IBFX Review

Hi all,

IBFX (Interbank FX) is the one of the worst brokers ever. Taking a position with this broker is up to you but closing it is up to IBFX. They will not let you close your trade when you are in a good profit. You will close it only when you have lost a lot. I had heard many things about stop loss hunting and trading against the traders by the broker but I had never experienced them personally until I opened an account with IBFX. I have no doubt that they trade against the position of their clients because it is proved to me. I took the same position with another broker and could easily close it with profit but the same position with IBFX never went to a profit and even when I compared the charts I see the difference in the same currency pair and time frame. I know another trader who has experienced the stop loss hunting with IBFX.

IBFX is always proud of not having a dealing desk but they also drain a lot of money from your account through changing the spreads. Their spreads are really terrible and you can never find such high spreads with any other broker. While the other borkers try to decrease their spreads to attract more traders, IBFX always increases the spreads.

They also freeze robots. If you use a robot to trade, IBFX will freeze it after opening a position. So the robot can not close the position on time until your trade will be closed by the stop loss.

Of course those who have mini accounts and trade very small amounts may not have such problems but if you have an account larger than $20,000 you know what I mean.

Their support team is also so rude and arrogant.

Be careful! There are a lots of brokers that you can trust. Stay away from IBFX.

Vahid,

Think about something. If you go to a casino and start to win, they'll bring you free drinks to get you drunk.
If that doesn't work, they'll change the dealer and try to break your streak that way.
Pit boss will call somebody upstairs to come sit down next to you and play sloppy in order to distract you.
If all that doesn't work, and you're still taking their money, they'll ask you to leave,
maybe try to scare the shit out of you so you won't come back again.

I've traded in enough places over the past and with enough capital to have learned that
when you consistently win at any bucket shop, your business is not welcome.
1st warning sign is usually if they offer Metatrader platform to their clients.

Not sure if one has anything to do with the other, but the two seem to go together.
It's like sharing needles and geting AIDS. Why does anybody even act surprised anymore ?
Many of these places trade directly against their clients, I don't care what their website or
their CS desk says. Could it be they lie to you ? Could they stand there straightfaced in front of
everybody from the clients to the regulators and auditors and even their own staff and just flat-out lie ?

Yup.

If someone belives otherwise, they are being gullible. I will bet real money that with enough time and effort,
I can convince the same people that if they will smell my ass, over a period of time, it will not only not stink,
but, it will give off a pungent aroma that will be both pleasing and relaxing, if, and only if, they will just keep smelling it.

Consider why you get ripped off when you deal with crooks? I dunno, maybe because they're dishonest ? hmmm ?

And you know, when you trade small, like one or two lots but nothing bigger, it doesn't matter where you go.
At a few bucks a pip you can pick anywhere and get pretty much whatever and it usually works out the same.
In fact, every now and then a small trader can build up enough capital at a broker to "escape" the bucket world
and trade "outside the matrix" without a bunch of Mr. Smiths chasing their trades all over the construct.

Just like every now and then someone leaves the casino with a big pile of money. Rare, but it happens.
You have to know and anticipate what happens under various circumstances with a given broker and
what tricks they'll pull at given times and test what works and what doesn't and what you can get away with.
With enough practice, you can consistently take money away from them, little by little, just like they do to others.

If your trades begin to reach a million or more at $100/pip and you're trusting these monkeys not to fuck you, you're dreaming !

With proper capital, an ECN can be a better way to go. or the futures markets currency FX.
Either way, I wish you the best in what ever you pursue. Good trading to you.

I'm using IBFX as well, it's the only broker i've used and soon i'm going to test others as i'm only demo trading. So far i've been making some decent profits but i've always wondered why the market closes so early? It's always down for like 2 days or something. Is this standard practice?

Here's another case of one of these market makers and some of the catch-22's you'll sometimes have to deal with.

http://www.forexfactory.com/showthre...37#post2415937

Hard to anticipate, but if you know it might be coming at any time, you can formulate a battle plan
to not get caught when you're thrown a red herring like that.

