Going offshore to escape the CFTC

Yes, I have verified at all 3 levels and the small bank deposits, and it still gives me the $1000/day limit.

I will go ahead and begin using it and see if the limit goes up with use of it.

Thanks for your reply.

hey @1bluecloud! smallpaul has got the wrong link. i have been with finprotrading since 2015 & have been depositing and withdrawing from their banks. Never have deposited to finpro trading UK ltd bank account, they are registered with Finpro UK Ltd and the company is active. i hv always deposited to Finpro UK lts account and lately using btc

here’s the link FINPRO (UK) LTD - Overview (free company information from Companies House)

hope it helps and clarifies!

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Coinbase usually replenishes the limits based on how much you are trading (buy or sell). So if you are actively trading in the account, the daily limits will increase but at the end of the day, they reserve the right to increase or decrease your limits.

And normal bank transfer can take upto few days to reach your coinbase ac, ACH transfers can unlock the 25k per day limit if you are verified at level 2 with them

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We welcome the following new members to this thread — charlie.afl, frandlost, DynaPip,
wmwmw, martypython, ChexMix27, forexglobe, Ranger3, and 1bluecloud



51 new links have been added to Post #2.

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thanks for the correction i have posted that same link a few months back also if you do a wire transfer with finpro trading your money is going to turnkeyfx

Can someone help me out with this…

I currently use an Amsterdam VPS to auto copy my trades with low latency to FXChoice, Finpro & Tradersway.

I was considering adding Turnkey to the mix, however I have a question… Do Finpro & Turnkey have the same feeds & liquidity providers? Would I just be duplicating my existing Finpro account & tapping the exact same liquidity sources?

they have the same feed and also the same turnkeyfx mt-4 platform so you have to download turnkey forex into another folder so not worth it to have account with both unless you don’t trust one or the other

FINPROTRADING AND TURNKEYFOREX HAVE SAME FEED

@MrInvisible
These are essentially identical from a technical perspective, but
each broker might be amenable to some differences in the “deal”
they could make for you on commish, etc…

ALL MT4 PLATFORMS FROM ANY BROKER ARE IDENTICAL
They are simply “broker branded” but are the same core software.
All you need to access one or another is the .SRV file, or have the
MT4 instance create the .SRV file from their broker search function.

I know this because I use the NJ4X.com framework, and ANY MT4
terminal is exactly the same, and all it needs to access the full range
of brokers is the set of .SRV files … (with the possible exception
of U.S. brokers who have to support FIFO; perhaps they have
a custom MT4…) The same applies to MT5 terminals, by the way.

[EDIT] since most people don’t know this, they end up downloading
multiple MT4’s from various brokers, which is a way to get their .SRV
file of course, but is unnecessary and clutters up your computer…

[EXTRA TIP] When you install your MT4 terminal, DO NOT TAKE THE
DEFAULTS. Instead, on the very first installation screen change the
installation directory folder to c:\MyBrokerMT4 or whatever… Why do
this? Because you can then copy the entire installation tree into
c:\MyBrokerMT4-2 folder, and you have a “clone” of the platform, so
you can run TWO (or more) instances of MT4 simultaneously, on your
computer, instead of switching accounts within a single MT4 instance.
Hey, you’re welcome !!! LOL :slight_smile:

Hope this helps !

hyperscalper

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I use to aggregate the major bank ECN’s EBS, Reuters Matching & HotspotFxi as well as the single bank platforms of Citibank, UBS & Duetche bank via tier II prime broker setups with FCstone & ADM Derivatives. This allowed the trading of massive position sizes with relatively tight spreads. Of course this was before the Dodd Frank legislation forced me out by requiring ECP Qualified US Citizens with >10M in assets for prime accounts. I have been forced to aggregate retail brokers ever since 09.

My position size exceeds the typical retail maximum ticket size… so my sole concern is who are the broker’s LPs. If I fill too large a position with brokers sharing the same LPs price slippage is a potential huge issue.

@MrInvisible

Can you elaborate on what you mean by “aggregating” retail brokers, and
what technology you use? In house, custom development? What would
be a typical example of a trade? Curiosity… What lot sizes are you using?
hyperscalper

Aggregation was actually the wrong term to describe what I’m doing…

Back when I had the prime broker setup, you could put in a request for stream for ex. 30M and the order book would show the best bid/ask prices from all pre arranged liquidity sources. You then had the option of filling the entire 30M via the source with the best bid/ask. That was price aggregation.

You also had the option to sweep the entire market depth of the order book to fill huge orders (100-200M) in 1 click. What I’m doing now is similar to sweeping the order book. A larger order is broken up and routed to several retail brokers with different liquidity providers to reduce potential fill slippage.

