New to Forex but have traded option and Nadex previously. TOS was my primary platform but the spreads seem to be fairly wide for Forex. I will be focusing on scalping and currently looking for a broker that offers tight spreads in addition to the following…
Easy to withdraw/deposit money
Customer Support
Intuitive platform
low slippage
After reading through some of the other posts, it seems that FXCM seems to have negative feedback, currently looking at Oanda, MB Trader and IB.
The country doesn’t matter.
What matters is whom you’re scalping.
No broker minds a client scalping [I][U]the market[/U][/I], but understandably enough they don’t want you scalping [B][U]them[/U][/B] (if you’re any good at it) because in those cases, it’s [I]their[/I] money you’re winning!
This means that successful scalpers need to avoid [I][U]counterparty market-makers[/U][/I] and trade only with genuine brokers who are simply executing trades for the client in a market to which the client doesn’t himself have access, in exchange for a commission-fee, [B][U]without[/U][/B] themselves being financially involved in the [I]outcomes[/I] of the trades. It’s all simple and logical, really? 
Hey Lexys,
Thanks for the response so I guess that would bring me to my next question assuming I should opt for an ECN broker have you used MB trading, Forex.com or FXCM?
TradeKing which acquired MB has the USD/JPY spread listed at 4 and Forex.com said they are market makers
Use FXCHOICE enuff said. their spreads are pretty tight and US friendly.
I haven’t - sorry.
I know some people who use MB (they changed hands?) and I haven’t heard anything terrible about them.
Forex.com I regard as more or less a complete scam - I wouldn’t touch them, myself.
FXCM has just about the world’s worst history of adverse rulings and multi-million fines from regulators, very repeatedly, over issues arising directly from the ways they’ve treated their clients. I wouldn’t touch them, myself.
All second-hand information (apart from FXCM’s regulatory history, which is objective and factual) and personal opinion only - sorry!
From my own experience, I think IB are very good (but they don’t do a lot of “customer hand-holding”) and I think Oanda are good (but they’re a counterparty market-maker).
Regarding FX Choice - Have you had any issues withdrawing funds from them? Personally for me I am concerned that they are based out of Belize.
Welcome to the forum, Rogue! 
FXCM has strengths in all the categories you listed. On our No Dealing Desk (NDD) forex execution we offer to all Standard accounts (5k minimum), we offset each client order one-for-one with the best prices from competing liquidity providers.
On the NDD model, we don’t take the market risk on the other side of your trades, so we don’t profit from your losses or lose from your profits. Instead, we make money from your trading volume via the commission. That means scalpers some of our best clients! In fact, we have an Active Trader program that can provide commission discounts for high volume traders.
You can try one of our free demos to see our spreads for yourself. Our platforms even offer one-click trading which can be useful for scalping.
As our client you can deposit or withdraw funds 24 hours a day on our MyFXCM.com portal. We also offer 24/7 live support. (and support on weekdays on forums like this :))
Our flagship Trading Station Desktop platform is particularly popular, and we offer mobile and web versions. In addition, you can trade your FXCM account using MT4, NinjaTrader or Mirror Trader, so there are many options.
Slippage is a risk of trading in any market, with any broker, but with FXCM slippage can be either positive of negative. Positive slippage is more common with limit order, while negative slippage is more common with stop orders due to the momentum of price movement when such order types are triggered. The latest FXCM execution stats showed the following:
[ul]
[li]78.71% of all orders had NO SLIPPAGE.
[/li][li]12.77% of all orders received positive slippage.
[/li][li]8.52% of all orders received negative slippage.
[/li][li]50.02% of all limit and limit entry orders received positive slippage.
[/li][li]39.9% of all stop and stop entry orders received negative slippage.
[/li][/ul]
FXCM’s Trading Station has order features called Market Range and Range Entry. Market Range limits your negative slippage, but not your positive slippage, on Market Orders. Range Entry does the same thing but for Entry Orders (Stop Orders).*
It’s worth keeping in mind that the vast majority of FXCM clients are pleased with our service and execution. Below are the latest financial data from the CFTC listing US-regulated forex brokers by the amount of money on deposit with each.
Also worth considering is the fact that we’ve been in business since 1999 making us one of the oldest firms in what is still a relatively young industry. If less than 1% of our clients past or present express a grievance about something, it may seem like a large number of traders compared to other brokers, because we are bigger. However, it’s not as large relatively speaking when you consider the percentages.
That’s not to say that we don’t take such client feedback seriously. My primary goal on forums such as BabyPips is to answer questions about FXCM and address any potential concerns. However, if you see my other posts, you will find that I don’t simply promote our firm. I actively contribute to discussions to provide service and education to traders.
