If you guys start reversing and re-reversing your votes, I’m gonna have to make a spreadsheet just to keep up with y’all.
I’ve been speaking with Profiforex customer support for a few months now and this is their policy from what I’ve been gathering from them:
Pairs with the “v” suffix are scalp-able. These pairs are 5-digit quotations and are my favorite as they have less spread compared to their 4-digit quotations. From what I’ve been told, if you attempt to scalp on 4-digit pairs with orders less than 1 minute in duration, I believe your profit will be canceled. Also, if you decide to hedge, then your trades need to be open for a duration of at least 5 minutes. If you make a profit on trades where you hedge and the trade was less than 5 minutes, the profits will be cancelled. On top of this, arbitrage is of course not allowed.
So in summary, unless you plan on hedging, scalping is absolutely allowed on “v” suffix pairs, but trades less than 1 minute on non-“v” suffix pairs will be cancelled. Hedge trades closed less than 5 minutes from opening will also have profits cancelled.
This is all the information I was able to get from the customer support, and they told me these are the only restrictions they have.
If you plan on trading with Profiforex, I would speak with their customers support first to verify, they are almost always available.
Regarding Profiforex, taking all things into consideration(no questions registration process,nano lot sizes,deposit methods,spreads,etc). I would vote “Yes” in general. But for me personally, I like having the option to change my mind 30 seconds after entering a trade regardless of the suffix on the pair. If I should happen to make enough to cover the commission cost, then I want the credit.
Absolutely correct, been using them 20 months, I only trade the v(variable) spreads as they are way tighter and commission is only 0.3 for the trade. Regarding ForexBrokerInc, I have contacted them and suggested they come on to explain the issue. As of now, it is 3rd party hearsay, not questioning Tom at all, but if ForexBrokerInc should come on to defend, shouldn’t the trader it actually happened to come on as well. If it is arbitrage, any broker in the world would do the same.
I just want to caution you that I mentioned a few posts back that it is not my account and my friend (as an older fellow) does not want any of his information, even anonymous information, posted online. He is one of those guys that thinks having his picture up on Facebook will somehow make people able to access his bank account :60:
I have nothing to gain by slandering a broker in this way, but won’t be able to back up my claims. So please take them into consideration and just be careful everyone.
That is the part I don’t understand – why would an ECN broker care about arbitrage unless the broker was not really an ECN? If someone would explain this to me, I would appreciate it. It isn’t like hundreds of orders per minute were being placed neither.
Anyway, just do your research and talk to many people and see which side of the balance is lower in the end.
Actually, Frank, no reputable broker would care because it’s a non-issue.
Whether the “arbitrage” is taking advantage of price discrepancies between two brokers, or just some kind of triangular pricing anomaly at the same brokerage is of no consequence. To a broker, it’s all just “another trade”, and any profits / losses belong to the trader.
That said, there are certain situations where a broker might legitimately adjust the gains of particular trades, but arbitrage (in and of itself) is not one of them.
Excellent point, Tom!
This is the entire point of dealing with a true ECN/STP/NDD broker like Tallinex and, rather than focussing on semi-irrelevancies such as spread (though with spreads starting at 0.0 pips, we’re pretty good there too!), focus on the infrastructure and what that can offer you. The best example I can give is one client who traded a 24-hour run upward in USDJPY last year - his EA placed just over 18,000 (yes - eighteen thousand) 0.01 lot trades in the space of 15 hours and traded a $2,000 micro account into over $22,000 in a day.
Wow, wasn’t aware. I see a lot of brokers using this excuse to take profits. There is a thread at forex factory where forex.com took 20K in profits claiming he was taking advantage of latency and trading prices that didn’t actually exist. I guess the argument is if the price is their on the platform and you fill me, should be a good trade.
$2k to $22k in one day…? Could someone teach ME how to do this? lol I don’t use EA’s because I don’t know enough about them and therefore don’t trust them (lack of experience). I made $400 on a $1200 account (now at $1600) on two trades at the London open this morning. I thought that was “good”… maybe I was wrong. 
