just wanted to chime in with my thanks to this thread - I’ve registered with several of these dealers and come to the conclusion that Trader’sWay and FinPro are f’ing fantastic. I have ECNs with both of them; I prefer TW for FX, and FinPro for CFDs. i trade mostly DAX and GBPJPY, some crude oil, and beginning to work with HSI as well.
FinPro’s service has been the best i’ve ever experienced. while they’ve had a myriad of tech issues (i.e., of course, only on DAX) with outages & latency problems, they’ve been extremely responsive and relatively quick with fixing the problems. also, their DAX outage today caused me a huge loss which they credited me for, no questions asked. That’s pretty tough to find.
anyway, i’m always open to a better deal, but these two have been hard to beat so far. Really appreciate the info from everyone here.
Hello, Lucy (have I got your name right?) — Thanks for your comments, and welcome to the Forum.
[U]More List updating and clean-up[/U]
In addition to the updates planned for tomorrow, I will get the [B]List of Links[/B] on post #7 up to date. That list hasn’t been updated for 3 months, and my preliminary count indicates that I need to add 46 new links. I will attend to that chore tonight or tomorrow.
I will reduce the font size on post #2 (that’s [B]Group 2[/B] of the List), to make it more readable.
I have corrected the way [B]maximum leverage at Tallinex[/B] is shown on post #1.
In the Notes at the top of post #1, I will add a short blurb on our procedure for picking [B]Trusted Brokers.[/B]
Thanks to all of you who have contributed your opinions, advice, and comments in this thread in recent days. I greatly appreciate your participation.
Clint, here are the spreads and commissions of TradeWiseFX. ECN account has no spread mark up and EURUSD averages 0.5 pips + $2 per side. GBPJPY averages 1.4 pips + $2 per side. On the Classic account EURUSD averages 1.3 pips and GBJPY averages 1.9 pips with no commissions.
We are especially working on making the conditions attractive for EA traders and scalpers wit low order execution times.
It was not possible to add all of the new links to post #7, because of the Babypips post-size limitation. There is a limit of 15,000 characters per post in this forum. And links are major resource hogs.
Post #7 is currently up against the size limit, and there are still 13 links remaining to be posted. (The links in limbo are recent posts discussing Trader’s Way and Tallinex.)
So, I will have to remove some old links, in order to make room for newer ones.
I ran out of patience fighting with it, and just put it aside for now.
•
Regarding the question of whether to designate LMFX as a Trusted Broker, several members have posted comments. No negative information has come to light regarding LMFX — but the community seems about evenly split between (1) proceeding with the Trusted Broker designation now, and (2) delaying that action until more LMFX client feedback has been posted here. It was suggested that client feedback concerning withdrawals is especially important.
Given this divided consensus, we will wait.
I suggest that we consider this question again in a month.
In the meantime, I encourage members of this community who have live accounts with LMFX to continue to post their experiences with this broker. The more data we can get, the more confident we can be in our decision.
•
Once again, I want to thank everyone who weighed in on adding TradeWiseFX to our List, on removing Forex-Metal and SmartTrade, and on the LMFX question. Your participation is what makes this thread effective.
haha, it’s one of my daughters’ names, but thanks much.
I also opened with LMFX but have not deposited / verified with them yet. They seem to run a tight ship but I would agree to withhold the judgment.
re FinPro again, up until about 10 minutes ago I have had lightning fast (avg 8.2ms) execution times. Now I’m up to 32ms avg. I am in/out pretty quickly, and net profitable on the account. I emailed their support with this and will see what they have to say about it. I’m hoping it’s a fluke and not being throttled by their liquidity providers. I’m really nitpicking with this criticism, but still.
EDIT: average fill time is now about half a second. ugh. Hoping this is an error and not a switch on my account!
Clint, I see you respond right away to a lady’s comments but turn a cold shoulder to other peoples questions.
Can anyone please respond to my question on page 346?
Respectfully,
JerryW
@Hyperscalper, are you having delayed fills with FinPro now? I have been throttled down to 0.50 second (average) execution times down from 0.08 - 0.20 average as of the last few days. I’ve been screaming at them to no avail about it, so I can only assume it’s their LPs doing it. I am finished with them as they’ve had too many data outages that have cost me, with no recourse after the first incident on their part. Shameful really, as I thought my MT4 dealer search was over!
The information provided by Mr Green is totally incorrect, and Mr Green has exhibited a total lack of knowledge regarding the subject of offshore trading in his communications with Tallinex.
it is absolutely NOT illegal for US residents to open / fund / trade FX accounts with offshore brokers
the SEC / CFTC / NFA have no jurisdiction over offshore brokers
The ONLY reason why most offshore brokers refuse to accept US residents is because their jurisdiction requires them to be registered with a local regulatory body, and that regulatory body has stipulated that its members may not have US-resident clients. Such stipulation is made as a favour to the SEC (since there is no legal basis for such a rule), and affected brokers are forced to comply under threat of termination of their registration with the local regulatory body (which would find them trading illegally and subject to prosecution in their country of domicile).
This is why the offshore brokers that DO accept US residents are based in jurisdictions where registration with the local regulatory body is not a requirement (or, as in the case of Belize, the local regulator is not actually providing any form of regulation because members are expected to ‘self-regulate’).
As long as you report your offshore trading accounts and any profits / losses to the IRS then there is no issue but, being completely oblivious to the actual legal situation, Mr Green contacted Tallinex at the end of December and stated his intention to report Tallinex to the Enforcement Division of the SEC.
The SEC has subsequently contacted Tallinex regarding US-resident clients, but the communication made it quite clear that they were powerless to take action.
If anyone using the services of Mr Green is trading with an offshore broker then I would only state that you may be drawing unwanted and unneeded attention to your broker, and possibly their local regulator (in addition to receiving incorrect advice).
I can confirm this statement from Paul Cullen, our Tallinex rep.
Paul and I have been corresponding privately regarding this matter since before Christmas, and we both agree that Robert Green is trying to play Sheriff (or maybe Snitch would be a better description) in matters he doesn’t understand.
I would add to what Paul said above, that you may be drawing unwanted attention to [I]yourself,[/I] as well. The CFTC and their sock-puppet the NFA, and their fellow regulators like the SEC — hate [I]off-exchange[/I] retail forex trading. They hate [I]offshore[/I] trading, they hate [I]those of us[/I] who trade offshore, and they hate [I]this thread.[/I] They are not above enlisting the assistance of the IRS to harass, audit, and prosecute individual traders, like you and me.
If you trade offshore, the CFTC cannot touch you directly — but the IRS can, [I]if your tax status is not completely in order.[/I]
Keep yourself completely in compliance with the tax laws: Report all of your foreign financial accounts (forex accounts, bank accounts, whatever) on the FBAR form [I]— if your offshore holdings reach the relevant threshold.[/I] Report your trading gains and losses on your tax return. And [I]pay your taxes.[/I]
Appreciate the heads up. Services that are experienced enough to help with tax prep with offshore trading are few and I can see the agencies attempting to bully and strong arming such services as tax and legal professionals into snitching or simply avoiding offshore traders, in effect making it harder to do the right thing. Must be like a game to them, divide and conquer using all means necessary.