Hi everyone,
Having tested five different trading platforms in the past 2 months,I have come to the conclusion that the biggest obstacle to making a profit in FX trading is your broker.
I have found it relatively easy to pick the direction of the market using trends and range trading.However,I have noticed that what screws you up in the end is spreads,trading costs,charges applied to funding and withdrawing from accounts,inability to place stop losses at where you want to and various other small but ultimately damaging restrictions brokers put in your way.
So,can you make money trading FX? yes,but the brokers will take it off you one way or another.
Please comment pippers.
ECN is I guess the only best option available. Thats what i am going for. Pricey yes but less worries on the broker manipulating the price chart
That seems the most sensible option orionanglo, the things to consider would be these,what is the minimum investment,do they allow trading of micro/mini lots,how quickly can you withdraw money from your account and what would be the costs incurred?
Three ecn traders I am interested in are Ironfx,fxpro and dukascopy.
Good luck and good trading buddy.
Which five trading platforms have you tested? I may be wrong, but I assume you meant forex brokers and not actual trading platforms. Correct me if I am wrong.
I am sorry to hear that, ‘dailyfascist’…
There have been very many threads dedicated to this topic… Unfortunately the ‘brokers are out to get us’ sometimes seems a little more than a cry of frustration than factual proof: in the end, all the BabyPips threads that have been started on this topic have soon died out quickly enough, because in this day of highly regulated brokerage, you will be hard pushed to find that, say, Oanda or FXCM (or any other regulated broker) can play Russian roulette with your money and not be accounted for it… There may be lots of individual examples to the contrary, but on the whole it is a system that works and we, small-size account holders, can benefit from it if we know how to exploit the Forex market to our advantage…
All I am saying is: we need our brokers in order to trade, so let us try not to be bellicose and keep posting threads denouncing them as rogues and thieves (not that you have, but so many before you already have)! Rather, let us establish a good relationship with them and help them improving their service, where necessary, with our help.
Cheers.
Take a look at IC markets they are really good regulaed and flexible leverage options and not to bad price points
Yes of course LastBear,I meant brokers sorry for the confusion.
Hi PipMeHappy,
Whilst I appreciate what you are saying and I am in no way saying that all brokers are thieves or rogues,what I am saying is that it ‘seems’ to me that they are not really interested in the small retail traders as the present controversy surrounding ‘high frequency trading’ appears to suggest.
I guess this echoes Jesse Livermore’ s bucket shops.
The question no one asks when joining a broker is who am I trading against?
Some brokers offer dealing desk execution. This is what it appears like you have. Non dealing desk means your order goes straight to a liquidity provider in the interbank liquidity pool. A few benefits are stops cannot be seen by your broker in fact they have no interaction with your order apart from passing it on and taking commission. Suitable for small account holders.
Dealing desk execution means it is in the brokers interest that you loose. This is a conflict of interest. However good old Jesse figured those #?!@ 100 years ago and they made him rich. It also meant he could not trade anywhere in US and was known as the boy plunger. I have seen many stories of brokers closing client accounts for excessive profit even now.
As pipme says, regulation has made it hard for the brokers. Dealing desk brokers have stop limits and will aggressively move against you if they feel you want to profiteer. That said I have a demo account with a dealing desk broker and even this week despite stop limits, delayed quotes, etc made a tidy sum teaching my daughter to trade.
C’est la vie… Learn the game and ditch all those fancy technical tools. I recently removed Bollinger bands from my chart found I never used it. So now I have 3 MA’s and tick data. That’s it…
I’ve never experienced any problems with the brokers I use. Sure they take their spreads, but unless you’re scalping that’s not an issue. They take rollover which can hurt long term trades, but you know that in advance - and you can just as easily earn rollover as be charged for it.
And as to withdrawals - I’ve never had to wait more than three days. Usually I get credited within 24 hours.
Hi DayTrader,
Glad to hear that,could you please tell us who you use? thanks.
My primary broker is FXCM and I have three accounts with them. They’re a solid broker and their support is 1st class. I also use a Vantage FX account for a fund I trade with - they weren’t my choice, but they seem decent enough.
I’ve also used Axi Trader in the past and they were good too.
Be aware that their are a lot of small fry who white-label the products from other brokers. There’s nothing wrong with that necessarily, but I prefer to stick with brokers I know aren’t fly-by-nights.
Broker provide trading service to you, so you have to pay for them for each trade. I think it’s right, each trade is like a chance for you to earn money. No one work for free. They have to spend million dollar to build a system for providing service to you.
Broker is not like a bank, if there is not bank, how can you deposit/withdraw/transfer/loan money easier and secure?
yes if you don’t mind. which brokers you meant to?
GekkoGlobalMarkets,Alpari,GoMarkets,FXCM,Oanda
I’m not complaining about them taking their legitimate profits,I’m talking about charges for funding accounts,charges for withdrawing funds etc,etc. but hey if you are happy to be ripped off,then knock yourself out.
It is normal for any broker to have some fees. If you are that good as you say this should not be a problem to you.
Just because I am good doesn’t mean I want to be ripped off:rolleyes: