It seems you are new to trading and believe me we all fussed about brokers, having spent the greater part 3-4 years building and consulting with brokerages, you have very little to fear. The smaller ones just pass orders on, so they have no real stake, some may request bbook revenue, that is your lost margins. Others will say no to it and rely on trade volume, I have to admit, this type doesn’t make a lot, in the long run they all want full licences to fully market make. The bigger ones can afford the intense scrutiny from the FCA, so end up with a market maker licence, which is more expensive and is a sign of ability and descent compliance. So all things equal a market maker is less likely to screw you and a STP has little ability to screw you, however they can request spread widens, etc from their handler to earn extra money.
So you see, not worth obsessing, Go with the bigger ones if you have concerns.
Personal opinion only, but I wouldn’t touch them, myself. When a company [I]continues, over the long term[/I], to have adverse regulatory rulings/fines after adverse regulatory rulings/fines[U] arising over matters directly concerned with how they’ve treated their clients[/U], one’s perhaps entitled to look askance, given that in such an increasingly competitive marketplace there are plenty of other equivalent, long-established and well regulated brokers who don’t have that kind of history at all?
That instance, admittedly, was pretty “small fry” and pretty inconsequential compared with some of what they’ve done in the past. But one could perhaps be forgiven for thinking that [I]it may still speak of a company that simply doesn’t learn from its previous mistakes[/I]? Why take a chance on something like that, when you don’t need to?
With apologies, that’s not so easy for me, given that you’re in South Africa and I know nothing about it.
If you have enough capital to open an account with Interactive Brokers, I can certainly recommend them.
If you’re looking for something smaller-scale, in my opinion it’s hard to do better than Oanda (they [I]are[/I] a counterparty market-maker, but a good and [I][U]honest[/U][/I] one in the opinion of the people I know and trust, who “know the industry”; I’ve also used them myself in the past with absolutely nothing adverse to report at all - though that doesn’t mean much in itself, of course, because it’s only anecdotal, subjective evidence - not objective like regulatory histories.)
Sorry not to be able to do better than that, but I do think that avoiding brokers with a [I]huge[/I] history of fines in the millions from various different regulators must be a pretty sound general principle - don’t you?
To be honest, I [I]didn’t[/I] know it was so difficult.
Is this because you’re in South Africa and there are no good, honest, well-regulated brokers there? Or because other mainstream, orthodox brokers like Interactive Brokers (and/or Oanda) don’t accept clients from South Africa? If it’s so, then it’s so, but I admit to being surprised that I hadn’t heard this before.
There are brokers in South Africa, but I prefer a foreign broker as I am not trading any instruments that includes any South African currency.
Most brokers such as Oanda which I checked now, have South Africa in the country list to choose from. I checked their deposit & withdrawal policies and they support debit card and Paypal which is suitable, but were hoping for a Credit Card option as I would feel safer. I have a prepaid / prefunded credit card that I got especially for using online etc.
It was quite a few years old so it is pretty old. It is funny how things have changed, there are brokers now offering 0 spreads, think about that for second. A BROKER offering 0 spreads? They get the money from somewhere surely… Anyway for another discussion. If you are a position trader, you need good swaps as this will impact your bottom line, I would happily pay 4 pips on EURUSD if I could get a good swap rate for example. If I am a shorter trader then, I would look for good execution and fixed spreads as the shorter term impact of spreads is far greater on a position. So it is really not just about big, small, media fighting or competitor slandering, your broker is suppose to represent you, so the choice is always yours best on your needs, so figure that out before choosing broker.
Oanda allows single unit lots. This is a MASSIVE advantage over a 1000 unit minimum lot size restriction. Do not fail to consider that as you make your decisions.
But also, remember there is nothing preventing you from opening multiple accounts with multiple dealers.
Hi. Yes I managed to get a $100 demo with Oanda and made about 50 trades this far using units ranging from 100 to 500 for the test run with their platform.
The minimum trade size at FXCM for all our account types is 1000 currency units (AKA one micro lot, 1K on Trading Station, or 0.01 volume on MT4). This is the smallest order size we can offset with our liquidity providers.