It’s nothing too complicated… a VPS running multiple instances of MT4 with off the shelf copy trade slave & master EAs.

Order size is about 25-29M depending on the USD pair.

I have traded on velocity and citifx and they have the option of aggregating the prices for you based on your order size, FCIntl is also a very good broker but they have always favoured QIB’s and institutions. Never traded with them because I felt that I will be realtively too small in comparison with their other clients and can possibly get not treated as well.

One way of doing that (which you have already figured out, is to slice your order and spread across multiple brokers. At the end of the day every broker / entity / liquidity pool has a tag number or identifier attached to it and all the limits (as per the best of my knowledge) is attached to these specific ID’s. So LP’s treat them independent of eachother.

In this specific case, I believe you will only get diversity of LP ID’s (because all broker’s clients, technically would be a sub-id or same ID as that of the broker). I dont specifically see how it will help you in getting better fills. As far as I see their liquidity is very similar (if not exactly the same) and if you are hitting the markets on both of them independently, its going back to the same set of LP (at best their agregators will give you some internal routing diversification, but not significant). So technically, you are splitting your orders only to be recombined again (atleast partially) at the LP level. Hope that I’m making sense :slight_smile:

Essentially, if you look at Advance Markets (not an offshore broker but a kangaroo broker) you can do size with them but their spreads are not the best ones in industry.

Coming back to your point, I think you will have to both slice your orders and add delays to your orders (say 50 MS or so) if you want true diversification, this will in a way fool the LP’s that quickly move spreads for few MS and come back when they see significant sizes. But, if you are doing a hit-and-run strategy, you will have to be slightly more creative than that.

hope that helps

@MrInvisible
I’d like to hear more about your strategy, but this looks like
lots that far outstrip anything I’m able to consider… or that I
would expect a typical retail brokerage to fulfill, especially
the U.S. friendly ones we have on our list.

Just, in general, is this a scalping approach; where you go
for a handful of pips ? I can understand why you are concerned
about liquidity and slippage; or perhaps even LP’s "backing away"
from their Bids/Offers if these are to be achieved in a single
transaction…

[EDIT] I mean that in my trading a single transaction rarely exceeds
0.1M or a “standard lot” and I rely on multiple fills within that size
range, so I have less of a worry on any single transaction, and
not much concern about slippage…

hyperscalper

Weird… for some reason I can’t quote or reply properly on here.

@whywescalp

You answered my question in detail, thanks for your help.

I also traded Citi Velocity as well as the single bank platforms UBS Fx trader, Deutche autobahn & Barclays Barx. I was a small fry @ FC, but my volume was decent @ >5 yards a month. I can’t complain, they always treated me well. That was back when 150-250K could get you in the door through one of their Introducing brokers compared to 10M now.

Do you think these smaller offshore brokers would be able to setup custom direct/aggregated price feeds with their LPs in larger amounts similar to larger retail brokers?

@Hyperscalper

My target is anywhere from 3-7 pips, some consider that scalping and some don’t.

It’s not an algorithmic arbitrage system that is adversarial to brokers and their LPs by taking advantage of discrepancies/lag in their price feeds. Thankfully, backing away from quotes has not been an issue. Ironically, it was a problem with the much larger Gain Capital.

RETAIL MT4/5 CONNECTION LIMITATIONS

@MrInvisible well, I’ve just standardized on the ubiquitous and cheap
MT4/5 broker connections. We know that they will typically “hold” your
orders, aggregate them, possibly for periods of at least 50 msecs
or longer. This gives them plenty of time to “optimize” fills which are
slightly in their favor.

For lot sizes I trade, I get really excellent precision, but I’m not counting
on any single fill significantly affecting the overall result and, as I said, I
am not using lot sizes which would be expected to generate significant
slippage, plus I don’t “chase price” with Market orders, which is where
"adverse slippage" comes in…

So my question would be, why are you (or are you?) looking for
individual fills of 10, 50, 100 lots in one transaction, or perhaps you’re
not; rather than to distribute those entries across multiple transactions??

hyperscalper

It’s not a high frequency system. It only produces 2-3 trades per day, so when opportunities do occur I need to take advantage. I enter with the full ticket size across multiple brokers and get out. Other then during the lower volume JPY session & around news releases, filling 4-6M with decent spreads has never been a problem with most of the retail brokers I have experienced.

I think you should ask their sales guys to get you in touch with their senior manager or so, and with some negotiations and persuasion you can get direct or aggregated feeds and some preferential treatment (its all baked in the commissions).

