Yes, they both have different pairs for different people who want different things. I completely forgot about the non-v suffix pairs for Profiforex, because I think the variable spread pairs are the best pairs for Profiforex as they have the lowest spreads. I’ve traded demo accounts with Profiforex for the past month or so and have not seen a huge widening of spreads. As far as commissions go, the max I’ve seen has been 3 points per trade on variable spread pairs, but they do go lower on certain variable spread pairs.
I don’t have as much experience with Sensus as I’m still waiting for them to re-institute their 1:500 leverage.
As far as slippage goes, I will have to wait and deposit money before I can see if that’s a factor for either broker.
I know what you mean. I have reluctantly taken an interest in Bitcoin due to frustrations with third-party payment processors. On several occasions over the past few years, I signed up for an account with a particular payment company, only to have them tell me later they no longer accept US clients. Theoretically at least, no one can be denied access to the Bitcoin network. Well, enough said about Bitcoin.
Apologize if my statement was misleading. Just making an observation based a quick scan of the funding methods offered by the various brokers. I don’t actually have an account with Forex Metal right now. I don’t have an account with Traders Way either, so haven’t offered up a vote on them.
Great idea, BTW, on creating the “Trusted Broker” designation. Really appreciate all of the insightful discussions on this forum. You know, I sincerely hope that our “friends” at the CFTC take the time to read these pages, as they provide a detailed account and testament to all of the trouble they’ve caused, and more importantly to the indomitable spirit of forex traders in spite of it all. Thanks again, Clint!!!
I obviously can’t speak for Profiforex, but the main reason why brokers avoid PayPal is because they’re so quick to freeze accounts and hold the funds for an average of 6 months while they “investigate”.
Wow… I just came away with some interesting news. I just traded the [B]AUD EMPLOYMENT CHANGE[/B] with 3 different brokers, [B]Profiforex, Sensus & Tallinex[/B]. Amazingly, [B]NONE[/B] of them had any slippage. So this changes the game a bit for me. We already talked about the fact that [B]Sensus[/B] has the lowest spreads but highest commission. But, in the war of trading having lower spreads and higher commission is probably your best bet.
In the fall of last year I was researching Sensus Capital and was delighted to see that they accepted US clients while being under the Malta Regulation.
Last month I decided to wire them $1,200 to test out their services. I found Lucas, the account manager, to be very personable and courteous. He was very timely in his responses and I was pleased with his service. My account was credited with $1,182 once the wire passed through their correspondent bank.
I found that their chat support agents were not as good as I would have hoped for, with the enormous exception of Dennis W. He was phenomenal – hands down the best and incredibly excellent. I made a point after a while to ONLY go on chat after 5PM EST anytime I needed something, as those were his hours.
I had an issue where a couple of my trades would take over 3 seconds to execute and it took a little while for them to find the issue. After a few days and chat sessions with Dennis that lasted 20 minutes on multiple occasions, everything was fine and good. I had been placing soem test trades at 0.01 lots just to try them out. I then shorted EURJPY at 0.20 lots and made $175 (not bragging :30: - keep reading) and immediately withdrew my entire account, which was now at $1358.56.
This is definitely not enough money to make any scam broker pause and deny it, but I wanted to make some sort of a profit and successfully have the money wired back to me to see how everything went along. Elaine, the payments person, was very helpful and wired my money to me the next day. It arrived into my bank account a few business days later. [B]Sensus[/B] charges $20 per wire (but there is an $18 correspondent bank fee somewhere in Europe that takes a cut when you send IN and OUT). So, after all was said and done, I ended up spending $1240, my $1200 deposit plus a $40 wire fee, and ending up with $1320.58. So while of course I only made 80 bucks, the point of this ordeal was to check out how everything went start to finish.
I intend to fund the account again in the summer when I have some more time to trade – I am far too busy with other things right now. I would like to change my undecided vote to [B]yes[/B] and make our community aware that I have had an excellent (and short, one month) experience with [B]Sensus[/B]. I am confident enough to go back with more money and for a much longer time period than before. I am quite pleased.
Request for Clint. Going forward, would you please also keep in mind whether the
brokerage offers Binary Options on Forex. As this is a Forex forum, that’s the
underlying that I’d be interested in…
So as you update your listings, please add a line whether or not they do offer
Forex Binary Options and possibly what underlying platform they offer.
