I’m live with IBFX on a micro account. Didn’t go with an ECN, because all the ones that I think were legitimate didn’t have micro accounts, and I wanted to start extremely small with my first account.
So, far they are working very nicely, I won some, I lost some. Wins are starting to outweigh my losses and be much larger, platform and trades are still behaving as usual. I’ve been doing a trade journal and so far my losses seem just about all my fault and not because of any shenanigans.
They are not an ECN. However, they also claim they are not a deal desk and that they do not trade against you. I was talking with a live chat rep today. They claim they use a large pool of banks as liquidity providers. So, they are a market maker, but not a deal desk. They claim “STP, straight through processing,” to the market they create. And as other brokers claim to make their money from the spread that they show you.
I’ve seen some requotes when price is moving fast, which is annoying, but to be expected. You can’t close or buy/sell at certain price if it isn’t in the market anymore.
While I like the idea of an ECN very much, I do not like having to add commision on top of my losses or subtracting them from my winners.
Mathmatically an ECN with a nice commsion structure would be cheaper. I think it was MB’s?, MBT navigator?, commission structure that basically added up to about a pip.
Well I thought there was a foundation about ECN not having micro accounts, I guess if you get to trade on an ECN is because you have a considerable amount of money. About they claiming not to trade against you, I guess that’s something that might be an advantage, though I used to have an account with them, but my problem was execution so I had to go with some other broker.
Its hard to find a true ECN broker cuz a lot of brokers called themselves ECn when they are not or they are just market makers. A real ECN does not have dealing desk and it sends the client’s orders directly to the market, also real ECN will let you enter the market at any time, but not always in the price you ask, when spreads are wide, ECN broker gives you much more liquidity, as I said, there are many brokers that considered as ECN but they are not really ECN brokers. I can say t ha I am trading with 2 real ECN Brokers like Dukascopy and Sunbird, but I recomend you to always try the demo firs before you start trading in real…
Actually there is not really a 100 % way to know if a broker is real ECN or not, what you can do, is to test the broker, meaning that if the broker lets you trade while volatile moments, during news, platform doesn’t crash, if the withdrawals are being executed fast without any complications, it is very important to be able to see how transparent the company is and that they are always on you side…
Well there’s a simple answer to this question: just take the broker’s word for it!!!
Deltastock is a TRUE ECN/STP Broker with Level II Market Depth and mutiple liquity providers SHOWN to the client in order for the client to choose the best price quote. See deltastock.co.za.
Nice plug, but why doesn’t Multicharts add you to their supported brokers list?
Also, as far as ECNs go, the true battle is between Dukas Vs. MB Trading Vs. Interactive Brokers. And, anyone seeking out an ECN purely out of safety of their equity as a primary concern should go with Dukas, as they are a FX BANK… They have opened up European operations with micro account capabilities as well.
If you go through Molecule 6 is your Introducing Agent, you get 45% of all commissions back after each full trade executed. This makes their overall fee structure less than a retail broker, with infinite higher safety. Biggest problem is they don’t accept American citizens to join… I’m Canadian so no issues.
Dukas uses JForex as the platform, a suiss cheese logic system that is Java based, but difficult to grasp (Even for programmers). They can bridge over to MT4 and Ninjatrader, if you wish to use free platforms with unreliable data sources.
However, someone like Multicharts does work through Dukas - which means that if you spend months backtesting and strategy testing before going live, your results will be as accurate as possible in the live account.
If you are American, MB Trading Vs. IB Is your only choice in my opinion, as I fully agree, it’s just not worth the risk of moving to a market maker with fixed spreads even if there are minor benefits through headline activity due to fixed spreads…
I believe even with ECN broker if you don’t know how the Bank manipulates the market you can be still at the losing end of the trade. Particularly the stop run mentioned by Jimmy, I read a trading strategy basically based around this assumptions at day trading forex live, you can even search in youtube their stop run video. Here is the link regarding their article about bank manipulation they called BankTradingStrategy.
Figuring out if the broker is a real ecn broker or not sounds simple and at times, not so much. Guess as others have stated, the only way is to do a dry run with a micro account, trade when market is volatile and track your trades carefully.
Some brokers do offer ECN accounts with level two liquidity, but as to whether they are for real is anyone’s guess.