I’ll update the vote tally accordingly.
I’ll take “yes in general” as a “yes”, and add it into the updated tally.
[U]Updated Vote Tally[/U] — [B](yes[/B] = +1 point, [B]maybe[/B] = 0, and [B]no[/B] = -1 point)
• compounder’s “reversal” has taken 2 points away from Forex Broker Inc, knocking them out of contention (as of now).
• Jean’s “yes” vote for Profiforex puts them clearly in first place.
[B]The top 4 brokers* based on points, so far —[/B]
Profiforex — 3 points (plus a maybe)
Trader’s Way — 2 points
AssetsFX — 1 point (plus a maybe)
Sensus Capital Markets — (2 maybe’s)
- not counting FX Choice and Tallinex, which are already designated as trusted brokers
.
Hi Frank
As I mentioned, the issue is not one of latency, but one of “reality” - if you get a price and that price actually existed in the market at the time then good on you.
A problem only exists when you get a price because there was a pause in pricing from liquidity providers (a mini version of what happened during the SNB event) and the broker’s bridge returns “last price” because it was left waiting too long (it’s a “fallback” system for ECN). In that case, the price you get in your trading platform never actually existed and the broker will usually adjust the fill once they get the correct price from the liquidity provider.
I have decided to withdraw my comments as they are no longer relevant.
Awesome!
Indeed I did - you stated “Tallinex gap indicates that they were unable to quote prices for the majority of the day” which was both entirely inaccurate and an outright lie because our prices were only offline for around 20 minutes - the same as for every other broker.
Yes - but you are now mis-quoting. You made the comment “As far as I know, when we see gaps this means that Tallinex was unable to get quotes during these gaps.”, to which I replied “That’s not entirely correct - [B]it is a possible cause[/B], but not the actual cause (which was corrected by our server switch last week).”
Again, you’re mis-quoting. Your actual comment was “They have some serious gaps even on some low impact news events.” and my response was quite accurate - we don’t have serious gaps. In fact, we didn’t have gaps - period! Apart from the few freezes during the first few days of February (and the SNB event), our feed has always been exemplary.
This is another inaccuracy: they are not [B]OUR[/B] spreads… spreads are determined by what counter-parties make available in the market. We take our pricing from Integral’s X-Grid system which is a very deep liquidity pool used by many major banks so, if our spreads are widening and the spreads of other brokers are not, it actually suggests a problem with those other brokers.
Of course, if you’re still only using demo accounts as the basis of your comparison then the Oanda information may not be trustworthy as, unlike Tallinex, most brokers massage spreads on demo servers to lure gullible people into opening live accounts with them. Alpari UK was notorious for that.
As mentioned above, what you see with Tallinex is what’s [B]actually happening in the market[/B], not faked or “old” prices … and these non-widening spreads might actually be related to the “arbitrage” confiscations discussed in the last few posts!
Regardless, whenever you look to compare brokers, ensure that you’re comparing apples with apples, not apples with oranges. You can only do that accurately by comparing live accounts… and even then, only if the accounts are similar - if you try comparing a true ECN/STP/NDD account (as you would get with Tallinex) against an account from a broker who trades against you then any assessment is irrelevant and pointless.
I did ask you not to take the comments personally, but the fact remains that you [B]were[/B] scaremongering - your opening comments were wildly inaccurate and you’d based your entire assessment on a demo account. If you’re genuinely looking for reasons to make Tallinex your main broker then invest $100 and open a live account - at least you’ll then have an accurate foundation to base your assessment on.
AMEN brotha…speak the truth!
I have decided to withdraw my comments as they are no longer relevant.
Hi Clint,
Of course, this is your project and I respect however you wish to conduct it. However, in my opinion, I think it should definitely be a requirement to have personally traded a live account with any broker you are voting for/against
Please try to be factual when you make a comment, and refrain from blurring issues.