I’LL START THINGS OUT WITH TRADERS WAY, and invite others to contribute
their Binary Options experience with the other U.S. friendly brokers.
Yes, they offer a “white label” of SpotOption’s platform. This platform offers
a Web Browser interface (as do most Binary Options providers) with the
following features:
So-called “60 second” category of options:
Times: 30 sec, 60 sec, 90 sec, 180 sec, 300 sec
Amounts: $5, $10, $25, $50, $100, $250
Strike price reference: MIDpoint of Bid-Ask price.
Payouts: range from 60% - 80%
Only scalpers with the most precise of analytics
should consider 60 seconds or less ! This is partly
due to slippage on establishing the order acceptance
relative to market volatility, requiring automated
order entry.
I am in negotiations with TradersWay, hoping that they
will be able to provide an MT4 (MetaTrader) module which
would enable automation of Binary Option Orders by
an API method, as opposed to Mouse Clicks on Browser.
This would significantly improve my already positive view
of them. Again, this is SpotOption which could provide
this module, and I have no more details about it.
Other categories which I do not know much about are:
Binary Options with expiry dates later same day
Pairs relationships between pairs of underlying assets
Long Term with expiry dates days or weeks ahead
I have exercised a Live account for a while, and can give them
good marks for Fairness, correctly honoring the initial Strike
price. Latency on acceptance of Order is good, but could be
faster. I use automatic triggering with system-generated clicks
on the buttons to submit orders, from a fast analytic system
in Forex.
No “limit orders” on entries, all Binary Options Contracts are
based upon Market mid-price (mid of Bid/Ask on Reuters feed)
at the time of contract acceptance.
Summary: As a “white label” of SpotOption they are reliant upon
their platform, but TradersWay says they will honor any reasonable
disputes and make them good, as concerns Binary Option trading.
Snapshot of Live platform attached.
Thanks Tallinex. Appreciate your brokerage perspective on these issues. I’ve also heard that Paypal is not considered a true “cash like” digital currency because it has a feature similar to credit card charge backs. So brokers are understandably nervous about accepting it.
tomd100,
You might find this interesting. Not sure if you plan to trade their CFDs, but Sensus may be using the same liquidity provider as FXCM. I was reading their CFD product guide and noticed on page 8 (near bottom of the page), it reads, “This means all FXCM products are aggregated…”
I was curious so downloaded FXCM UK’s CFD product guide. The Sensus product guide appears to be a cut-and-paste version of the FXCM product guide, but they left an FXCM reference in there by mistake. I guess this is a good thing. If these are the same CFD products FXCM is using they should have good liquidity.
HyperScalper,
I saw this article in FX Magnates yesterday about SpotOption coming to the USA. I’m clueless about binary options, but maybe you understand what they are talking about here…
Does this mean the “Cantor Exchange” is planning to become a “white label” for SpotOption here in the USA? If so, I guess that would be a big deal for binary options traders.
Binary Options are wrongly considered gambling by regulators. Now, in the absence
of hard core precision analytics, that’s just what it is. But will calling it an "exchange"
overcome the “nanny state’s” need to “protect” U.S. traders? Would they permit 60 second binary
trades? I think not, unfortunately.
SpotOption doesn’t offer limit orders, and unless they can offer their more "interesting"
products such as sub-5-minute trades, then I think they can’t be seen as competitive
with Nadex. BUT THERE IS NO DOUBT that the U.S. market is “ripe” for something
other than Nadex. But I think “regulation” trumps “innovation”, especially since Binary
Options do tend to “blur” the lines between legitimate trading and “gambling”.
If you make it “too easy” for Joe Six-Pack to sign on and “bet” $5 on EUR/USD,
with a 5 minute term, say the regulators, then it will not be permitted in the USA
because that really is gambling, and not serious trading in most cases.
Don’t get me wrong on this, I’d like to see SpotOption offer its current products
in the U.S. but I don’t think there’s a “snowball’s chance in hell” they’ll be allowed
to do so…
I could be wrong, it would be the first time so far this year ! LOL just kidding
HyperScalper
Thanks, Tom. — Your revised vote is reflected in the following vote tally.