Im sorry but that is just not correct, a STP is often with a marked up spread.
it go as the name states, straight through raw from the market with the exeption of the marked up spread sometimes (usually),
a ECN elecronic central network is NOT the same as STP.
for a simple comparision you can think of a ECN as a Home internet network wich is not located in the real market,
it is kept in house and it is the brokers own network for their ENC customers, it can also be shared with other brokers to make it better, what is happening when you are trading on a ECN is that you “also” additionaly have the option to buy or sell cheaper and to a lower spread than on the raw market if someone on the ECN is willing to sell or buy from you on that particular moment in time then yes, you get a better price than STP, for this service you will pay a commision to the broker, Market makers do have STP, our largest broker FXCM is a MM and they use amongst other STP with a marked up spread
From my experience, I do not know how to tell just from its website. However, if you can ask them a report showing the counterparty of your trade then it will be tru ECN. Based on this, Global Prime would be a TRUE ECN because they can provide you that report if you want it.
ECN is direct access trading with market makers, usually UBS, Barclay Capital, CITI, etc. Yes different from STP which can still have Brokers playing with the orders while ECN gives you full access to the order book. Don’t argue… I have an ECN account.
This usually requires you pay a commission and spreads are sometimes 0. To find out a true ECN broker, they won’t use MT4 they will have their own ECN platform and it is sometimes complex and in some cases they have no feeds (rare). They will however display what is known as DOM or depth of market which gives you a real inside look at liquidity at each price, useful for scalpers and limit orders.
I have attached some wiki links so no one gives false information. God this is so rife in this forum…
Just to clarify for everyone, FXCM offers our clients two types of forex execution: No Dealing Desk (NDD) and Dealing Desk (DD).
On our NDD execution, client orders are offset one-for-one with our liquidity providers, whichever one happens to be quoting the best price for our client at that moment in time. To make money from this model, we add a fixed pip markup to the prices we receive from our liquidity providers which acts as a commission. Others sometimes refer to this execution type as STP or ECN, but the key point is that FXCM profits from client trading volume, not client losses.
While FXCM believes that NDD execution provides the best all-around trading experience, we also offer DD execution as an option for traders whose primary concern is low spreads. Others sometimes refer to this execution type as market marker (MM), but the key point is that because we can create the prices on which you trade, our DD execution option is able to offer spreads for the most popular currency pairs that may be up to one pip lower than those provided by the NDD model.
Thanks for the contribution to the thread but STP (Straight through processing) is different from True ECN. STP is you passing the orders to market maker, ECN is a direct feed into the Interbank market pool or market makers. It is the purest plug in. I am sure FXCM has no DOM. However you are correct on NDD.
I do know brokers who despite having STP models, still reserve this for their Book A clients usually winners and Book B will still get passed on to a dealing desk, this is normally evident if the broker has fixed spreads, ECN spreads are usually variable and normally are very low. I think your spreads are around 2.4 pips on majors I haven’t seen them vary…
I believe BabyPips School has a map of exactly how this works on their market structure section.
The term ECN is used ambiguously when it comes to retail forex. That’s why FXCM prefers to use the term NDD.
While the term ECN has gained currency (pun intended) in retail forex trading of late, I feel it should be reserved for the electronic communication networks used by banks and other institional level market participants to trade amongst each other, not with retail traders. The link you posted previously from Wikipedia says as much: [I]“FX ECNs like Currenex, Bloomberg Tradebook (an affiliate of Bloomberg L.P.), 7Hedge FX ECN, Hotspot FX, 360T, FXall & BAXTER Financial Services Ltd with Currency Dealing provide access to an electronic trading network, supplied with streaming quotes from the top tier banks in the world.”[/I] source: Electronic communication network (Note: We do offer institutional forex trading solutions through our FXCM Pro division.)
FXCM Active Trader accounts have the option of trading on a platform that allows you to see depth of market. It’s worth noting that these accounts execute orders using the exact same liquidity pool as our retail NDD clients. The only difference is that the minimum to open an Active Trader account is 25k, so these accounts trade with a lower pip markup/commission.
You have a live account with us, so you will be able to confirm just by looking at the prices on your FXCM platform for just a few seconds that our spreads are variable :57:
What’s fixed is the pip markup we add to the bid and ask prices. Unlike other “ECN” type brokers, FXCM doesn’t add a commission on top of our spreads, so this fixed pip markup acts as our commission.
Found new broker company called Goldboro. I have account with them.
commission 6$ per round lot
min 0.01 with step 0.01
EA’s allowed
MAM(PAMM), Partner rebate.
Good experience for me. I hope it’s real ECN.
