your trading skills.

I use EFX and I think they’re great. The thing I’m waiting for is the new charting package that EFX is developing now. It should be realeased quite soon; I’m not sure if Justin mentioned that in his above post.

Yes, I will have to abandon XTick but having the datafeed of my broker is a major plus for me. Plus the unofficial demonstration of the new platform on one of the unrecorded webinars looked pretty awesome. Free to EFX customers.

Justin what is the latest word on the release date for the new platform ?

Hello professorx,

First off, thank you for the wonderful comments.

We recently did release a charting package by integrating our datafeed with IntelliCharts. IntelliCharts offers two versions of their software: an online version for $40 and a desktop version for $100. All EFX clients receive 50% off either package of their choice. For more information, please click here; http://efx.tradesecuring.com/Misc/EFX.asp.

With regards to the release of our new platform, this will probably happen in early to mid 2007. As things develop, I will certainly keep everyone informed through my website and the forums.

If you need anything else, please do not hesitate to ask.

Best Regards,

Do you charge rollover fees…like some banks do? Also can you please copy/paste for the forum, the rollover interest rates bid/ask for some of the major crosses in the month of Jan 2007?
Also are you registered with NFA?
Thanks,
deepsankar

Hi Deepsankar ~

Yes, we do charge & pay rollover fees, but not like your typically deal desk broker.

Symbol Buy Prem. Sell Prem.
AUD/USD 0.75% -3.35%
CHF/JPY 1.20% -3.20%
EUR/AUD -0.12% -4.29%
EUR/CHF 0.36% -2.47%
EUR/JPY 1.03% -3.13%
EUR/NOK -0.58% -3.14%
EUR/USD -2.90% 0.87%
GBP/CHF -6.60% -7.60%
GBP/JPY 2.18% -5.78%
GBP/USD 0.40% -1.50%
NZD/JPY -3.20% -0.60%
NZD/USD -0.90% -3.10%
USD/CAD 0.55% -1.28%
USD/CHF 1.81% -3.92%
USD/JPY 2.73% -8.66%

Regulated By:
NFA/CFTC, through MB Trading Futures, Inc.

I hope this helps.

Is interest paid on your margin deposit? Thank you.

Justin, now that FXCM offers non-dealing desk, could you comment what differences (or similiarities) EFX shares with FXCM?

Hello piprosterous ~

Thanks for the question. I don�t know specifics of the FXCM platform, so let me throw a few items out at you and you can check them.

First, a non-dealing-desk platform must be charging a transaction fee that is disclosed by default. If a platform is not charging a fee, then how are they making their money? The only answer is that they are trading against you within the spread, which makes them a deal desk. Some platforms try to claim that they aren�t a deal desk because their spreads aren�t fixed, but then they still call the trading �commission-free.� You can�t be NDD and be commission-free by default. The new thing is to have one bank with floating spreads that IS the deal desk, while the �platform� itself only passes the orders through to the deal desk, so they try to say that they are NDD. I�ve seen that a lot lately, but then they still claim to be commission-free, which is the red flag.

Second, there is no reason that an NDD platform shouldn�t allow you to post your own bids and offers, so I would verify on any platform if you can post a bid or offer and have it reflected in the quote. Obviously, if your order is being displayed for all other customers and banks to see, then you are operating on a true NDD platform where nothing is hidden. If your limit bids and offers are not shown in the quote, then where are they, and who are they showing them to? Obviously, they are still keeping them in-house to trade against. That�s why an NDD broker charges a fee. If they are just posting your order for you for anyone to hit, obviously they aren�t taking the other side of the trade to make money against you.

I�ll leave it at those two main points because I think that sums up, if you think about it, what NDD trading should be about, and I haven�t heard from anyone of another platform that does this. The key is that customer orders need to be handled with no intent to trade against them, and a fee should be charged for that. A lot of platforms know that they need to use the �non-dealing-desk� phrase now, but then they say things like �spreads as low as 2 pips.� Why wouldn�t a spread go to 1 at a minimum if the platform is NDD, since customer orders should be built into the quotes. Are they saying that they never have a customer buy and sell order only 1 pip apart from each other or from where their bank quote is? For that matter, they never have two banks quoting 1 pip apart? Makes no sense. And there, I�m giving them the benefit of the doubt on only have trading at 1 pip increments, while we go down to the tenth of a pip.

