Yes, I’m a real newbie! I’m trying to learn as fast as I can, but why do I need a broker? Can’t I trade with software direct from Forex?
I read this below today at wikihow and it had me a little concerned
“Consult a trusted broker. You need to trade through a broker who will not deal against your trades with human dealers or electronically. Most retail FX brokers take the other side of your trade which causes them to gain from your losses. This is a huge incentive for them to run your stop losses and stall the execution of your trades”
This site is really good I have to say. Have taken a few of the great lessons here already, but I bet after a few months of understanding and demo accounts I won’t kid myself into pretending I know more than 1% of what I need to know to do a smart trade.
Technically you could exchange any currency for any other currency at a bank that exchanges currencies. The rate you pay will suck and you will have to pay to have it changed back and forth, and not be able to use leverage, but yes you COULD trade without a broker.
Your other brokerless option is to become your own broker, do you have a few million dollars to make that happen? I know I don’t…
Most of what you quoted sounds like fear mongering to me. Almost any established broker will be fine. Most people who loose money trading blame their brokers and not themselves that is why some get a bad rep, not because they are doing any of that but because they are simply the most popular with newbies. FXCM comes to mind, and interbankFX. You will find very few if any respected people here complaining about them doing such nonsense.
I like and trade with Oanda, they have tight spreads, fast execution, and good customer service. On the other hand I’m sure you can find somebody who said they are a scam because they lost money trading. If you don’t like their platform check out the banner ads on babypips for interbankFX, GFT, or FXCM, or one of the 5 or 6 others. All of them should be fine, if your not sure about a specific broker feel free to ask in the appropriate section on this forum, or do a search.
Make sure you like and can use their platform, and I also suggest calling or emailing them and asking a question or two, see how long it takes them to answer, etc.
Thanks for the reply Simy, really helpful for me! The reason I am looking at trading on Forex is that the banks in Canada have frustrated me enough to head in this direction.
I kind of thought that clip from wikihow looked like fear mongering myself, but really did not know enough to fully doubt it, thanks for the clarification.
Ok, will have a look at a few of the brokers you suggest and see which one I feel comfortable with. What I am a little confused about is that I thought I was talking to someone at Forex when I was using the chat box at “Forex.com”, but on my web browser address it always bounces to “Forex.com/UK”
Does that mean that they are another broker too? I’m still confused if I need to use a broker in canada or can use one from any country?
As far as I understand, you can use a broker from any country, but always use a highly recommended one, what I would like to know is which currency is best to have your account in, like Oanda for instance, I can hold my account in £ or $, does it make any difference?
Good to know, thanks! I’m still concerned about the scam alert for Oanda though. Would like to know more about it if anyone else has some knowledge if the scam alert has merit or not?
What is a little disappointing is that FXCM is also under the scam alert at forexscambuster
For one, that is very poorly written. I write bad… very bad. Read some of my earlier posts and try to make heads or tails of it. This is what that is to me. Garbage.
From the few details that I can gather he is confusing multiple products, and the comments are even worse. I can go on a point by point with this but it would quite honestly be a waste of time. I don’t pretend that Oanda is perfect, but messing with prices? I haven’t seen it, nor have I heard of a legitimate complaint about it. Messing with order execution? Same deal…
As far as not offering tools, or not having specific time frames etc. This can be a hangup, Oanda didn’t use to offer trailing stops, they do now. They don’t have a chart higher then a Daily, and the data doesn’t go back as far as some other brokers.
They widen their spreads during low liquidity, and during high liquidity times. They don’t hide this though. They will sometimes raise it during news events in expectation of wild price fluctuations. To be honest if they stopped doing this it would mess me up a little bit, if I’m going to enter and the spread keeps getting bigger, I don’t.
Their platform is java, so you need to make sure it will run smoothly on your system, some Windows machines may have speed issues with it. Java and Windows doesn’t always mix depending on how its codded and what is running in the background… I don’t use Microsoft products so it doesn’t bother me. Linux – FTW
If you want to code or program an automated trading system Oanda wont work for you unless you meet their requirements for the API access, or pay a monthly fee.
Short of that, there isn’t a reason to use Oanda, fast execution, was (if not still is) the tightest spreads… Not a lot of fancy tools on their chart, but more then enough to go indicator happy.
For the record I run the Oanda platform on my trading computer 24/7 which is an old 600Mhz laptop with 128Mb ram or so running a full blown copy of Ubuntu… eventually I’ll trim it down… Runs just fine on there, even with multiple chart windows open. Poor computer runs at nearly 100% CPU, but still
Oanda answers my questions when I ask them, I can get my money in and out quick and cheap with paypal, the platform works for me and I can trade from my phone, so for me they are perfect. If they don’t have an indicator your system needs then that may be an issue. If you want to trade automated that may be an issue too. Short of that, I’ve never had a problem.
I’ve had a live account for 3 years I think… I’m doing horrable, but still
klrman, I suggest you to use a broker located in US, where the Forex Market i ased, beside they can’t scam you, I’ve been trading with Wall Street Brokers for 2 years and I’ve made alot of pips, they’re located in the US.
Hope that helped.
I have to admit I’m getting cold feet at the moment and need to study a lot more before I even begin to trade. Thanks for all your help. BTW, I never knew Forex was based in the US!
Anyone have experience with “Dukascopy”? So far, from what I have read, they seem to be a genuine and trustworthy ECN that I feel safe depositing in to start trading.
I have not heard their name thrown around a lot in any forums so I was hoping some here would have something to say about them from experience?
Attempting to trade on the forex market without a broker is like trying to hunt a grizzly bear without a soup spoon. Chances of success are very small and distinct risk you will get hurt pretty badly. In fact choosing the wrong broker may also cause heavy risk, so it is important to even choose a right broker the right way.
