i use fxcm at the moment but want to try scalping on the EUR/USD. Problem is the spread is too high even when trading 1st 3 hours of London & 1st 3 hours of NY. I want to use a spread betting account (I am not interested in NDD). If i have £25k in my account, how much do I have to trade to maintain active trader status? and what will the spread be for the EUR/USD? Do you charge commission on top of the spread? The reason i ask is because your site says 0.9 spread but when i spoke to someone they said it was 1.5 spread.
The EUR/USD spread on Active Trader is typically 0.9 pips, but there is an additional commission which is based on your deposit size and trading volume. It’s possible the person you spoke with was referring to total transaction cost, if you factor in that commission. If you have not already, I would encourage you to try a free demo of our Active Trader platform. That way you can see what the live spreads are like at the times you want to trade. Just shoot me a private message with your contact details, if you would like a specialist in our Active Trader department to reach out to you with this information.
I have FXCM MT4 account for two months. I manual trade and receive trading signals from other traders. EURUSD is the pair I trade the most. I recently deposited $25K and joining FXCM active trader account to avoid big spread. However the active trader account does not meet my expectation. Here is the example:
I receive a trading signal to buy or sell EURUSD. If the master account is receive 10 pips, I will generally get 6-7 pips or less. If master account loss 10 pips, I will generally loss 13-15 pips. This is not a news event trading as I try to avoid that. I compare the note to other signal subscribers and some has only 0.1-0.5 pips different from the master account and some even gain more pips than the master account.
Contact FXCM with online chat, the representative says: “… Possible. It could always vary with different brokers, where you may have not received as many pips on this trade you may not lose as many on a negative trade…” (I agree. But on 06.13.2013 19:15, I lose -9 pips and the master account only lose -2.9 pips). Anyway, they continues “…I can not verify the price feed for a different execution that someone may receive from another broker, I can verify all trades that have been executed at FXCM… I am not aware of a execution issue at that time, but it is difficult to compare price feeds of different brokers at the same time, the bid and ask will be different…”
FXCM is a good broker but if other brokers could produce more pips on averages trade, why cannot FXCM do the same? I am currently researching on Finfx, MBI, ATC, LMAX, AXI, Forex, and IC Markets but I hate transfer to another broker. Is there any way that FXCM can solve the problem? Or, is it the limitation for FXCM price feed? Thank you very much for your help.
Note: I am use UltraHosting VPS. My IB is CashBackForex.
I think I might have an idea about what could be causing this discrepancy. You mentioned a couple of examples where the master account that you are copying closed out trades after a 10 pip profit or 10 pip loss. Are these examples typical of the amount of pips the master account makes or loses on trades?
The reason I ask is because this would indicate a very short term trading strategy. In a very short term trading strategy, any delay between when the master account sends you a signal to place a trade and when you receive the signal could result in a difference between the results on the master account and on your account.
How is the master account sending you signals? Perhaps there is a way the message from the master account could be sent to you faster, but we need to know more about the delivery method. It also might speed things up for you, if you use one of the VPS providers that are co-located with our MT4 servers. Your account balance would qualify you for free VPS access.