Based on what I read from your posts so far, I’m assuming you are a liquidity taker and are sensitive to time. Since you are only trading a few times a day and are putting big lots when you get the opportunity and getting out with 3-7 pips (sort of like a breakout trading or news trading :wink: ) may be not technically so, but in a way similar flow. Some brokers will put that as toxic flow. I would actually merge that kind of a strategy with some simple random cross trading (buy with one broker and sell with another) to conceal your trading pattern

To a large extent, I agree with @HyperScalper because that is a very efficient and proven way to trading bigger size with retail brokers. Slice your transactions over multiple brokers, vary them by few 10 ms to let LP’s feel they are different trades and take liquidity across multiple LP’s and brokers. Essentially you can automate to send 100’s of trades in less than 100 MS to over 10 different brokers and achieve your target size with little slippage. I do that as well when I have to put size on my trade. Although Im not nearly as technically advance as @HyperScalper but I can manage with my little experience in tech and flow management.

I would recommend get multiple brokers and dont ask for FIX connections, as that makes them (atleast internally) qualify you as potentially toxic flow. Put simple automation on MT4 with multiple instances running on a large local dedicated server (VPS might not be enough in your case) and slice out your trades into smaller tranches.

Hope that helps !

MT4 ORDER OPERATIONS ELAPSED TIMES

@MrInvisible sorry, I just can’t get close to your ability to enter
orders quickly, say with 10 millisecond resolution… These are
current elapsed times I’m getting (round-trip msecs) times for MT4
into FinProTrading.com, for example.

My Amsterdam server has ping time of 1 millisecond from FinProTrading’s
MT4 server… This is not some VPS; but a dedicated Xeon server
with 8 processor threads… ?

These are not really “high performance” brokers… ?

[20180817-01:55:33.544(GMT)] OrderOp Buy Limit elapsed: 79
[20180817-02:16:18.148(GMT)] OrderOp Close Position elapsed: 98
[20180817-02:16:18.148(GMT)] OrderOp Close Position elapsed: 98
[20180817-02:16:18.148(GMT)] OrderOp Close Position elapsed: 98
[20180817-02:16:18.258(GMT)] OrderOp Close Position elapsed: 210
[20180817-08:08:59.004(GMT)] OrderOp Sell Limit elapsed: 71
[20180817-08:09:00.632(GMT)] OrderOp Sell Limit elapsed: 63
[20180817-08:09:01.529(GMT)] OrderOp Sell Limit elapsed: 62
[20180817-08:09:02.046(GMT)] OrderOp Sell Limit elapsed: 72
[20180817-08:09:02.573(GMT)] OrderOp Sell Limit elapsed: 92
[20180817-08:09:17.313(GMT)] OrderOp Close Position elapsed: 139
[20180817-08:10:18.043(GMT)] OrderOp Cancel Order elapsed: 88
[20180817-08:10:18.043(GMT)] OrderOp Close Position elapsed: 88
[20180817-08:12:39.531(GMT)] OrderOp Sell Limit elapsed: 132
[20180817-08:12:39.968(GMT)] OrderOp Sell Limit elapsed: 63
[20180817-08:12:40.525(GMT)] OrderOp Sell Limit elapsed: 111
[20180817-08:13:52.805(GMT)] OrderOp Cancel Order elapsed: 78
[20180817-08:13:52.835(GMT)] OrderOp Close Position elapsed: 110
[20180817-08:15:25.725(GMT)] OrderOp Cancel Order elapsed: 81
[20180817-08:15:25.725(GMT)] OrderOp Cancel Order elapsed: 81
[20180817-08:15:25.795(GMT)] OrderOp Close Position elapsed: 149
[20180817-11:48:21.859(GMT)] Buy Market OrderOp elapsed: 140
[20180817-11:49:10.849(GMT)] OrderOp Buy Limit elapsed: 72
[20180817-11:49:14.559(GMT)] OrderOp Buy Limit elapsed: 71
[20180817-11:49:16.409(GMT)] OrderOp Buy Limit elapsed: 69

hyperscalper

MT4 AGGREGATION PHASE

I had a situation with an 800 millisecond order operation time (round trip) and
requested to have the “aggregation” hold phase removed, which brought
times down into the 200-250 millisecond range. The broker explained that this
was now a “direct connection to liquidity providers”… It certainly was faster.

These long aggregation times are for the broker’s benefit, of course, and
disadvantage scalpers…

But then I found much faster brokers, and have not yet pushed to request
that from them, as they are acceptably fast out of the starting gate…

hyperscalper

@whywescalp

Entry is time sensitive, however I’m definitely not news trading or entering during fast moving market periods. In the past, I only used the method of entry you’re recommending for orders that could not be filled within the top 2 levels of an order book… do you really think it is necessary in my case?