True story of FXCM 'at best' option

Friends, don't get fooled by FXCM's advertisement about guaranteed fill on all market conditions. Following is the transcript of my chat with one representative:

FXCM)8: Welcome to FXCM's Live Chat Feature. So that we may better serve you, feel free to provide me with your name and email address. How may I help you?
you: What happened to Market order using 'at best' option?
you: I placed an at best order to sell EUR/CAD after Canadian employment news and after 6 minutes I got a message that your order can not be filled
FXCM)8: the at best option is available
FXCM)8: and you used 'at best'?
you: Again after NFP I placed buy USD/JPY at best order and I am yet to receive any message
you: On both occassion I used 'at best' option.
you: This is in fact a bad advertisement for 'at best' option
FXCM)8: NFP was 24 minutes ago
FXCM)8: and you are still waiting execution?
FXCM)8: actually this is the first I am hearing
FXCM)8: this
FXCM)8: that an order would wait so long
FXCM)8: the only time you would get the above message with at best
FXCM)8: is if there are no quotes
you: No I am not waiting, but I didn't even get any message
FXCM)8: from any banks on a pair
FXCM)8: this could happen for a split second with crosses
FXCM)8: around something like nfp yes
FXCM)8: but if you see active prices
FXCM)8: at best will fill a trade3
you: Its very difficult to see in a split second whether there is any feed or not
FXCM)8: well, there were 4 that I saw that were grey immediately
FXCM)8: following the news
you: And what about the at best order to sell EUR/CAD after Canadian employment news
FXCM)8: that would be a perfect example, trading a cross, where the USD pair gapped 100 pips, the cross was not quoted at first.
FXCM)8: it is important to see that many of the largest forex dealer members are quoting any pairs
FXCM)8: even now
FXCM)8: our prices come from banks
FXCM)8: you can and do have grey outs
FXCM)8: but often for seconds
FXCM)8: rather than an hour or more
FXCM)8: this is the advertisement, this is the reason traders choose FXCM for their news speculation
you: But you should never say again that 'at best' option will surely be executed even in volatile markets. You must write down that there is no Guarantee to fill your market order using at best option during extremely volatile markets.
FXCM)8: I can completely understand your frustration, and it is something that should be looked into. We are subject to the banks, and the liquidity they provide. it is highly competitive in regards to other brokers, but you are right in that
FXCM)8: there should be no guarantee because unless a broker is taking the other side of the trade
FXCM)8: there is no way to guarantee a fill
you: And you must write down that 'at best' option doesn't work for crosses.
FXCM)8: again, I completely understand your frustration, but this is really not the case
you: Then why do you advertise 'at best' option is guaranteed fill
FXCM)8: if it greyed, and I saw that it did
FXCM)8: then it will not fill
FXCM)8: however, if the price is available
FXCM)8: you will get filled
you: I am not frustrated. But I am pointing to your hollow promise in advertisement
FXCM)8: if you would like, considering you are the only client who has made these assertions to me
FXCM)8: we can look into other factors
FXCM)8: including connection
FXCM)8: you can paste a ping of your ip to us here
FXCM)8: and I can review it with you
FXCM)8: also
FXCM)8: let me pull a report
FXCM)8: what is your account number?
you: During NFP I didn't receive any message, so I may have some problem regarding connection. However, during Canadian employment news I received a message from you and so there is no question about connection.
you: If you pull my report are you going to fill my 'at best' order?
FXCM)8: ok, well without any details on your account, without a report and without a trace route I am not sure there is anything else I can assist you with here
FXCM)8: I understand you are frustrated, and I have attempted to explain and can look into it further
FXCM)8: but at this point, without any more information I am not sure what else I can assist with here
you: I do not want any assistance from you unless you guarantee that my 'at best'order will be filled. Only thing I want is that henceforth whenever you advertise for 'at best' option you must say that there is no guarantee for it to be filled.
FXCM)8: if you are clicking on a price that is not greyed out, then yes it will fill
FXCM)8: is there anything else I can assist you with today?
you: So that you don't make a fool out of your clients

FXCM)8: understood. without the report I cannot even confirm that what you are asserting actually occured
you: Have fun. Have a good week end.
FXCM)8: but I can tell you that anytime a price is available you can be filled with the at best option
FXCM)8: thank you and take care

I have realized a long long time ago that the "AT BEST" is translated as "AT BEST FOR FXCM".

It was AT BEST interest to not fill you.

Not sure why your using these guys. Their are tons of better platforms..efx
etc ... FXCM is a pure bucket shop and until they clean up their act
it is likely a lot of money will leave their premises.

FXCM's at best is a SCAM.

I am struggling to find some free time to buy a very nice domain name like fxcm-atworst dot com and then upload some extremely interesting videos that will burn FXCM.

Here is what the videos will show....

The last couple of months I did an experiment with FXCM's at best "feature". I was opening my posstion two minutes before the big reports NFP, CPIs etc. The times that I got lucky and the spike was on my side I was trying to close the trade with AT BEST and guess what happened..... this scam company was holding my orders pending and they were closing my position at the top of the retracement with the minimum profit for me . Isn't unbelievable??? I have many many case like that, not on the same account, not on the same server.

I have quite few accounts with them, minis, EUR, GBP, std just in order to get provisioned on the few servers that they have on their Fiorano powered web farm (hey FXCM rep what is that RAPID server that you have? you know what I mean right? can i get provisioned on that?)

