Anyone out there able to recommend a broker to a newbie who after 6 months is going to go live…
Probably the fastest I have ever lost a $1000 in my life but what the hell. I’ve gotta put my Pip School lessons to the test and see if all them hours and hours of study and demo worked for me.
As for a broker, i use Alpari, and have been doing so for over a year live, and two years on demo. No problems to mention.
As for you $1k loss…are your ready to start a live account
Thanks Jezzode, I was looking at Alpari and they do seem a pretty well organised broker. I like the fact that also they’re from the UK so will be regulated by the FSA.
As for my $1K loss, if it happens I’ll get it back eventually…Lol
My views are here at the end:
http://forums.babypips.com/rate-my-broker/31836-looking-best-ecn-broker-2.html
If your not after MT4 the first option is the only option if you’re not auto trading also.
If your after MT4 then your really after a broker that has tried to hook MT4 Server to an ECN bridge. Second option is the new UK office of a well known US broker.
Proper ECN is not supported by MT4 Server without clever work arounds. Second option has done it as well as it can be done.
Third option will concern you if your an algo scalper or trading huge accounts and need to guarantee no broker shenanigans.
As for Alpari if u dont have the £20000 for their direct pro ECN account I would say stay away. FxPro has a more reliable and consistent price feed than them (spikes, missing/faulty bars, consistent indicators) and the second option above even better than them.
Now I’m here download Wilder_DMI.mq4 if you use MT4 and ADX, default ADX in MT4 has the wrong mathematics in many builds.
BEST OF LUCK
Stay away from Alpari they are market makers and Russian if you win to much they will put an investigation on your account and hold your money.
Check out the Forex Factory thread on this.
As per recommendation check out oanda, it has a uk division and is one of the best.
I would recommend Oanda because you can trade nano lots. That would allow you to keep your risk down while you are learning.
Who were you demoing for 6 months? Or rather during the 6 months which are the Brokers you were demoing with…? I believe they are worth looking at…
For me, I like ThinkForex…
are you all trading with mt4 platform?
I use Oanda to trade micro lots and have found it quite a good learning tool over the last few months. I use the non metatrader program though, not sure if you can trade micro or nano using metatrader on oanda.
After replying to a new separate thread, it seems this will have the same answer.
All newbies to trading have the same question, and this is “what broker should I use”, and before I ramble on I can see why a newbie may have this logical thought process. However as you become more experienced, especially when you go live, you will come to see that this is a much smaller problem to overcome. Stop worrying about what broker to use, any profitable trading approach will work on all brokers. (I’m discounting bucket brokers here as you should be able to spot them from a mile away, however, there are allot of legit brokers out there, so this is a good thing)
You need to find a profitable trading approach before even looking for a live account, or if it doesn’t work on demo, then i can guarantee you that it wont work on a live account.
It’s like when you are considering learning to drive. You will be thinking ahead of yourself, and already looking for what car you can best afford, and you may consider how quick this car can go etc…But this is backward thinking, you should rather be thinking about how to pass your driving test first, the car comes second. Driving lessons are just like trading on a demo account. And passing your driving test is just like finding a profitable trading approach.
So, a broker really does not matter, what does matter is being profitable first. And i don’t mean profitable for a month or two, we can all tweak a system to give those results, whats harder is to have consistent results over more than a year or so.
I hope you can understand the sort of comparison that i’m trying to make. If anything im trying to save you the hassle of finding a broker, any real decent broker will do.
Very wrong the broker matters a lot the spread difference, slippage, execution can make the difference between loss or win.
Actually no, the broker is not the bigger issue here, it is your trading approach…until you realise this you will not be able to succeed in the longer time frame. It’s logical, so think about it. Each broker will have very competitive spreads, and the ones that do not are not worth touching as alarm belles should be going off in your head.
However, each to their own. Unless your scalping for a few pips here and there, which is highly unlikely and also highly unprofitable for most people not even including newbies, then a 0.5 difference in spread should not be affecting you. And if you think that it will effect you then you have the wrong approach to trading.
Both of you are right - however as the poster is in the uk I have already dealt with the broker point and I spent four years dealing with the trading approach point myself so second this point.
Both are correct however a good strategy will still beat ANY bucketshop broker quoting within 5 pips of the market and not generating random spikes.
95 percent of losses are bad entries or bad exit strategies not because of brokers “skimming off the top”
my 2 pence worth
May I also add to your point which you raised on Alpari, who now also have Alpari UK. They are not a market maker, they offer three accounts.
- Spread Betting
- Spot Forex
- ECN
The Spot Forex and ECN are mirror images of each other, however the spread betting option is a market maker. So if you decide to open a spot fx account, which can be done so with as little amount as you wish, you are trading real time data that is fed from an ECN account, the only difference being that the spread is wider than an ECN for obvious reasons. The spot forex account, which i do hold at present, has varying spreads through out the day depending on liquidity, however the spread betting account spreads are fixed with instant executions, which is standard for any spread betting provider.
The spot forex account also has no artificial pricing, however you stand more chance of requotes and slippage, but this is standard behavior of an ECN account too.
I hate confusion but I will do my best to be polite.
The only way to obtain ECN VENUE EXECUTION (not just pricing) with Alpari is with their PRO account which used to be a Currenex client but is now supported in MT4 via an ECN bridge on PRO ACCOUNTS.
(execution = ‘NDD’)
The is not a price feed issue only but an execution venue issue.
If your broker works for you this is excellent but the poster should have the correct information.
And actually requotes do not happen on ECN orders that are Executed At Market - that’s the whole point. Variable spreads and some slippage in fast moving markets but not requotes 
requotes come from a dealing desk that cannot hedge ur position primarily or an extremely volatile market moving quickly.
yes, your correct on the re-quotes, my mistake when i was typing a response. There pro account, as you have pointed out, does mirror the interbank spread, and then you have you fixed commission as usual.
And yes, the spot fx account does offer ECN pricing, but not ECN execution. This is the point i was trying to get across from a previous post regarding artificial spikes in data. Someone said to stay away from alpari as they are a market maker with pricing spikes, so i am arguing that this is not true on the correct account.
I would recommend Oanda, custom units allow very rigorous risk management with small amounts. They have mt4 as well. Now I haven’t had a real problem with them minus one time when mt4 was down for about 24 hours.
I agree with jezz here if you have a profitable strategy then a .5-1 pip difference shouldn’t be that big of a deal. Personally I have taken profitable trades on MMs when spread was over 10 pips and still came out with 2:1 profit. So yes it’s a huge hurdle but completely possible to overcome if you really see prime set ups that offer controlled risk and high probability trade set ups. Would i want to do it every day for every trade. Of course not just saying it’s possible.
If you want real security trade currency futures. Much more regulated and through a central exchange but also the amount of capital you need to play is much higher