Never go with market-maker scam alert

My advice is never to go with a market maker especially not ACTIVTRADES they are a uk broker. Today i traded the nfp they opened my sell usd/jpy at the very bottom of the candle then closed at 55 pip slippage on my stop, they then opened my buy usd/jpy which wasnt even on the chart so who knows how much the spread was, they then didnt open my buy eur/usd the reason they didnt open this they said was because i didnt have enough funds in my account, funny that, considering they opened two more trades at the same volume after they didnt open my eur/usd buy. The real reason they didnt open my eur/usd buy was because it would have cost them money. So my advice is never trade with any market-maker especially not Activtrades.

Thats interesting. They are my broker, and I have never even once had any problem with them. Did you contact them to see what the problem was?

One of my accounts is with a market maker. Have used them for years never had a single issue. Long outgrown their services but still keep that account for some personal trading and live testing.

Withdrawals are handled immediately with funds in my bank within 3 business days. Never had a slippage issue outside of times of major news and market transitions which were obvious. They honoured USD CHF stops, but that had no effect on me since I didn’t have anything in the CHF.

It is not that they are a market maker that is the issue. Some brokers are cheats, liars and fraudsters, how they serve up the service to you is not relevant. The cheaters will cheat no matter what model they say they follow. The good brokers will provide good service with the idea of generating more business and commissions in the long term that will far exceed any quick buck by hitting your stops.

yes i did a live-chat with them, they said they didnt activate my buy eur/usd because i didnt have enough funds but 1 second later they opened two of my trades with twice the volume, interesting they didnt want to open my eur/usd which would have netted me £300 in less than a minute. She just outright lied to me in the live chat and then said email them so they can look at it in more depth. my two trades that i lost on were pretty convenient too. my sell was at the utmost bottom of the candle and then my buy wasnt even on the chart it was above the very top of the candle, is this very bad luck or something more sinister? the fact they didnt open my buy eur/usd and made up a lie as to why not makes it all look very sinister.

out of interest which market-maker do you have an account with?

Was the chart a bid chart or an ask chart?

-Adrian

55 pip slippage is common on high impact news like the nfp. you need to view both your ask and bid charts.

And remember it was a market holiday in large part of the world too - high risk news event + low liquidity = huge slippage :wink:

its a bid chart, i dont have a problem with the slippage really. my problem is the fact they didnt open my buy eur/usd citing lack of funds so they delete that pending order but yet then 1 second later open 2 trades with the same volume as the buy eur/usd. it just doesnt make sense. the only reason they wouldnt open my buy eur/usd was the fact that that was going to cost them activtrades money.

slippage and bigger spreads are acceptable, not that we like them but we understand it, high risk event plus a lot of the bigger traders not trading because it is easter. the problem i have is your broker cannot pick and choose which pending order to open depending if its going to cost them money. I would just stay away from activtrades not a trustworthy broker at all.

Are you using a VPN or anything?

No , what does that do? do you mean vps? if you do it wasnt a connection issue, they actually stated on my statement “deleted, lack of funds” i thought activtrades were a good broker aswell, i have only been with them for a month, after friday tho i can definitely see them in a different light, i was straddling the nfps, a buy and a sell on eur/usd and usd/jpy, now i accept i lost 3 out of 4 of those trades, the reason being it was easter and there was more movement before the big main movement than normal, i placed my pending orders 30 pips away from the current price which was 12 pips too close, if it wasnt easter im sure i would have had two winners. my disappointment is the fact they have lied to me and just didnt want my eur/usd buy to happen.

Did you had any other open positions at that time?

Did there where some kind of time delay in your orders? Where they pending or market orders execution?

They were pending orders, yes i had a couple of positions open at the time, the reason nfps went so disastrously for me was activtrades spreads, now when i was with alpari 5 pips was a lot but not too bad, activtrades have 60 pip spreads during nfps, i guess i will have to go to a fixed spread account with fxpro.

So i’ll end this thread with these comments; Activtrades have been an ok broker so far, on the upside most of the time their spreads are very good, when it comes to news tho especially NFP’s their spreads are completely ridiculous, 60 pips, it makes it extremely hard to make profit during these times, my previous broker alpari uk’s spreads were ten times better during the NFP’s. Their live-chat is pretty poor aswell I think the main reason for this is english is not their first language, so its very hard to get a decent answer to your questions. I possibly didnt have enough money in my account i have been extremely unlucky, i missed out by literally one second. if my trade closed one second earlier my buy eur/usd wouldnt have been deleted and my losses thereby would have been halved.
Any newbies out there who want to trade news events would be best to steer clear of activtrades and possibly all brokers that have floating spreads, im looking into using fxpro fixed-spread myself.

Go for it, and let us know how it is and if their services are good except their spreads etc.

No broker has a crystal ball to know where the prices will run up to! But to write a thread not to use market makers and then goes for a fix spread account it makes no sense because to have a fix spread account the broker must be a market maker.

I know this thread has turned out to be quite illogical, maybe i have been dosed with the arbitragers acid!! turns out the premise for this thread was a mistake i made, i dont think i was cheated just extremely unlucky, im not definitely going to go with a fixed spread account but id like to trade the nfp and with activetrades spreads that is just not possible whereas fx pro can provide a fixed spread making it fairly easy to profit during nfps.

will do, wont be for a couple of months tho. need to get out of my eur/usd positions first.