Actually what these people do on the news is just an internal order matching, nothing more. They send to the clients quotes that suppose to come from DB, LBFX and UBS but none of them are really tradable at the quoted prices. They even suppose to implement FIX commands on their Order2Go API but they only mimic the differed Opentrade(). I can keep going for days telling you about them...

Anyways, I wasted too much precious time with them. I am moving forward.

PS1. The point here is that although FXCM has a super great trading station for the novice forex user they should not mislead the traders by advertising the "AT BEST" feature and give promises that never come true.

PS2. Have you noticed that since the news-auto-clicker become very popular the forex brokers started integrating one-click execution features on their platforms?

Would that not work with the autoclicker? I thought one click execution would work best?

Who is LBFX?

Yes exactly, I have the impression that the brokers try to make their client stations autoclicker capable.

Have you noticed how terrific these stations perform with autocklickers? You have 100% fill, even on NFP.... on demo accounts though But the new demo user ate the bait and he is willing to open a new account (= deposit money on brokers account, increase the user base of the broker).

If I am not wrong it is the Lehman Brother FX Indeces.

I noticed this acronym on their offers table using the API.

Like spinning your wheels in the mud. Even if you do get filled there is a good chance they could come at you a few weeks/months later and null your trades. At the end of the day brokers are not going to let you trade the spike or scalp.

Dear Forex Factory posters,

I came across your thread about the At Best features regarding the FXCM Trading Station II. The "At Best" feature is designed to fill traders at the best available price in the market at that time. Unfortunately due to a technical issue during the Canadian Unemployment release last week, some liquidity providers were unwilling to honor prices which they were quoting during this time. Subsequently, a very small percentage of clients experienced an issue where their orders were not filled as they should have been.


As a No Dealing Desk provider, currency rates and execution of orders are provided by the banks we have relationships with, unlike traditional market makers who are the counterparty to their clients' positions. We are the agent in your forex transaction and it is in our best interests to have your orders filled as we collect our fee from the bid/ask spread. Although these types of situations are rare, there are times when banks do not have a market to offset positions. If a counterparty cannot offset a trade at a particular price, then the order will not be executed or it will be executed at a price which can be offset.

While this issue was ill-timed for many traders, I want to stress that a very small percentage of FXCM's over 90,000 accounts were affected. We are actively looking at a solution to this issue to change the percentage affected from small to zero. Some of these solutions include the ability to interchange rate providers instantaneously, the ability to receive immediate confirmations as to successful or unsuccessful order execution, as well as the ability to queue the different orders by type.

I also want to reiterate the fact that FXCM is a Non Dealing Desk firm and we are compensated solely via the bid/ask spread. If clients are unable to trade, FXCM does not profit. It is mutually beneficial for clients to be able to trade and be executed at their will.

If you have any questions feel free to contact us anytime. We are happy to answer any questions you may have.



FXCM Management

Interesting that with FXCM's larger client base (and therefore, liquidity), it performs poorer than MBT. At MBT i was filled on market order.

Was all these a liquidity issue wherein your banks refuse to honor quotes? I heard that story repeatedly from bucketstop brokers.

Come on, a smaller broker such as MBT has liquidity; why cant a larger one dont? Surely you have lots of clients filed to BUY USDCAD even during volatility and surely the sellers should have caught these orders. BUT NO.. The orders were delayed for many minutes.

This sounds like a reversal game: Wait for the price to reverse and fill the hapless traders at the worst price. But after several minutes, seeing there was NO REVERSAL, the only best thing to do was NO FILL.

So what happend to the liquidity? I think either FXCM took away the liquidity for themselves to the very last dime or they have their "preferred clients" clean it up.

Sorry FXCM; this AT BEST has never worked as advertised - I kept getting requotes ever since.

Even the FXCM Rep knows full well what kind of place he works for...

The problems with FXCM are well documented even throughout these forums and in many other places... FXCM is a place where new traders go because of their high pressure advwertising... and when they get there, all money is sucked up as quickly as possible...

FXCM ALWAYS has an excuse as to why you could not trade or why you lost the trade...

People who work for FXCM are completely aware of what kind of company they work for...

The employee with which you were chatting with was certainly well trained in how to get you to hang up...

I agree and have agreed for a very long time... FXCM is a true scam... they should be ashamed of themselves...

I highly doubt they would be posting about technical errors if that weren't the case. As for postings on forums, I think half the stuff written here about brokers is total garbage any way, I would hardly judge a broker by what someone on a forum wrote. And I find it especially laughable that you bring up MBT since none of us are even sure yet that they will be able to meet new capital requirements. That is the true stuff I would be worried about.

If you can't fill the 'at best' orders you must shut up. And you must mention in your advertisement that 'there is no guarantee for 'at best' market orders to be filled during volatile markets'.

Sounds like the same crap I have been getting from some one who gets to write articles for fxcm and they think fxcm is the greatest. I wonder why? They are also always stating the efx/mbt may not be around soon.

I do trust what all these people write on this and NDD forum. I have learned a lot from these folks. I was told not to listen to this but to experience it myself. I think it would be foolish of me to put my money on a broker that just about every trader distrusts for one reason or another. I don't want to loose my money so I can get on here and YES you were right but I wanted to experience it myself.