Going to chime in here on this thread instead of starting yet another one on these guys...
This is not a rant on my borker cuz "they screwed me" post... Everything here is documented and in the process of getting packaged up in a concise format with supporting documentation.
I've been live with IBFX now for almost 3 years. I've seen them go from what I now consider to be mediocre with lots of problems at the beginning to much improved with a mostly stable platform and spreads and order execution up to reasonable standards for a borker of their type. Customer support was never a problem for me and may well be one of their stronger points, at least in my experience. I was reasonably happy with them for quite awhile and even recommended them to some newer traders ((personal friends)) looking to open their first micro/mini account.
Sometimes I was right, and sometimes I was wrong, but we always got issues worked out in very good time. They were never perfect by any means, but I felt I had figured out what to expect from them on most any issue that i had ever had with them and acted accordingly.
I began to wonder what was going on when they reinstituted their 3-5 pip minimum difference from price on order modifications. Then Eur/Jpy spreads began to explode last fall, both fixed spread and these out of nowhere spikes where the Ask would spike up for a second to +30 pips in the middle of relatively light to moderate PA, a few seconds or minutes before a price move of 20-40 pips, nothing overly spectacular, but you'd easily be out of the trade, either at a loss or diminished profit.
As the Bid price never budged, the chart never indicated what happened as price showed it never got anywhere near where the Ask line spiked to. I have several screen shots of this kind of thing and watched it in real time on a live account. I called and discussed this with them and they said it was "becuz of the feed from their liquidity providers on that pair alone"... end of story. It got so bad, I eventually quit trading that pair.
Starting about 7-8 weeks ago in particular, I have watched them go from what I described above which was really concerning me to to absolutely unacceptable. It's becoming almost impossible to get an order filled at the price you want on one or even two tries and I'm not talking about high volatility events. Requotes are far and few between now as compared to before. They have apparently morphed into what is now called "Off Quote" and sometimes the Invalid mssg. The Requotes I do get now often get requoted as well several times if one is naive enough to take them. I've experimented on microlot orders in order to document the patterns.
Short version... you'll get stonewalled by one entry refusal technique or the other ((ie Off Quote, Requote, Invalid etc)) if the entry is to your advantage, and you'll likely get in instantly with NO problems if the entry is already turning against you, but you won't know that until too late.
Second area of MAJOR concern now is the way in which limit orders are being handled. Short version there is they may or may not get hit, and at the price you fixed. In other words, they do not trigger at all, or they trigger 1-5 pips away from your price. Sometimes it works just fine like it should. It's turning into a monumental crap shoot tho as to what will happen.
Related to that issue is order exit. You may or not exit at your fixed price point. I have had MANY more orders exit at 1 to 3 pips away from price than at the one entered. Seems to make no difference whether it's a Stop Loss getting hit or a Take Profit. They give me a pip on profit and take an extra one away on SL. You could argue it evens out, but... I assure you it doesn't.
One EU long trade last month had the TP hit to the pip, but did NOT close at 40 something pips profit. What it did do was drop back down and trigger the SL plus one additional pip... for a 21 pip loss. That one got adjusted, but the limit sell that was in place as well did not get triggered nor adjusted, as it never went active. Sorry but that dog don't hunt...
The only subjective observation I can make at this point is that the faster price is moving, the more likely it is to overshoot by 1-3 pips ((happening often)). The maximum I've seen so far is 5 on a handful of trades.
Concerning the Daily Confirmation report, you've got 24 hrs to protest anything or it is considered to be confirmed by you. That is generating a daily list of trade tickets to call in and protest and another whole level of time sensitive accounting to do on top of everything else
Their answer to date ((to me personally)) is that "They are aware that some people are experiencing problems..." and "Trade specialists are working on it..." Alrighty then.
All I can say is that almost 2 months later, nothing has changed, and the problem seems to be getting worse. I'm tired of calling in long lists of trade ticket numbers to get audited and adjusted. That's not the way to run this kind of business. The ones they wear down or just never realize it's happening to them will only contribute to their bottom line, a pip at a time multiplied by the number of orders the execute daily.
Reminds me of the recent scam alert on the news to look out for mysterious 25cent charges on your credit cards... it adds up if you do it to enough people and they never notice it.
So, I'm curtailing my trading, and shopping a'rd. I've given them the benefit of the doubt, but now it's to my benefit to doubt they will fix this anytime soon...
Finally, for anybody that doesn't know what your Journal is, be a good idea to spend sometime figuring it out. That's all you have on your side. I backup each days log just for good measure.