All of my “short freeze” comments have been in relation to publicised server issues during the first 9 trading days of February and were completely resolved during that time. That’s one issue.
Your comment (which is an entirely separate issue) was in relation to the SNB event (two whole weeks before the first “short freeze”) where you stated “Tallinex gap indicates that they were unable to quote prices for the majority of the day”. In reality, our feed was offline from 09:31 until 10:45 (so not even “the majority of the morning”) and completely in line with virtually all other brokers. Some brokers did get their feed back slightly faster, but those quotes came from HotSpot and were wildly inaccurate even in the context of the huge drop everyone witnessed, and I believe they were eventually retracted.
My point was, and still is, until you use a live account as the basis of an assessment, you have no tangible details to base an assessment on.
Actually, no, but since various members of our staff previously worked for other brokerages, I do know what happens elsewhere (especially with demo accounts). Many brokers squeeze their demo account spreads to look better, and comments from one client (who was copying trades from a demo account with another broker to one of our live accounts) uncovered a major brokerage offering demo micro accounts with spreads matching their flagship “raw spread + commission” account (but without any commission as it was a micro account) - if that’s not misleading the gullible into opening live accounts then I don’t know what is.
I have no issues with “unfavorable” if it’s true … but there are always reasons why things happen and those reasons deserve to be qualified. Of course, I [B]do[/B] have issues with “unfavorable” when it [U]isn’t[/U] true, as was the case with some of your comments.
At no time did I [B]ever[/B] insult you, or another broker - I have only ever stated facts. If I accuse you of misquoting me then it’s because you misquoted me… and I’ve consistently made a point of providing the complete text I wrote to support any such assertion.
You’re quite correct there - you didn’t say spreads at other brokers were static… but where did I say you had? I didn’t misquote you - I was making a statement in relation to your comment.
I think I’ve covered/defended the relevant points here, so maybe this can now be put to bed. If you disagree then let’s get away from the “you said”, “I said” thing… post a new message and list each point you want to make, and I’ll accept or defend each one.
While I understand the genuine meaning behind this suggestion, I would like to voice my opinion as to why we should not make this a requirement.
Of course, it is not possible to fully understand and realize all of what a broker has to offer (or is lacking) without signing up for an account and trading. However, I want to draw attention to the fact that many of us have traded with quite a few brokers during our long or short time as traders. We should allow all of those who have traded with other brokers to be able to both:
- Voice their opinions on other brokers with whom they did [B]not[/B] trade - this is an inherent right we all have obviously, but also
- Vote on whether or not another broker should be marked as trustworthy [I]based on our observations, opinions, experiences with other brokers in our industry[/I], as long as enough information has been provided as to why the decision has been made.
Now, I believe we are in control of the most up to date list of offshore FX brokers for US citizens and we have all brought very important information to the table with Clint being the oversee-er and facilitator of much of the discussion. One possibility would be to ask Clint to accept a vote at his discretion, but I think that if we ask him to judge whether or not a vote has merit, this could get complicated very quickly (and even more time consuming). It is also impossible to verify whether or not a person has traded live with a broker.
That being said, I believe that the very reason that a broker appears distrustful is enough to deter us from making a deposit with the said broker. Thus, all of these people would not be able to place a vote (myself being one of them).
If I am overruled, then so be it. I just want to make sure the time I spent looking into brokers who seem dishonest counts for something.
I will give you one thing … I just noticed that Forex Broker Inc. historical price action (MT4) has almost no connection to what prices they were actually quoting at that time.
OANDA and also Tallinex PRO are quoting live “sell” prices which are reflected identically on their (MT4) charts.
I will keep monitoring Tallinex and if their spreads calm down during news time they will be the most favorable broker in the list in my opinion.
Forex Broker Inc. is very misleading because the prices that they are quoting have absolutely no connection to what is being plotted on their charts.