This also highlights how FXCM dedicates a greater amount of resources to educating new traders than many other brokers. That means more novice traders choose to begin their forex journey with us. The flip side of this is that when they misunderstand something about how the market works or how to use the software, they sometimes blame us.
While Lexys made up his mind about FXCM despite never trading with us, I encourage you to see the discussion we had with each other. Then you can read the concerns he raised and my responses. :57:
If you have any additional questions about FXCM, please feel free to reach out to me in the Broker Aid Station.
* For risk management purposes it’s best to use this Range Entry feature only for opening new positions with stop orders (AKA Stop Entry orders) and not for closing existing positions with stop orders (AKA Stop Loss orders). The reason is because, from a risk management standpoint, negative slippage on a Stop Loss order is preferable to a trade remaining and potentially losing even more money.
@ Jason Rogers, can you explain to me why when I contacted FXCM about setting up an NDD account with a deposit of $2k they…
Hi Rogue,
‘Jason Rogers’ is a pseudonym used on the forums. We set it up this way back in 2009 when I first started participating on the forums as our brand ambassador in the event someone else would need to fill my role as FXCM’s brand ambassador. But 7 years later, still me 
I have to apologize because I listed the minimum for our UK office which is 2k. The minimum for the US used to also be $2k for NDD accounts but this was changed to 5k in June of this year. I understand a colleague has been helping on chat with your questions. Sorry about the confusion I caused. I just updated the previous post with the correct information.
Jason
That’s a sham Jason considering the title of this thread is called “Best U.S. Broker for Scalping”…
While I made an error in posting our old 2k minimum for Standard accounts which was increased to 5k in June, FXCM meets the criteria you listed in your original post:
Since your focus is on US brokers, you should be particularly interested in the latest CFTC data I mentioned earlier showing traders have more money on deposit with FXCM than any other US-regulated forex broker.
I signed up specifically to respond to this and complain about FXCM.
A company that’s been in business this long, managing this much capital, and having the reputation it does [positive] should not have these issues. I plan to close my account and find another broker.
Hi User001,
First, I want to thank you for posting on this forum and bringing your concerns to my attention. I’m sorry to hear you’ve been having trouble connecting to us.
I appreciate that you have an IT background, but please consider that if FXCM had widespread connection issues like you describe, then someone else would have posted about them.
In fact, your comments made me curious whether any FXCM clients besides you recently posted about having connection issues, and this is the most recent comment on this forum from one of our live account holders:
Please give me an opportunity to help you. I can put you in touch with one of our tech specialists who can investigate what’s happening.
I have been connected all day every day this week except between NY close and London open. I have had no problems with connections and all trade entries and exits have transmitted and been executed "instantly " I.e. no observable waiting time. But I guess connections to FXCM are through various servers around the globe, could this be a server-specific incident? I sure your techies can sort that out in an instant - surely that is the first place to start asking - as Jason says…
Thanks for confirming this, Manxx
While I’ve seen no reports of any recent connection issues for any of our servers, our tech support team can do various tests to see if there is something specific to User001’s internet service provider/network settings that is causing these problems for him. Any number of factors could cause this, so the best thing is to troubleshoot it in real time over the phone or live chat.
[B]@user001[/B] again I hope you will take me up on my offer to arrange a tech follow up for you. :57:
Sorry but this is [B]completely wrong[/B], Andrew. It’s the exact opposite of the reality. :31:
Brokers are businesses that executes trades for customers in a market to which the customers don’t have access, [I]without the brokers being financially involved in the outcome of the trade[/I].
You’re talking about [U]counterparty market-makers[/U] (like the one you’ve been advertising here), not genuine brokers. [I]They[/I] commonly don’t tolerate scalping because they would be the party being scalped.
A genuine broker doesn’t mind a customer scalping [I]the market[/I] at all. In fact, genuine brokers particularly [B][U]welcome[/U][/B] scalpers, for the obvious reason that brokers make their living from commissions, and scalpers pay more commissions than other traders because they trade so frequently. 
Jason, what was the reasoning behind FXCM’s decision to more than double the required minimum for a Standard NDD Account?
Welcome to the forum, G4mobile
With our No Dealing Desk (NDD) forex execution, FXCM profits from client trading volume and offsets each client order one-for-one with the best prices from competing liquidity providers. Accounts with a balance of at least 5k trade more volume than smaller accounts not only in the short term (larger account have adequate margin to place bigger trades) but also over the long term (research has shown 5k+ accounts tend to be more profitable than sub-5k accounts, source: FXCM’s Traits of Successful Traders Guide). For traders looking to start with as little as $50, FXCM offers a Mini account option with DD execution. When Mini account balances grow to 5k, they have the option of switching to Standard NDD execution.
