Hi All,
Wondering if I could pick your brains a little on the next next steps ....
I've got a profitable EA based trading business which I split execution across 3 brokers (with 1-2 backups), leverage is all offered at 500:1 but that high is not so important, we trade fairly short term and smaller sizes beginning at around 1 lots, so we don't need super high margin.
My trades, systems and reporting are all generated in MT4 on each terminal and aggregated to a single data feed. Some are off the shelf EAs with heavily tested and customised SETs and others and including performance management and positions views etc are custom. It would be next to impossible to move off MT4 is the short term.
We trade about 12,000 lots per month and my starting assumption is at this level we could have the ability to move up the food chain ? Is that the level we can ?
Why ? Well I'm after lower cost to trade (small changes in commission is big across the monthly volume), better execution (again can be big impact across the month's volume) and single pooled margin (which is logical and normal outside retail brokers from what I can see).
I've seen huge threads on using PoPs and LPs but they seem to all end in talking about who has a dealing desk and who is claiming to be STP and long lists of people who are mostly retail brokers. So I'm wondering if anyone has actually moved away from retail/professional brokers to (say) an LP, PoP or ECN.
Can you share some info on what how you connect to the LPs have you connected to an ECN and what is the complexities? Is it as simple as username/password and then (ok not so simple) sending orders into the LP or PoP. Also has anyone kept their trade generation in MT4 and then traded further upstream like this ?
From what I can see, without access to the MT server you can't connect directly from MT4 to any of the FIX based LPs/PoPs. Is there any hardware or solution that can emulate an MT4 server which can bridge to FIX providers ? I have an idea I'm testing which I'll come back to you all if it works but someone must have solved this before (and given some of the savings I have do have budget to buy a system or bridge if one exists to do this.
Ideally if someone (a white label broker) would rent me monthly accounts on their MT4 server - and route my traffic as I direct that would be ideal (hint hint any smaller brokers here interested in such a concept?)
So finally, assuming I get the tech right, if I have a good LP or PoP, can I operate in much the same way as with my broker but (in theory) they might have less "slippage" and better (more real) depth etc ? Do I need multiple sources to get the same quote and spread that my current broker might present to me?
Please feel free to respond to any concept or idea above you don't have to respond to it all. Hopefully this thread might turn into a 'migrating from retail brokers to LPs/PoPs " info source. If you've got question also throw them in too.
Of course if anyone doesn't want to put the details publicly feel free to message me.
Thanks heaps for any input and expertise shared.
Wondering if I could pick your brains a little on the next next steps ....
I've got a profitable EA based trading business which I split execution across 3 brokers (with 1-2 backups), leverage is all offered at 500:1 but that high is not so important, we trade fairly short term and smaller sizes beginning at around 1 lots, so we don't need super high margin.
My trades, systems and reporting are all generated in MT4 on each terminal and aggregated to a single data feed. Some are off the shelf EAs with heavily tested and customised SETs and others and including performance management and positions views etc are custom. It would be next to impossible to move off MT4 is the short term.
We trade about 12,000 lots per month and my starting assumption is at this level we could have the ability to move up the food chain ? Is that the level we can ?
Why ? Well I'm after lower cost to trade (small changes in commission is big across the monthly volume), better execution (again can be big impact across the month's volume) and single pooled margin (which is logical and normal outside retail brokers from what I can see).
I've seen huge threads on using PoPs and LPs but they seem to all end in talking about who has a dealing desk and who is claiming to be STP and long lists of people who are mostly retail brokers. So I'm wondering if anyone has actually moved away from retail/professional brokers to (say) an LP, PoP or ECN.
Can you share some info on what how you connect to the LPs have you connected to an ECN and what is the complexities? Is it as simple as username/password and then (ok not so simple) sending orders into the LP or PoP. Also has anyone kept their trade generation in MT4 and then traded further upstream like this ?
From what I can see, without access to the MT server you can't connect directly from MT4 to any of the FIX based LPs/PoPs. Is there any hardware or solution that can emulate an MT4 server which can bridge to FIX providers ? I have an idea I'm testing which I'll come back to you all if it works but someone must have solved this before (and given some of the savings I have do have budget to buy a system or bridge if one exists to do this.
Ideally if someone (a white label broker) would rent me monthly accounts on their MT4 server - and route my traffic as I direct that would be ideal (hint hint any smaller brokers here interested in such a concept?)
So finally, assuming I get the tech right, if I have a good LP or PoP, can I operate in much the same way as with my broker but (in theory) they might have less "slippage" and better (more real) depth etc ? Do I need multiple sources to get the same quote and spread that my current broker might present to me?
Please feel free to respond to any concept or idea above you don't have to respond to it all. Hopefully this thread might turn into a 'migrating from retail brokers to LPs/PoPs " info source. If you've got question also throw them in too.
Of course if anyone doesn't want to put the details publicly feel free to message me.
Thanks heaps for any input and expertise shared.