I am thrilled that I may finally be getting access to spot FX back in my life. There are few options (and shrinking every year) for trading spot FX in the US. Most FX brokers available in the US I either simply don’t trust or only offer FX trading (I need stock, options, futures, and futures options as well). I currently have access to FX through futures, but at 100k nominal per contract it can sometimes not be granular enough. For example, I may want to trade 50k, or 125k, etc. and I either have to under or over risk on the trade. I am now going to be getting access to the spot market through TD Ameritrade. I had originally been with TDA but moved my accounts away from TDA to a much lower cost broker, but unfortunately my current broker doesn’t offer spot FX and some other types of trading vehicles that I like. I decided to contact TDA with whom I have 1 personal trading account, 2 IRA’s and 1 HSA and asked if they will negotiate their commissions for my accounts. To my surprise they said they are willing to lower my commissions to bring my business back over.
The moral of the story is 2 fold, 1) sometimes it’s worth trying to negotiate, especially if you have a broker that is mid-to-high range for commission costs, and 2)for US customers TDA offers commission free trading in their FX markets for a large number of pairs. They also offer 50:1 FX leverage and mini-lots, which for an account of my size offers the granularity I need to correctly size my trades.