I think he means the servers for a good proportion of retail traders… if not he’s way off! London still recieves far and away the bulk of all forex trades.
Some people such as myself :o, before I knew anything about Forex, actually thought it was a stock exchange with a physical address
BTW, anyone have good experience with Dukascopy? I kind of like that they are a real ECN as well as a real Swiss Bank now. I would really be interested in the pro’s and con’s of Dukascopy from traders who have actually used them for awhile.
I’ve heard of them for quite some time and when I started looking for a broker I looked at them, I do remember they were not one of the finalists, but I don’t know why. Maybe non Linux friendly platform, that excluded many brokers…
When I searched for “dukascopy” I got 6 pages back, thsoe two threads in there, and ofcourse you can always start a new thread if you have questions specifically about them. They have been around for awhile and if you like them, try their platform(s) if you like their platforms, and their policies then by all means open a demo and get to tinkering with their toys some more until you are intimately familiar with them.
Next step after that is to get a good system together, I suggest buying off of support/resistance and leaving indicators behind
Thanks very much Simy, very helpful for me! It has been a little exhausting trying to find an ECN that is a true ECN and one that has a high reputation, so the more I read about them the better I am feeling about opening an account and giving this all a try. I’m just about to download their demo and see if it makes sense to me.
After scanning other threads. I also found this link that puts them in the top part of the game. “Top Forex Review | forex brokers review” Someone also posted that many marketmakers take from marketplaces such as Dukascopy because of their spread and fair pricing.
I have to admit that I got quite discouraged after reading how most of the marketmakers are using all sorts of tricks against the traders whenever they feel like it and it made me search even harder to try and narrow everything down to a point where I feel comfortable depositing some of my own money with.
UNFORTUANATELY reading these broker review sites can be very misleading and unsettling. You have to be able to ‘filter’ the reviews and that you can only do with a bit of knowledge and experience I’m afraid. There is not a single broker on the planet that does not have at least one ‘less than cordial’ review posted about them (including US and we’re THE BEST) (yeh that was a ‘cheap shot’ I know but read on and you’ll understand). For the MOST part: a bad review is posted by a (new???) trader that does not understand how this ‘thing’ called ‘the market’ REALLY operates. A FINE example of this is probably one of the most basic things that a trader should know and that is the difference between all the different order types and what ACTUALLY happens to a stop order when it’s placed!!! A stop order BECOMES a market order when it’s executed by the broker and if price has moved too quickly or ‘gapped’ it’s executed at the best / first available price. This is known as ‘slippage’ and IS NORMAL in a fast moving market (and in the case of a weekend ‘gap’ it’s JUST NORMAL). So what happens??? A stop order gets ‘slipped’ and ALL OF A SUDDEN the broker is deemed a ‘scam artist’!!! See my point here???
One of my PERSONAL favorites is when a trader has wiped out his account blaming the broker BUT DOESN’T TELL YOU that ACTUALLY: the guy was trading a standard lot of EUR/USD with a $10 per per pip movement, capital of $5, leverage of 10 000 000:1, and a stop loss 500 pips away!!! ‘Get my drift’??? (OBVIOUSLY I exaggerate here)!!! LOL!!!
ALL I’m saying is that BEFORE you can ‘filter’ out the ‘nonsense’ you have to at least know a little bit about the BUSINESS of trading and THEN you’ll quickly be able to see which of the reviews are with merit and which are not. In addition: you’ll also quickly be able to see certain ‘patterns’ emerging in the reviews. A good example is a broker that I used to trade with ‘eons’ ago (who shall remain nameless as a professional courtesy NOT that they deserve it mind you): NEVER could you close out a position at a profit (they would simply hold your order until the position has turned to a loss UNLESS price had moved SO far in your favour that they could no longer ‘cover up’ and EVEN THEN you’d not see all of your profit and there was ALWAYS an excuse) but MAN when you were prepared to realise a loss you could close the position out ‘in the twinkling of an eye’!!! LOL!!! THAT type of thing and as I said: look for these ‘patterns’ in the reviews. The ‘oneoff’ bad reviews don’t count for much in my opinion. To make things EVEN MORE difficult for you though: it’s a FACT that SOME brokers ‘invent’ traders with the sole purpose of getting the said ‘invented’ traders to post bad reviews about the competition!!! LOL!!!
I guess the only thing I can say to you is: ‘be careful out there’ but don’t get ‘stagefright’!!! LOL!!! And besides: there are MANY MANY good and wonderful people on this site that are ONLY TOO HAPPY to give you FREE GOOD advice!!!
I use Oanda for a few years .
I never felt “scammed” when I made money,
I always feel “scammed” when I am on the wrong side of the trade.
Hmmmmmmmmm, definitely a"scam" when I hit the “short” button and hit submit when I actually should have gone “long”.
Dukascopy, some people seem to be “hyped” about it, I was checking the spreads a few times, and they seem very close to Oanda.
conclusion, no reason for me to switch.
My 2 cents.
Your post above just proves my point. If your not sure, just ask for the most part were pretty nice here. I don’t pay attention to the review sites anymore, some of them are scams themselves but I’m not going there anymore because I honestly don’t care anymore to find all the information I found on them in the first place.
Hey while were at being scammed, I think my broker scammed me because the market always moves against me when I first open a trade… Not because I’m one of the few going short when everybody is still getting on the long bandwagon, or vise versa, nope it has to be my broker.
They also scammed me because when a press release came out the market got out of hand and my SL got hit before it “took off like a rocket” in the “correct” direction.
And last but not least my broker scammed me because it takes almost a full 24 hours for me to withdraw money from my account, and they do it for free, but its not really free, so its their fault.
