ECN or STP or MarketMaker? Which one to choose?

I have tested some brokers logging the spreads and yes they do widen but not to ridiculous levels like Oanda. IC Markets and FXopen performed pretty good and completely trade-able whereas Oanda and some others make it completely impossible to get in market unless you to experience big losses.

Doggonit. I am in USA.

-Adrian

I have an idea for you. Go half with one broker like tallinex or tradersway and the other half with a local broker. Use ic market’s demo account to do your trades and use fxblue’s trade copier to copy you trade’s from ic market’s demo to your two real accounts. You can even hide your stoploss and profit target by adding pips to it on the sender side.

That’s why he’s having a problem finding a good broker. There are some in the US but you need quite a bit of cash to open an account with them. I still can’t understand as to why they come up with those laws to stop Americans from going overseas specially when the US loves to “promote” a free market society and right now Europe being kind of “socialistic” yet we have more freedom on the markets than Americans.

The USA was lost a generation ago to a powerful elite group of collectivists who pretend to battle each other as two different parties while paying lip service to freedom as they make everything and everyone but their own enrichment and their own political class illegal at home and the target of our attrocious military abroad.

-Adrian

Not to get political, but I couldn’t agree more with both of you guys.

They have to try to save me from myself because they know better . hell we cant even trade xau and xag usd.

I have spent as much time on looking for broker than I have in my trading. Not what I want to be doing .

Great idea. I just may have too do that.
On tradersway demo they really high spread on 1 of gbp pairs almost as high as my live oanada spread.

Are you guys really that concerned about dealers taking out your stops when the market actually doesn’t? I have never seen a situation where a stop was triggered even though the market did not go there.

-Adrian

Oh man! You do not know oanda! Not too long ago I posted charts to show how 6 other brokers respected a support line to the pip whereas oanda broke that support line by 12 pips.

Right but they didn’t just do so for your stop right? All Oanda traders saw the price go there. If I look at the data feed from Gain and FXCM I can see loads of differences all the time. But everyone that gets the Gain feed gets the same data right?

-Adrian

You are right but if I was trading off oanda’s platform I would be stopped out but by using another broker’s platform like IC Markets and using fx blue trade copier to add 20 extra pips to the receiving platforms I didn’t get stopped out because my stop was being controlled by IC Markets platform and yes I do feel more comfortable not communicating my true intentions to my brokers. Stop hunting doesn’t mean that they are looking at one particular trader and decide to stop you out but if they see by dropping the price a few pips they will knock out 100,000 traders, they will do it.

I see u r in US also. can I ask who u r are using. Myabe I can check them out. Im having doubts about tradersway because like I saw yesterday on one of the gbp pairs the spread was real high and only a pip or so lower than oanadas which was about 10.

I use FXCM the most. I also use Forex.com and Oanda. I have an account with thinkorswim but I have not put on any fx trades just yet (they are more expensive). I personally would prefer to have accounts with as many dealers as possible. Also, I have over 65% of my trading capital in a local FDIC insured checking account.

-Adrian

P.S. I have absolutely ZERO fear of a dealer hunting my stops. I don’t know if my stops are close to many others, far away, or whatever, nor do I care. I have a system now and I trade it. Simple as that. After that, its all beer and sunshine. A few bikinis for the view perhaps too.

Sure, but they are no better at trading than a newb. For all we know, the market is headed deep past that stop anyway. Just because your dealer knows your stop, doesn’t mean he can get anything out of it. Plenty of traders in plenty of markets can see the depth of the market, they still can’t make dime one.

-Adrian

I was checking into e trade but they say that fxcm takes the trades done through e trade. Im gonna leave what I have now at oanada and put about half of whats in there and give tradersway a shot.
Im so tired of looking and spinning my wheels wasting trading time.

Are you following this thread? Going offshore to escape the CFTC

Those guys on that thread might help you if you really want to go with an overseas broker. A tallinex rep contributes quite a bit to that thread so might consider asking him whatever doubts you might have.

Yeah, I figured there is no benefit in trading fx through etrade since I already have an account with FXCM. No tradersway for me, I am in USA.

-Adrian

No it was not, most of the time this happens on market corrections and once market got back into to the trend it never looked back. Oanda purposely drops the price more than any other broker, I haven’t been checking on them lately but I did in the past. Obviously if you trade long term with large stops it might not affect you but if you have a different trading style than it will, so it really depends.

Hi 3xfx,

Many traders in the FX market uses the phrase ECN and STP interchangeably. FXCM offers No Dealing Desk forex execution which is the same thing as STP.

Every order you place is offset one for one with a liquidity provider. This means your loss is not our gain and your gain is not our loss. The price on the platform (and thereby spreads) is set by price competition from multiple liquidity providers, and not by FXCM. And your stop loss orders are held on FXCM’s servers and unknown to the liquidity providers.

You also mentioned having a platform set to NY close in order to have 5 daily candles which our platform has.

Let me know if you have any questions about FXCM.

Jason

Do you realize that you are saying that Oanda knows the future? They can pick tops and bottoms? If they can, why on earth would they need to run stops? They would already have trillions. They, like everyone else, have no idea if a given move is going to stop in ten pips or a thousand. They have no idea where the price will be in the next ten minutes, ten hours, ten days, etc.

If they fill your stop and profit from your loss and the market continues against your original position while you sit safely out, are you unhappy?

-Adrian