Just opened account with Oanda,will keep you posted with my experience.
I currently use CMS as my broker, but I'm looking into having another account with a different broker also. I'm considering, FXCM, InterbankFX, and Oanda. Oanda does look really enticing seeing that they have very low spreads and I have heard good things about them.
Just my 2 cents- I used FXCM for a few months and was unhappy with them overall (especially the stop loss hunting around news time) so I switched to OANDA and couldn't be happier. I love the fractional lots (so I can test strategies using real money but only risking like 1 cent per pip), and their interface is one of the best I've used, not to mention the spreads are great (as low as 1 pip on EUR/USD sometimes). Only complaint would be that the spreads aren't fixed but like I said overall I'm very happy with them, but I guess it depends on your trading style on whether or not you would want to use them.
I've placed over 1,000 trades w/ FXCM, and only saw them hunt my stop
once -- two other data sources showed that the drop to my exact stop
level was unique to FXCM. It was a very tight 20 pip stop. Don't use tight
stops in general! They are begging to be hit!
By the way, FXCM refunded my money politely and cheerfully within an hour
of my complaint!
The biggest gripe I've heard of with FXCM is that they put quick-pick
scalpers on dealing desk intervention if they see them grabbing profits
via trades left open for less than two minutes. Once they notice someone
doing that, they subject them to requotes and delays in order execution.
InterbankFX says all online order execution is handled 100% by computers.
Well, maybe that's the case now. Once they start being taken advantage
of by some smart scalpers, they might change!
I have started demo trading with InterbankFX and am quite impressed.
They support automatic trading quite nicely. They have a canned MACD
strategy that works well. I attached it to 15-minute and 30-minute GBPUSD
charts and saw good results. I changed the default 40-pip TakeProfit
parameter to 135 pips. Much better! Only a few exits actually grab the
135 pips, with the rest taken on intelligently filtered MACD crossovers.
The strategy uses NO STOPS. You could program them in without too much
trouble if it would make you feel better.
Their servers seem very stable and I won't be surprised to see myself going
live with them in a couple of months, using them for exclusively automatic
trading.
The spread has been 'paid' for a short-term trade in exactly the same manner as a long-term trade, so why is there a problem, as alleged? Surely the greater the number of trades going through the better for the broker. Unless there's some sort of interest-paying thing behind it where the broker can get paid interest on the margin by banks while trades are open? Any thoughts?
Does anyone have proof of this activity? Would be interested to know anything about such scurrilous and costly moves against small traders. Any broker doing such should be banned - so let's gather and present evidence to the appropriate authorities.
Does anyone have proof of this activity? Would be interested to know anything about such scurrilous and costly moves against small traders. Any broker doing such should be banned - so let's gather and present evidence to the appropriate authorities.
Ignored
I don't have the e-mail exchange from almost two years ago, but FXCM
basically 'fessed up to a "bad tick" when I accused them of hunting my stop.
I've seen enough anecdotal evidence from others, and one incident from my
own experience, to believe this does occur with them. But I think they are
overall quite reliable and honest.
As far as what threat scalpers pose to brokers -- I'm not very clear on this,
since I don't scalp and I don't think about it much, but as I understand it,
clever quick-pick scalpers who trade BIG lot sizes can give brokers BIG
headaches. They like to trade during times like non-farm-payroll news
releases on Fridays, and take advantage of the big, fast movements. The
good scalpers with lots of capital can make the broker lose some money,
which brokers typically will fight against to the extent they can get away
with.