This is not a rant on my borker cuz "they screwed me" post... Everything here is documented and in the process of getting packaged up in a concise format with supporting documentation.
I've been live with IBFX now for almost 3 years. I've seen them go from what I now consider to be mediocre with lots of problems at the beginning to much improved with a mostly stable platform and spreads and order execution up to reasonable standards for a borker of their type. Customer support was never a problem for me and may well be one of their stronger points, at least in my experience. I was reasonably happy with them for quite awhile and even recommended them to some newer traders ((personal friends)) looking to open their first micro/mini account.
Sometimes I was right, and sometimes I was wrong, but we always got issues worked out in very good time. They were never perfect by any means, but I felt I had figured out what to expect from them on most any issue that i had ever had with them and acted accordingly.
I began to wonder what was going on when they reinstituted their 3-5 pip minimum difference from price on order modifications. Then Eur/Jpy spreads began to explode last fall, both fixed spread and these out of nowhere spikes where the Ask would spike up for a second to +30 pips in the middle of relatively light to moderate PA, a few seconds or minutes before a price move of 20-40 pips, nothing overly spectacular, but you'd easily be out of the trade, either at a loss or diminished profit.
As the Bid price never budged, the chart never indicated what happened as price showed it never got anywhere near where the Ask line spiked to. I have several screen shots of this kind of thing and watched it in real time on a live account. I called and discussed this with them and they said it was "becuz of the feed from their liquidity providers on that pair alone"... end of story. It got so bad, I eventually quit trading that pair.
Starting about 7-8 weeks ago in particular, I have watched them go from what I described above which was really concerning me to to absolutely unacceptable. It's becoming almost impossible to get an order filled at the price you want on one or even two tries and I'm not talking about high volatility events. Requotes are far and few between now as compared to before. They have apparently morphed into what is now called "Off Quote" and sometimes the Invalid mssg. The Requotes I do get now often get requoted as well several times if one is naive enough to take them. I've experimented on microlot orders in order to document the patterns.
Short version... you'll get stonewalled by one entry refusal technique or the other ((ie Off Quote, Requote, Invalid etc)) if the entry is to your advantage, and you'll likely get in instantly with NO problems if the entry is already turning against you, but you won't know that until too late.
Second area of MAJOR concern now is the way in which limit orders are being handled. Short version there is they may or may not get hit, and at the price you fixed. In other words, they do not trigger at all, or they trigger 1-5 pips away from your price. Sometimes it works just fine like it should. It's turning into a monumental crap shoot tho as to what will happen.
Related to that issue is order exit. You may or not exit at your fixed price point. I have had MANY more orders exit at 1 to 3 pips away from price than at the one entered. Seems to make no difference whether it's a Stop Loss getting hit or a Take Profit. They give me a pip on profit and take an extra one away on SL. You could argue it evens out, but... I assure you it doesn't.
One EU long trade last month had the TP hit to the pip, but did NOT close at 40 something pips profit. What it did do was drop back down and trigger the SL plus one additional pip... for a 21 pip loss. That one got adjusted, but the limit sell that was in place as well did not get triggered nor adjusted, as it never went active. Sorry but that dog don't hunt...
The only subjective observation I can make at this point is that the faster price is moving, the more likely it is to overshoot by 1-3 pips ((happening often)). The maximum I've seen so far is 5 on a handful of trades.
Concerning the Daily Confirmation report, you've got 24 hrs to protest anything or it is considered to be confirmed by you. That is generating a daily list of trade tickets to call in and protest and another whole level of time sensitive accounting to do on top of everything else
Their answer to date ((to me personally)) is that "They are aware that some people are experiencing problems..." and "Trade specialists are working on it..." Alrighty then.
All I can say is that almost 2 months later, nothing has changed, and the problem seems to be getting worse. I'm tired of calling in long lists of trade ticket numbers to get audited and adjusted. That's not the way to run this kind of business. The ones they wear down or just never realize it's happening to them will only contribute to their bottom line, a pip at a time multiplied by the number of orders the execute daily.
Reminds me of the recent scam alert on the news to look out for mysterious 25cent charges on your credit cards... it adds up if you do it to enough people and they never notice it.
So, I'm curtailing my trading, and shopping a'rd. I've given them the benefit of the doubt, but now it's to my benefit to doubt they will fix this anytime soon...
Finally, for anybody that doesn't know what your Journal is, be a good idea to spend sometime figuring it out. That's all you have on your side. I backup each days log just for good measure.
FUBAR...