Broker like bank forex service: TFX Target

Broker Discussion Forex Brokers
1

I use a service of my bank Türkiye Finans Katılım Bankası(Turkey Finance Participation Bank) for my tradings. It’s called TFX Target. It is not something perfect but it offers a method that I cannot find in another bank or broker.

-Live prices 7/24.
-No leverage. Just move your money between different currency accounts.
-Low spreads like 25 pips at most(for major currencies pairs). They don’t increase at night.(to clarify, low for a bank forex. Maybe 20 times more than brokers but still ok for longer terms than scalping.
-Spread decreases with increasing trade volumes up to million units. Lowest spread for EJ was about 15 pips for example.
-Orders like limit, stop, OCO and OTO are available.
-News and a daily analysis bulletin are available, though analysis bulletin became not daily for a while.(Fundamental analysis tools)
-(Not so interactive) graphs(almost useless for analysis IMHO)
-Daily customer preferance ratios for current and previous days(buy/sell customer percent, volume percent)(Sentiment anaylsis)
-Something called “forward” but I don’t know what it really is.
-Get your money whenever you want. Same as other banks.

-Some pairs like GJ are not available yet. But many widely used usd, eur, cad, jpy, gbp, nzd, gold, silver and similar currencies pairs are available. I only use EJ though.
-Bugs… Android app frequently crashes. Not horrible but a bit annoying. Still ok for trading.
-Demo is limited for 90 days.
-Trade volumes between 150-2m units(not for jpy like things).

I like it. It is simple. I don’t think it conflicts with my beliefs. No risk of losing whole money.

I wonder if there are similar services. My bank says that TFX is the only one like this in Turkey.

Good tradings.

2

That’s extremely high and crazy spreads over there.

3

Yeah, not good for very short term tradings but ok for a day or longer terms. Daily movements usually allow me to profit, though I don’t surf on daily waves yet.

If one doesn’t prefer to work with a broker, these spreads may be not that bad. Especially if banks normally offer hundred pip spreads(I saw 150-200 for the same pair before in daytime and more than 500 when banks closed). I haven’t seen a better spread for now with the banks I worked with. So it is the best I see for a bank trading for now.

If you ask why I stick to bank trading, it’s mostly because of religious reasons. It’s really carefree.

Edit: I wondered and looked for the spread of Internet branch for today. Since it is weekend, buy/sell is 140/117EJ(2300pips!). It closed at 128 with 20 pip spread on Friday. This is just to see how much can a spread be when bank is closed.

4

i seem to remember something like that when i had an account in indonesia.

there is no risk of margin call.

5

The spread is too high. Not sure what I can achieve with that. I am a short term trader, I use ECN account from Forexchief, where spreads are lower than 2, and with low commission. So you technically failed to state what is advantageous about this spread of yours.

6

Of course, it’s clearly not for short term traders.

The advantage is simplicity, less risk, low spread(I will explain again), time options, order options, and not being swap.

Have money at bank? You can just convert it to whatever you want and you can even withdraw from any ATM or branch. You can realize arbitrage earnings whenever they’re available and pay your bills without waiting for a broker transfer. You never get rollover operations, so your money is always safe. The lack of leverage means you never get margin problems, because division and multiplication in currencies can almost never give something close to 0, even with many of the chaotic currencies (don’t include hyperinflated currencies and speculation driven ones like BTC).

But there’s a problem: you’re limited to the bank’s operation hours, otherwise a “high” spread like 20pips will turn into 200-400 pips or even thousands(yes, you can pay 100 USD for a 1000 USD transaction). And even during normal operation hours, most banks will have spreads of hundreds. If you want to do many transactions, there’s no way you can easily profit, even in a few weeks, sometimes. Add the lack of price triggered orders and the lack of quick price updates. So any regular bank will not have tools to let you do many arbitrage profits. Your best bet is the bank having a forex service, which can still be a swap service, just like any broker.

This system updates prices instantly and gives normal spreads 24/5. You have price order options, so you don’t need to do instant transactions. Add all the benefits of banks to this.

Short term trader? Of course, you won’t like this. With a spread of 20 pips, you can profit in at least a few days, unless you catch a movement. But if you don’t care about waiting a few days, a spread like 20 pips is not terrible, and even great. I don’t want to work with a broker, so this much spread is like an oasis. Even if I don’t ride every wave, I can have a few hundred pips of profit every month, depending on my accuracy.