experience with ACM broker, EFX and Interactive Brokers

Hello there traders,

I am writing to you to ask you for some advice about brokers.

I've talked to some executives from ACM and they are telling me that they really respect stop loss orders under all circumstances including gaps during fundamental announcements and gaps during weekends. Then at the same time I asked to a person who claims to be proffessional forex trader and he told me this:

"ACM is not an ECN. No ECN would 100% guarantee your stoploss. If there’s no counter-part at that precise price level, your stop order cannot be filled and thus the slippage. That’s the difference between ECN and retail brokers. However, I VERY much doubt anyone would guarantee a stoploss if price gaps over the weekend 50 pip beyond your stoploss level."
Then I want to hear your experience because this two paragraphs above seem contradictory. Besides, I have been told as well, that a broker which is an ECN like EFX group should be better for retail traders that a broker which is not ECN in the sense that an ECN pass your orders into the real market and a broker who is not an ECN might play against you without just putting their orders against yours. Could you please tell me what you know about this?

To end with, If you compare ECN, EFX and Interactive Brokers for retail traders who just wanna start trading a single minilot of 10000$, which one of them would you recommend? Which one is better according to execution time? I just know that EFX does not respect your stop loss orders under all circumstances and an executive from EFX told me that it is not possible that a broker can handle to respect stop loss orders under all circumstances.

So, this make me doubt even more whether ACM can really guarantee stop loss orders under all circumstances and gaps or not. Well, I understand that if they could guarantee the price of entry of the stop loss orders under all circumstances, that would not be saying much since they always could cover their back just by increasing the spread as much as they wanted.

But, would they have a limit to increase the spread during high volatility periods or after the weekend to justify the entry price of your stop loss order after a gap? Otherwise, it would be as if your stop loss order had not been entered at the price you put but at the price of the other end of the gap forcing you to lose more many than the maximum lost guarented by your stop loss order entry price.

Thanks for your help, but please I don't want to hear salesmen from any broker, just want the real opinion and experience of normal people who might or might not have some experience trading forex.
Thanks a lot for your help

As for efx vs interactive brokers when you speak about minilots I guess IB is not for minilots. the minimum deposit to start with IB is 10 000$. As for ACM I heard from them that they are STP (straight through processing). How this works I also don't know but guess it is a bit different from simple retail broker. When they honour your stops I guess that they do it with a loss to themselves, but for the sake of attracting more clients.

Thanks resol for replying. As far as I know, a minilot is 10000$. I still doubt whether ACM does what they claim, guaranting stop loss orders under all circumstances. Although it might be that they accept the losses themselves with the purpose of attracting clients, most people I have talked so far have told me that it seems quite unbelievable that they can do such a thing.

as for ACM I can't say because I didn't trade with them, but I heard from my acquaintances that they are a good broker. It seems to me, in the risky market as forex couple of pips won't cahnge anything in anyones favour. but strange that I can't find here people who trade at ACM, no discussion of ACM at all, any other broker is discussed here, but not this.