For information regarding rollovers, please visit; EFX Group - Rollover/Premium Rates.

Hi Guys -

Thanks to FXTrek, EFX is now able to offer a basic free Java charting package to our clients (demo or live) with our data feed incorporated. Take a look and let me know what you think.

Free Charting

Regards,

Just wanted to let all of those interested know…

This webinar will be for advanced training using the many different features of the EFX Navigator. We will be covering the following;

  1. [U]Order Types [/U]- All 15 of our flexible and efficient orders covered in depth.

  2. [U]Level ll [/U]- Placing trades between the spread.

  3. [U]Q &A [/U]- Plenty of time to take your questions.

[B]Start Time:[/B] 8:00pm EST - 9:30pm EST

[B]Hosted by:[/B] Justin LeBlang, V.P. of Business Development

[B]Register Here[/B]: https://www.gotomeeting.com/register/345136586

[B]Questions:[/B] <[email protected]>

Hope to see you there.

Hi Justin,

I have been interested in forex ever since i started thinking about my proffesional career (im 20 so not THAT logn ago). I started looking in to forex since last week and have been working quite hard to grasp the concepts, remember the rules, lingo, abbreviations, etc etc. I started training using the oanda platform. I then stumbled on to forexbastards.com and looked at a few of their links and reviews which looked (and still look) sincere. This is where i found out about babypips and EFX (you guys have one of the most favourable ratings). Anyways, after getting used to the general practices and procedures i decided to try your platform. When i first opened it i was thinking to myself “Is this a joke? no pretty graphs”. This was during the weekend so it wasnt in action. This morning when i had another go I was amazed, the update speed and execution efficency is great (not to mention the spreads, yours was 4 when oandas today was 15 for the AUD/NZD during the peak (dont know terminology yet)! Also refering back to my AUD/NZD example the commision doesnt hurt as much as 15 pips, after a 60 pip profit on EFX and a 45ish on oanda I am still happyer with paying the commision. Althought I am still getting used to the EFX Navigator trading platform, its definatly my favourite so far. Regarding the charting, I just open up dealbook 360 or oandas charts and arange them to fit on my screen in sync with your platforms windows, so far this works, but what do i know lol, i have been playing with forex for only a week. After i fullfill babypip’s instructions (2 months practice trade then real deal), I will open a real account with EFX. So here are my questions:

Does the demo account vary in any way? (execution times, etc) from the real deal?

Upon getting a real account are there any News functions and forecasting services, etc?

By the way, i am going to attend one of those webminars after i finish my exams so sorry if these questions are answered there.

Cheers!

M.Isak

Hi Isak,

First off, thank you for the comments and I wish you the best of luck in the Forex world and any other endeavors you embark upon.

With regards to the demo account;

� While the bank quotes are identical on both the Demo and Live platforms, our ECN technology allows customers to place their own limits orders into the system and display them for other customers. Obviously, �demo� orders cannot interact with a live market, so the ECN trades from customer to customer work from demo clients to demo clients and from live clients to live clients, but demo orders do not display in the live market. Issues in our demo environment are not a reflection of our live platform.�

This was quoted directly from our website: EFX Group. I feel is the truest statement that can be made.

We do not offer new services currently, but we recommended a few that we feel our reputable and provide a quality service. For forex calendar�s I would recommend either Forex Forum, Forex Calendar, Forex News @ Forex Factory or FxTicker | Forex Trading.

For live news though, I only use the pop-up tool provided by FxTicker | Forex Trading for paying subscribers. It provides live news right to the desktop and so far has been very helpful and certainly worth the small fee considering all the other services subscribers receive.

I hope this helps � let me know if you need anything else, and please feel free to email me directly at <[email protected]>.

Have a great day.