Looking for a serious broker in this minefield of brokers

Broker Discussion Forex Brokers
1

Hello everyone.

Could someone point me in the right direction, i’m looking for a serious broker that isn’t out to screw you over.
Preferably with a hefty number of employees, good support, long time in the business, respectable among professionals.

I’m looking at FXCM as they seem quite legit with 700 employees and been running since the late 90’s.

Would you recommend FXCM?
I don’t care about hedging, but I do want my account to be an existing separate account (not a consolidated super account that they dump every clients’ assets in) and I of course want fast execution, Reasonable slippage, semi-low spreads are ok, I do enjoy scalping, but I tend to go a bit semi on that so doesn’t have to be super low spread.

There are SO many brokers out there and I get the feeling it’s mostly not very serious companies.

I was “this” close to open a 5000USD account with Dukascopy in Switzerland, 10 years in the business, low spreads, fast execution, slippage control, really nice and smooth platform, No.2 on a global top ten review site!!
Sounded great!

Then I started to find reviews of people actually using them getting 30 and 60 pip slippage, despite they set it to max 10. Dukascopy replied quite a few times with only excuses and in the end stated that this is normal to happen in market conditions.

Ooook, I’m not gonna use a broker that considers a 60 pip slippage to be normal.

I do like the idea of a broker in Switzerland due to their privacy tradition.
Are there any legit and decent brokers in Switzerland?

I hope someone can turn me in the right direction in this seemingly large minefield of brokers.

With kind regards
Jesper

2

I use FXCM. So far everything’s great. No complaints and their support has been really helpful.

3

depends what you want?

4

Ok nevermind.
I found this review site that seems legit and mentions 5 big names.
(ok seems I don’t have enough posts to post links so just google the following if interested)

Google:
[B]Our List Of The Best Forex Brokers This Month[/B]

This review site does NOT seem to be legit, rather a pay-per-review by the companies themselves while throwing in a few big names to turn the soup around.
Or maybe he just had no idea what he was reviewing.

Google:
[B]Forex Brokers Review 2014 | Best Foreign Exchange Brokers | Currency Trading Brokers - TopTenREVIEWS
[/B]

I will go with FXCM, they support:

Scalping without restrictions, fast execution, NDD, 24/7 phone support, reasonable slippage, serious company with 700+ employees and active since the late 90’s, was able to and willingly paid a 2 million $ fine for positive slippage not being passed on in full (positive problems and IDC), highly regulated and being one of the largest players in the FX broker market they know they can’t do whatever they want = dynamic security = me happy.
They also use fully segregated accounts, meaning if the firm goes bankrupt, my assets is easily identifiable as separate from the firm.

Does anyone have anything negative to say about FXCM that isn’t a kind of murphy’s law incident?

5

FXCM is a very reliable broker. It has a stable technology and I recommend you to go with it. However, the platform may not be ideal for scalping purpose due to sudden small and large (on news breaks) spikes. However, I never had to face any major problems with speed of execution and slippage. I think their market maker/STP model kind of prevents such large slippage. Good luck

6

Hi Umaf,

I’m glad to hear of your positive experience with FXCM. The quality of our trade execution is due in no small part to the fact that our pricing accurately reflects market fluctuations. During major news events, even the largest banks in the world widen their spreads. Our own spreads will widen at these times as a result.

If another broker’s spreads don’t adjust to changing market conditions, it could be a sign their dealing desk is taking the market risk of offsetting client orders at prices that aren’t available in the wider market. Such brokers may have to resort to re-quoting their clients or delaying their execution in order to avoid losing money.

Instead, FXCM provides traders with accurate prices and quality execution with no-requotes.

The risk of spreads widening can increase dramatically during major news events. This is a risk you must be prepared to accept, if you decide to trade the news. That said, you can be confident of receiving a fair price on FXCM’s No Dealing Desk (NDD) forex execution, because of how we offset your orders with our 10+ liquidity providers.

In the NDD model, FXCM acts as a price aggregator. Once our fixed pip markup is added, we take the best available bid and ask prices from our liquidity providers and stream those prices to the platforms we provide. That’s the price you see. FXCM’s liquidity providers include global banks, financial institutions, and other market makers. This large, diverse group of liquidity providers is one of the things that make this model special.

FXCM does not take a market position, eliminating a major trading conflict of interest. Your orders automatically fill from the NDD price feed, and your orders are anonymous to the liquidity providers. That means they can’t see your stops, limits or entry orders. They only see all orders as coming from FXCM.

7

1pipfix is a flexible and transparent broker, they’re great especially for small brokers. You could check them out, too. :wink: