AYE hi fellow traders I am stuck and I need sum advice. I have been demoing on MT4 for several months now. I am doing really well and each demo account I have had I have doubled or tripled the amount of the orginal investment. I would like to go live but I am having trouble finding a reputable FOREX BROKER preferable ECN. A lot of Brokers are obvious market manipulators you can easily tell by the spread prices. My trading method is scalping so I need a broker with tight spreads and that offers crypto. AND yes please no political answers like “pick the broker that works for you”. I have done my research and due diligence as I stay on Forex peace Army and reddit. And in advance thx for the advice
Scalping contains huge risk even though it brings profit very rapidly, and for using this approach you have to choose the broker which allows trading concept such as this; generally so many brokers don’t allow scalping and hedging in their platform. So, be careful when choosing a broker.
Thank you for the obvious advice. “scalping contains huge risk, so be careful when choosing a broker”.
We always consider scalping as a risky approach , but if you can ensure most narrowest trading spreads there is a possibility to get good result by means of this trading approach.
Hi @ceez1000,
Since you are stuck, have you considered a different approach?
Research and due diligence are good, but it’s important to seek out reliable sources, as another recent discussion here highlighted: False prophets, a concern
One drawback of the sites you mentioned is that no one verifies whether the people posting broker reviews are real clients. What’s to stop some obscure broker from trying to build a reputation by having its employees post positive reviews for itself and negative reviews against its better known competitors? Have you ever wondered why some little known brokers seem to get great reviews while established brokers with clients around the world get poor reviews?
Not to pick on you personally (in fact, we posted a similar response to someone else on this forum recently), but your ECN comment reveals some misconceptions about the forex market we would like to address.
It’s worth noting that for institutional traders, our parent company, GAIN Capital, offers ECN solutions through the GTX marketplace. However, for retail traders, FOREX.com is a market maker, because we believe market making is the best way to provide our retail clients with reliable pricing at retail trade sizes while effectively managing our own risk. We are fully accountable for every execution and don’t outsource that responsibility to a third party.
It’s important to understand that if a particular retail forex broker tells you they are an ECN, that only means they must offset your trades with another firm that is a market maker. That’s because market makers perform a vital service, not only in forex, but in many financial markets, including major stock and futures exchanges.
Consider what the world’s largest stock exchange says about how their market model works:
The cornerstone of the NYSE market model is the Designated Market Maker (DMM). DMMs have obligations to maintain fair and orderly markets for their assigned securities. They operate both manually and electronically to facilitate price discovery during market opens, closes and during periods of trading imbalances or instability. This high touch approach is crucial for offering the best prices, dampening volatility, adding liquidity and enhancing value.
DMMs apply their market experience and judgment of dynamic trading conditions, macroeconomic news and industry-specific intelligence, to inform their decisions. A valuable resource for our listed company community, DMMs offer insights, while making capital commitments, maintaining market integrity, and supporting price discovery.
In the following post, we discuss the three methods retail forex brokers can use to offset your trades in greater detail: Who is the counterparty in an exchange?
Focusing on brokers that are regulated by reputable government authorities where you live can go a long way to addressing the concerns you raised. Key advantages of trading with a well-regulated broker is that there are:
- minimum financial and trading standards they must meet,
- ongoing monitoring by the regulators to ensure compliance,
- a framework for handling complaints from customers, and
- the power to enforce actions against regulated brokers for violations.
For example, the CFTC and NFA set the requirements a broker must meet in order to offer forex trading to US residents. Though not an exhaustive list, this membership application will give you an idea of some of those requirements: Compliance Requirements for Retail Foreign Exchange Dealer (RFED) Applicants | NFA
- In the US, forex is regulated by the CFTC and NFA, and brokers are required to maintain net capital of $20 million.
- In the UK, forex trading is regulated by the FCA and funds are protected for up to £50,000 per client by the FSCS.
- In Canada, forex trading is regulated by IIROC and funds are protected for up to $1 million per client by the CIPF.
FOREX.com is well-regulated and welcomes scalpers with competitive spreads including cash rebates for high volume traders. We also offer cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin, Ethereum, Litecoin and Ripple to our clients living outside the US. While spot crypto trading is not available in the US at this time, we can provide US residents access to Bitcoin futures trading.
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