I am relatively new to FX and have just opened an account with Tradeking FOREX. I started using their simulator roughly half a year ago and was consistently able to make profit which enticed me to open a live account as a way to make some money while at university.
However, since opening the Live account, I have been reading up on reviews and realized that the parent company (GAIN Capital) is a market maker and essentially bets against your every position. This also brings up concerns of conflicting interests w.r.t. rate setting, etc. especially as they are not a publically traded Broker like FXCM.
I have only had the account for 2 weeks now but am already debating a move. Is this a wise decision and if it is where should I go? I have an initial deposit of USD10,000 and currently consider myself more of a fundamentals trader who wants to gain more insight into tech. analysis.
You should open live account with two reputable brokers ($5000+$5000) and start trading…do not need to think or analyze about market makers, positions etc.
Thanks for the reply. I was just in another thread that asked a similar question and it seems to be very difficult to find a broker with no bad reviews.
From reviews Alpari Pro seems to be a good bet but their minimum deposit is 10k. Other than that Citifx seems to have some positive backing from some of the others in the forums.
The answer of this problem is that find the less bad broker! To whom with I trade it sometimes says “No Connection” and this happens in crucial moments! This is a bad think about them but I am still with the broker. Do not go with the broker whose minimum deposit is 10k!
There are a lot of good (comparatively) brokers whose minimum balance is $50 to $500, choose any of them but be sure that they are not listed as scams in any forums.
The FinFX ECN Pro account requires a 10k deposit (servers are in NY, trading commission is USD 6 per round-turn lot, USD 5.25 via IB). If you want to split up across several brokers take a look at IC Markets (servers are in NY, trading commission is AUD 7 per round-turn lot, AUD 5.50 via IB). Alpari UK is good for a market maker, but I have never tried their Pro account.
jfx thanks for the helpful link. I will stick with my current account for a while until I know more about my strengths and weaknesses. I also want to find a strategy that best suits my trading style.
I really hope that’s a typo error, lol. You never have more than 25% exposed on your account. I’d say on average most successful retail traders use an average 1%-2% of the account balance per trade. It’s not about making profits quick, but lasting in the market when the bad run hits - which it always does.
Hi Jezzode. No this is not a typo! I haven’t really run into any trouble as of yet (but then again, a month isn’t really the most telling of timeframes). How many positions would a retail investor normally be in at once using the 1-2% rule?
I suppose the answer to this question is very subjective to personal opinion, but for a ball part figure I would say that the usual risk taken per trade is around 0.5% to 3% per trade (typically larger account balances use a smaller risk per trade due to psychological reasons). Also you may consider trade frequency, a trader may risk less per trade when they trade several times per day as apposed to a trader who trades perhaps once of twice a week.
As for total exposure risk, well this only comes into play if you have more than one trade open at any one time. If you risk 1% per trade and never have more than one trade open, clearly your total exposure risk is always going to be 1%. When trading multiple trades at the same time it is not so easy to decide on a safe margin “how many trades should I have open at once before i’m exposed to much?” To answer this you could consider looking at your past performance (and I don’t mean a historical bank of perhaps 25 trades, more like a minimum of 500 trades over a few different years to encapsulate various market cycles). You could look at your previous maximum draw-down and use this as an aiding tool for when deciding an appropriate total exposure risk.
Risking 25% on a single trade is just not the way to move forward.
Hi everybody!
I’m a beginner,and I’m new I’m interested on trading also.It’s true that it isn’t easy to choose or find a good broker!
I recently open an account by the help of some friends and they suggest Xpertmarket that I don’t know yet how it is.But later we’ll see the development of this last one!
I use Alapri UK, have done so for nearly years now, nothing bad to report back - which is always a good things since we are all looking for negative comments to talk about.
