Yes, exactly. To everything you’ve said.
But do realize that a pair with the base currency that a single unit is more than single unit of USD will cost a higher commission. .44 each side sounds like AUD/USD. But EUR/USD will be about .74 each side, and GBP/USD will be about 1.03 each side, all for a single minilot.
Any USD based pair will be exactly .50 for each side. You’ll see that latr, but just to halp avoid a surprise!
Jeff
You’re very right, I should’ve added that.
Just to update, i’ve been trading live with them for a week or so now. I make sure i’m out of the market at 5 EST everyday so I don’t get hit with interest rate rollover charges (not usually a problem as i’m typically out of the market anyway).
I held a trade through maintenance last night and I guess it went smoothly. The system is down for about a total of 20 minutes, and after maintenance is complete you have to restart EFX Navigator which is no big deal.
They do have a message center that alerts you prior to all of these things happening and they even send out messages about news releases and to expect high volatility (FOMC on tuesday) so I thought that was pretty cool for someone that might’ve forgot about them so they can get out of the way pre-news.
Spreads went to around 10 pips right before the news, but right after they were back to a tight 1-2 pip spread.
All the fills and execution has been flawless, i’m really impressed with them overall. I don’t think i’ll be taking my business anywhere else anytime soon.
To Daedalus :
Only 1 trade today. But the fill was instantaneous and the execution on both the entry and exit were done as soon as the button was clicked. I mean, no lag, no nothing. I’m very impressed
.
Your posts do not show where you live - USA I take it. How far away from the EFX server do you think you are ?
Travelling at the speed of light, it takes about 1/7 of a second to travel around the world. Now electronics is a lot slower than this, therefore, me being on the opposite side of the planet, I would imagine that my fills with EFX would be a lot slower.
I had a short going on GBP/JPY a while ago, and at 9:30 GMT it was about 2 pips from my target. I had left it going and stepped away, because there was no news that should have affected it. The CHF Interest Statement was coming out at 9:30 GMT, but I didn’t think that would affect GBP/JPY, so I was not sitting there paying attention to it.
And that may not have been what turned it around, but it dipped right down to my S&R line, and shot back up 75 pips right at 9:30GMT.
Here’s how that relates to the topic of this thread: I have charts with two brokers open on my computer most all the time. They say that price touched 227.42 and 227.44 respectively. I have a support line at 227.41, and so I had my target set at 227.44.
I cannot tell what price EFX got to. Their current charting is still very rudimentary, although I am looking for it to improve substantially in the coming months. But the difference between prices on different platforms was why I missed my 35 pip target, and instead got stopped out at -30 pips.
Another thing, I had my stop loss at 228.09. It hit that price at 9:37 GMT, which was 7 minutes after the news release. Now it did pop up a warning to expect fast market conditions, yes. But by 7 minutes after the release, and not even on a currency in the pair I was trading, it still slipped me to 228.17 for my stop when it was triggered at 228.09
Not that I am dissing EFX for either of these things. But they both did happen, and relate to this thread, so I am reporting them.
I learned a lesson out of it though, set my target at least 5-7 pips before the S&R line if I am going to be away. 5-7 less pips on a target of 35 is acceptable, especially if price bounces off the line and misses it by several pips due to differences in prices with different brokers.
Jeff
I’ve had to adjust my prices because as you say their quoted price and my price on my charts can be 1-2 pips off sometimes (no more than that in my experience), but with any FX broker, their prices are essentially made up, and so I don’t know that it would be any better anywhere else.
Tymen - I do live in the US, in Nebraska.
? what do you mean by: [I]prices are essentially made up [/I]daedalus?
I think you’ll find they’re trunked into a totally unbiased matching engine, which means best bid-ask is represented via multi feed suppliers, hence the flexible spreads & to the 1/10th of a pip order routing.
or did you mean something else?
Well then this morning, both of the brokers I’m charting with show that price stopped a few pips before my 229.23 target on a long trade, at 229.21 and 229.22 respectively. But EFX touched it, went ONE PIP past it, and closed my trade at my profit target.
Brokers using MT4 can report the prices exactly as they see them, or can modify them to suit themselves. They’re usually pretty close, but I’ve seen deviations.
EFX however does NOT make up their prices. Their platform changes nothing but the spread. They get their liquidity from a number of banks who tell them at any instant how much of any currency they have available and at what price. EFX’s platform simply is reporting in real time what the best price available is. From time to time you will notice that when you execute a transaction, some of your order gets filled at one price, and some gets filled at a slightly different price. I believe this is when they go to fill your order, and run out of the currency from one provider in that same instant, and have to get the rest of it from their next price provider. Since their computers are filling literally hundreds of orders worldwide at any given moment, this can happen from time to time.
But that TRULY is the currency market.
Jeff
I’ve never heard of that company before and there’s not much real information on their site to figure out who they are or how long they’ve been in business.
Quite honestly, after reading some of the posts here…I can’t seem to figure out what overall benefit ANY platform has over MetaTrader 4???
MT4 is going to be the industry standard by the end of '08 and many reputable firms are implementing it in the first quarter of '08.
IMO it’s a better idea to go through a more stable platform than those of the “other guys”
For order entry or charting?
Both----why wouldn’t you want a platform that will become a standard and thus be more susceptible to new charting capabilities and advances.
MB Trading is a great firm, no doubts there, but I just feel as though we will all need to know the MT4 platform sooner or later.
Quite honestly, after reading some of the posts here…I can’t seem to figure out what overall benefit ANY platform has over MetaTrader 4???
If you read through most of the more experienced trader’s
posts here you will probably find that MT4 is used quite a
lot as a back up to their normal platform.
I stand corrected, I had only been perusing the board for an hour or so before joining, but I have now seen it more popular than I had originally interpreted.
I can’t comment on MT4’s trading platform but when it comes to charting, Tradestation is the industry standard. I have yet to find a better chart service, setup, scalability, indicator support, etc. for anything else out there. MT4 looks like its out of the stone age compared to Tradestation IMO. When i used them for a broker in the Futures markets their Order Matrix’s are truly revolutionary and so easy to use to manage trades its not even funny. MT4 and EFX for that matter can’t come close. I might go back to using them as my broker just for that fact.
So which broker(s) are you using now?
I use EFX for Forex, and Tradestation for Futures.