I have just started learning the Forex Market, I’m reading through babypips as well as other sources of material.
I started a demo account with FXCM, using their trading station which I am really getting on well with.
I’m understanding the software and how to get to where I wanna get and the charts.
I’ve started to look around for Micro brokers, I want to start small before big although I realise I still be praticing on my demo account along time yet.
I found one broker among many that use Meta Trader 4, upon installing a demo and trying it, I just can not get on well with it compared to FXCM trading station.
One example I’m used to FXCM Macd with 2 Average lines, Meta Trader 4 only has 1?
ALso the controls of moving around the charts just seem awkward compared to FXCM.
Basicly, why is everyone raving about Meta Trader 4, what are the benefits of it and why are the charts slightly diffrent to FXCM i.e MACD…
Secondly, I noticed FXCM actually do Micro accounts! I don’t think they allow to demo with a Micro account and I notice the software maybe diffrent to the FXCM trading station I’m used to.
Could someone confirm if FXCM micro account software is the same as their Standard demo software?
Could someone advise a broker that allows Micro demoing so we can get the feel for it rather than having 100k lots etc.
ONe last thing… the FXCM Micro account seems to only operate in Dollars. I understand Forex tading in the UK is tax free, with the account being USD does it mean I get the tax applied and so forth?
FXCM micro uses the same trading station software as their standard accounts. I’m also a fan of Trading station as compared to metatrader. I know metatrader is quite popular around here, and I haven’t used it enough to do a comprehensive comparison. However, Trading station feels a lot more professional, polished and smooth to move around in, especially on the charts, while Metatrader feels a lot more “clunky” and old school in its user interface.
FXCM is a good broker in my opinion and I like TS2 a lot. An FXCM micro account may be what you want.
But… You should be looking at things like spread, exicution speed and cost of deposits and withdraws when you are looking for a broker. You can get a demo and chart with whatever platform you want and trade with the broker thats suits you in all the important things that affect the botom line.
Moonlight, tottally agree. When I tried Meta Trader 4 and reading the manual + guides I still could not click. It really feels old skool and clunky GUI.
Trading station is brilliant, guess it’s why FXCM has so many customers as the software is or at least seems flawess and smooth.
You’re correct that the micro account only operates in US Dollars. If you fund with a credit card denominated in GBP, it will be converted into USD for the micro trading account.
Forex trading is tax free for UK residents if the account is setup as a spreadbet account. FXCM has spreadbet accounts available for standard 10k accounts, but the spreadbet account is not available for micro accounts. The minimum trade size in the standard 10k account is a 10k mini lot compared to a 1k micro lot in the micro account.
What you could always do is setup the micro account to test your trading on a small scale, and then later transfer the funds to a spreadbet account to take advantage of the tax benefits once your trading sizes become larger.
Hi Jason
I am new to Forex ,after going through diffrent forums and blogs on the net about FOREX i decided to open and micro account with FXCM for the start and then decide the next step, the only platform i am use to is the meta trade4. do they have it in micro accounts.Pls advice.
Best regards,
Of course there is also the possibility the the difference between the MT4 trading station is rigged???
And of course the obvious bias anyway in the way it is set up to maybe have slow response and all…
What do you say to that Jason? I have been using a demo account at fxcm wanting to start trading with my account for real soon but because of using fxcm’s mt4 version I have lost confidence in fxcm altogether. Yes I have been laboring with this demo account using mt4 for a few weeks now (in between going through the tutes here and some forums as well as other sources of learning) and has so many wins that have not gone through even taking some screenshots to show which I will put here below as an example. I chose to use mt4 over the trading station because it is more well used throughout forex signal providers in general and so wanted to be able to use it well but found the fxcm version very frustrating to use. I’m not convinced that it’s not rigged to do this. But of course will have to try some other signal providers to have the experience to compare it with others.
Note how far below my take profit line those wicks have gone on past the T/P line by many pips but has not triggered my prophet this happened many many times. Now look at the next one as it starts to go back up before my last example where it comes down again and well an truly through the T/P line and even stays there and still does not give me my proffit.
That last one shows what can happen as it looks to go back up and I would have lost that and looks something the impression it would give a beginner oh looks like I don’t get profit unless the T/P is well and truly broken and the level stays sustained below the take profit line. But then there is this last one where it actually after going up again goes below the T/P line once more and stays there.
so there is the evidence and yes I am sore about it because there it is happening so often and in the meantime I know that those wins could have been on my real account and bringing me profits for real but I have to go though this and waste my time. Unfortunately being a beginner I have nothing to compare the fxcm mt4 version and running of it with and so have to go through that process as well. Can you comment please Jason, or anybody, is it rigged? could it be rigged? why is such a popular software not working? surely it can only be the signal process of the server itself?
Please take note
This last example shows profit of 0.03 because of where the profit margin is but does not give me my profit and went on to show 0.09 as it went down further but did not trigger my profit into my account in the end after some time 20 minutes or so I closed the software down without taking off the trade this time like the other times. I thought it was a joke the whole thing. All that time and effort and am I only learning the fxcm is not to be trusted? I would really like to know the answer to this has anybody had the same experience as I am having? Experience the same frustration? Won so many and not got there profits showing? I had 3 in a row trigger for me one evening giving me hope only to have this happen every second one the next day.
I just want to be re-assured really but at the same time am quite angry after spending so much time with this and copping such a big bad impression causing me to have lack of confidence that I am going to get my well earned profits (yes its a micro account but after my experience anyone who uses anything but a micro account is a fool).
Please comment Jason the longer I spend of this the less I think of fxcm (I have put this same problem and asked for feedback on the main newbie Island board but got little to no feedback). This is taking far to long…
Of course there is also the possibility the the difference between the MT4 trading station is rigged???
