Your thoughts on these three brokers

When I eventually go live, I am probbaly going to go with one of these three brokers based on what I have read and also using their demo platforms.


GFT.com.au - have offices in Sydney which is good for me, and DealBook 360 seems a pretty good platform. Have heard they lag though, which is a bit of a worry.

Forex.com - have had most success in demo trading with their platform, is very easy to use although their pip spread is sometimes larger than other brokers.

Oanda.com - seems to be the most frequently used platform by traders of ForexFactory so it cant be too bad at all.



Your thoughts on these brokers please? InterbankFX is a possibility as well, but havent really got around to checking them out properly.

Never used them.

Forex.com is not forex.com, it's Gain Capital. Nothing wrong w/ Gain Capital, per sae, just important to know the parties involved when making educated decisions.

Use them, never had a serious problem. Only had a few minor outages on their live platform, I don't use their demo. Have seen a few data spikes, but they didn't effect me. From my understanding tho they are good at fixing those problems. Very small minimum lot sizes make Oanda my recommendation for new traders, you can trade w/ single dollar lots if you want... good for getting the feel of live trading w/o blowing a hole in your bank account.

IBFX is good. I use their live and demo too. I use their demo for charting. It's pretty decent, a few drops here and there, but they're usually predictable. Their live server is more reliable than their demo, never had a serious problem w/ their live server. They do widen their spreads considerably around news time, which means you can't make money trading the news w/ them. Also means if your stops are tight then a news spike might take you out even if price doesn't directly hit it.

Another one of interest is FXCM. They're big and have an MT4 desk now.

Anyway... go here:
http://cftc.gov/marketreports/financ...fcms/index.htm

That's the FCM report for the CFTC. If you're dealing with a US-based broker, hit that site and grab the reports. Take a look at the brokers you're considering, look for the last several months, see whether their reported cash reserve is going up or down... will tell you whether the company is financially stable. Also take a look at the dollar amount itself.

For instance Gain Capital has 57m in exceed net capital, IBFX has 28m (up from 18m), FXCM has almost 70m excess, Oanda has 149m in excess capital. By comparison ODL has only 6.9m excess.

Since FX brokers are basically hedged bucket shops, your wins will be their losses in a sense. A decreasing (or small) balance in excess capital means they might not be able to hedge their trades, or they might not be handling their hedges well, leading to a melt down. The more money they have in excess the more stable they are and, at least in theory, the better they can handle a growing account. I would not trade w/ a broker that's got less than 10m excess, for instance, or has seen a recent substantial decrease in their excess.

That doesn't guarantee anything, of course, I mean Wachovia is there and it's got 1.46 trillion in excess. But of course w/ a balance sheet like that their smaller investors will likely be able to recoup their funds... assuming the brokerage accounts aren't just sold off to another firm.