• [B]Updated Vote Tally[/B] — the top 6 brokers by point-count
[B]Trader’s Way[/B] — 6 points
[B]Profiforex[/B] — 5 points
[B]Pax Forex[/B] — 2 points
[B]Sensus Capital Markets[/B] — 2 points
[B]Assets FX[/B] — 1 point (plus 2 “maybe’s”)
[B]Forex Broker Inc[/B] — 1 point
• [B]Binary options[/B]
Thanks for your suggestion, HyperScalper. I will [I]try[/I] to include binary option information in the broker listings, as that information becomes available.
The posts comprising our List are reaching their forum-imposed size limits, so adding more text (and especially, adding more links) to the existing format is becoming problematic. — See below.
• [B]Post size limits[/B]
The [I]Babypips[/I] forum limits the size of each post to 15,000 characters. A character is just about anything you can type with one key-stroke, including punctuation.
So, this row of periods, for example … just used 50 of the 15,000 characters allowed for this post.
This limitation only rarely comes into play when plain text is posted. Links, however, are another matter, altogether — links are surprising resource-hogs. And, for the past several months, I have been including links (to other posts in this thread) in the broker listings in Group 1 (posts #1 and #2) of our List. Those links look small and harmless as rendered in our List, but they actually consume a lot of the 15,000 characters allowed in each post.
Long story, short — even after moving the Pacific / Asia category from post #2, to post #1, in order to make a little room on post #2 for additional links, the List is still approaching its limits on those two posts.
I’m considering two changes to the format: (1) delete the oldest links, when necessary, to make room for newer links, or (2) move all the links to an “Appendix” page, elsewhere in the thread. I’ll play around with it, to see what works.
Before I upset the current format of the List, I’ll let you guys know what I’m contemplating.
I hope this doesn’t mean the CFTC is getting ready to go on another rampage, but noticed a rather disturbing article by one of the Government’s favored media outlets – Bloomberg. It appears to be a pure propaganda piece entitled, “These Americans are Getting Rich Trading Derivatives Banned in the US”.
It discusses business practices at a Forex brokerage in Chile. For some reason the article focuses on the CFDs, but not the spot Forex contracts offered at the brokerage. Otherwise it’s the usual “they’re fleecing the grannies” scaremongering. Such as, “Amira Loyola, says she had no idea what she was getting into when, responding to a radio ad, she deposited 4.5 million pesos ($7,400) into a ForexChile account…six months later, Loyola…was down 92 percent.”
What is really bizarre though is the article never does explain who exactly these “rich Americans” are. Both the brokerage representatives and clients interviewed in the article seem to be Chilean nationals. Guess it was meant to be just one of those eye catching headlines to tantalize the Washington liberals into enacting even more suffocating regulations on the FOREX industry.
Anyway, the article discusses ForexChile and mentions a couple of others. I’ll check to see if any of them will accept US residents.
UPDATE: I investigated the four forex brokers mentioned in the article. Unfortunately, none of them appear to accept US residents.
ForexChile has an affiliation with ForexPeru and ForexUruguay. Account opening menus limit the clientele to the respective local residents. BEFX (befx.cl) account opening uses fill-in-the-blanks versus drop down menus, but funding methods appear to restrict to a list of banks probably available locally. CapitalFX (capitalfx.cl) has a live account opening screen with drop down menus including USA, but “demo” is the only account type available for selection. xDirect website states they are only operating in Asia, Eastern Europe, and South America.
So, why would Bloomberg devote such an article to highlight a few seemingly obscure forex brokers in South America that appear to have no connections with the USA? Interestingly, the article’s headline has now been changed to “One of the Hottest Get-Rich-Quick Trades is Banned in the US”. The previous reference to Americans getting rich on banned derivatives has been removed.
LET ME APOLOGIZ(S)E that this is a bit off-topic but it’s important if
anyone uses the very popular SpotOption platform which is a complex
Browser based application.
All of my testing standardized on Firefox.
I struggled for days to get it reliable, and ultimately the only reliability was
on our Linux Red Hat server. Our Windows Server 2008 R2, and on
my local Windows 7 system, the SpotOption platform “white labelled”
to Traders Way and many other providers would HANG intermittently
and was almost totally unreliable.
It turns out that Microsoft has a HotFix for a known BUG in their Network
auto tuning algorithms which happens to affect both Windows 7 and
Windows Server 2008 R2 so I am posting this FIX which everyone should
consider, and especially if you’re looking at any complex network based
Web app like SpotOption’s Binary Options platform.
LOL just kidding