And of course the obvious bias anyway in the way it is set up to maybe have slow response and all…
What do you say to that Jason? I have been using a demo account at fxcm wanting to start trading with my account for real soon but because of using fxcm’s mt4 version I have lost confidence in fxcm altogether. Yes I have been laboring with this demo account using mt4 for a few weeks now (in between going through the tutes here and some forums as well as other sources of learning) and has so many wins that have not gone through even taking some screenshots to show which I will put here below as an example. I chose to use mt4 over the trading station because it is more well used throughout forex signal providers in general and so wanted to be able to use it well but found the fxcm version very frustrating to use. I’m not convinced that it’s not rigged to do this. But of course will have to try some other signal providers to have the experience to compare it with others.
Note how far below my take profit line those wicks have gone on past the T/P line by many pips but has not triggered my prophet this happened many many times. Now look at the next one as it starts to go back up before my last example where it comes down again and well an truly through the T/P line and even stays there and still does not give me my prophet.
That last one shows what can happen as it looks to go back up and I would have lost that and looks something the impression it would give a beginner oh looks like I don’t get profit unless the T/P is well and truly broken and the level stays sustained below the take profit line. But then there is this last one where it actually after going up again goes below the T/P line once more and stays there.
so there is the evidence and yes I am sore about it because there it is happening so often and in the meantime I know that those wins could have been on my real account and bringing me profits for real but I have to go though this and waste my time. Unfortunately being a beginner I have nothing to compare the fxcm mt4 version and running of it with and so have to go through that process as well. Can you comment please Jason, or anybody, is it rigged could it be rigged why is such a popular software not working? surely it can only be the signal process of the server itself?
I just want to be re-assure really but at the same time am quite angry after spending so much time with this and copping such a big impression as to unconfidence that I am going to get my well earned profits (yes its a micro account but after my experience anyone who uses anything but a micro account is a fool).
Please comment Jason the longer I spend of this the less I think of fxcm.
I had a bit of trouble reading some of the smaller text in your screenshots, so please forgive me if I’ve missed something. But if I’m reading the information you’ve provided correctly, it’s possible that you are not taking into account the bid-ask spread. For example, let’s take a look at your second screenshot here:
Notice how the price that’s trading in the market in the image above is 1.04487 which is still 0.7 pips above your take profit level of 1.04480. It’s important to note that MT4 charts show the bid (sell) price in the market. But when you’re in a short (sell) position, then it’s the ask (buy) price which needs to come down to your take profit level, in order for your trade to be closed out. That’s because if you sell to open a trade, then you must buy to close it. The ask price is always a bit higher than the bid price because of the bid-ask spread. That means when you are looking at the chart price, you have to keep in mind, that the ask price where you could close your trade is slightly higher than that.
If I have misread your charts please let me know. If you can magnify the images, that might help me see if I’ve missed something. Also, as I mentioned in my response to your post on Newbie Island, if you ever require immediate assistance, our tech support team will be happy to help you with your demo account anytime 24 hours a day. You can call us toll-free from Australia at 1800 109 751 or contact us via live online chat.
Please clarify what you mean by a “sell stop”. Do you mean a stop order to sell below the current market price? The reason I ask is because your previous post seemed to indicate that you had a take profit order set to close out a short (sell) position, in which case your order would have been limit order to buy. If you would answer the following questions, I could look into what happened:
[ol]
[li]Was your order to buy or to sell?
[/li][li]What price did you set for the order?
[/li][li]Was this order to open a new trade or to close an existing one?
[/li][li]What price did you see trading on your charts at the time in question?
[/li][/ol]
Please clarify what you mean by a “sell stop”. Do you mean a stop order to sell below the current market price? The reason I ask is because your previous post seemed to indicate that you had a take profit order set to close out a short (sell) position, in which case your order would have been limit order to buy. If you would answer the following questions, I could look into what happened:
It’s called a sell stop on the MT4 sftware and if you the choice between putting an order on immediately or a pending order. I was using the pending order and when you do that there is 4 choices
Buy limit
2.sell limit
3 buy stop
sell stop
I chose a ‘sell stop’ at 1.04490 with my T/P at 1.04480 it was 10 pips from the sell stop trigger level to the take profit trigger level (as I understand it both are triggered there is not manual taking of the profit as I experienced some but triggering the take profit which showed up as prfit added to my account.
Thanks for clarifying. When you chose “Sell Stop” at 1.04490 with a take profit at 1.04480, what you were doing is creating an entry order to open a short position by selling at 1.04490 and setting a limit order to buy at 1.04480 to close out your short position if that price level was reached. Note that your take profit order was set only 1 pip away, not 10. That’s because 5th digit after the decimal point represent one one tenth of a pip. To set your take profit 10 pips away, it would have had to have been at 1.04390.
(The reason your entry order was called a “sell stop” is because the price level for your pending order to sell was below the price that was trading in the market at the time you created the order. If you created a pending order to sell above the price that was in the market, then it would be called a “sell limit”. On the flip side, if you create a pending order to buy below the market price, that’s called a “buy limit”. And if you create a pending order to buy above the market price, that’s called a “buy stop”.)
Your “sell stop” order to open a short position would have triggered when the chart price reached 1.04490. That is because the charts show the bid (sell) price in the market as you can see below. Note that since the chart shows the bid (sell) price, the ask (buy) price is actually a bit higher than the price you see on the chart.
That’s important, since it’s the ask (buy) price which determines when your take profit order would trigger on a limit order to buy at 1.04480. You may have seen the chart price reach 1.04480, but the reason your limit order did not trigger at that time is because the ask (buy) price was still above your take profit level.
.