Have multiple brokers with funded accounts, don't trade too large, use stops.
Some kind of contingency, because when you least expect it, the unexpected happens.

you ve ever heard about "weekend"???

these guys have weekends? ... well that sucks. Also i was under the impression i was accessing a HUGE market via the Forex broker. Why does it matter if they take certain positions when they can't do anything to influence the market?

Thanks Toshi. You are absolutely right.

All of the brokers look lovely in demo trading. When you start trading with real money you can see through them.

Yes they close one hour sooner than the others on Friday afternoon and open one hour later on Sunday afternoon. This is one of their other spectacular features that other companies don't have

is the trick when you accumulate enough capital to go to an ECN?

do any ECN's have mt4?

so what i see in a demo account is different from a live account? i thought i was still entering the real market even if it was only with demo money?

...who then is, a good broker? (1000USD)

I had 2 big shorts on the NZD/USD with IBFX a while ago which were well in profit, I actually sat in front of the screen as these positions spontaneously closed out all by themselves, I closed the account the next day. Fucking bullshit.

wait so these guys can force close your positions? What the bloody hell is the point of trading over a long period of time if they can choose to destroy you at any whim?!

Ahh... a little light begins to shine through....just enough to break the edge of the darkness...

When you know that as you start accumulating forex profits on the back of a dealer and that
just about anything can be thrown at you, even if it's a foul, something unethical, or whatever
only then can you begin to guard yourself against an attack.

Take your profits out with regularity. Don't leave them with the broker.
I've met crack whores whom I would be more inclined to trust not to take my money .
Now, those assistant crack whores are another story.......

Hi Craig,

are you also have $20,000 account or less when ibfx forced out your trade?

Did you inform the authoryties about this mess?

but it's easier to make 100k with 10k then it is with 1k. The possibility of getting 1Mill (it's a goal) is just so much harder when you have to keep withdrawing just so you're not always on their radar is so stupid... Are there ANY brokers out there that you can SOMEWHAT trust then?


Again i ask, is the demo account completely different from the live account? i thought i was still playing against a live market? but these prices don't seem universal... ??

"1st warning sign is usually if they offer Metatrader platform to their clients."

Ironically, you have no idea how many clients won't trade with you unless you offer MT4. I've took so many calls in the past prior to having MT4 back where people would tell me about the many "virtues" of MT4 and how I'd have to be an idiot not to offer it out. It's by far the most commonly asked for thing when you don't have it, especially from non-US clients.

"is the demo account completely different from the live account? i thought i was still playing against a live market"

Trades on a demo never have to clear - while its usually a live feed, its not like they're ever really cleared to any sort of liquidity provider.

Never mind that 90% of people never treat the demo like they would a live account. If a client loses on a demo, they'll double-down. The client will ignore rules they themselves put in place because they hit their target of say, 10 pips, yet the market moves 40, and their first thought is "Well, I missed out. I won't miss out the next time."

You should use a demo to find out the functionality of the platform and get a rough feel for the markets, but I wouldn't ever say to myself that the demo is "exactly the same."

ah i see. I've been treating the demo as if it was my live cause i plan on going live very soon but it felt like it was ... different.

What do you mean it has to clear? whats the major difference between a live and a demo? Sorry i've gone offtopic


in regards to IBFX, originally i demo'd with them because they seemed very professional, now i'm not so sure. What're the brokers a lot of you are currently with and how much should i leave with the broker? keeping in mind it's easier to hit a larger profit with a larger balance?

By clear, the demo never has liquidity issues. You probably won't see the spread change. It's a not a real trade, so it doesn't have to go through the channels to clear. It's just instant in, instant out.

Demos are good to get a feel for the platform, but for the above reasons and more, you shouldn't think they're exactly the same. Sure, you can test strategies and develop plans. But like I said before, very few people can treat the demo like a live account and do so consistently. We're all human beings with human vices -- eventually, we get greedy and try for more. If you lose demo trading - no big deal, you can always just double up on the next trade to make up for it.

On the live though, you'll be more tight-fisted. It's your money now - you will be much more risk adverse unless you've put such a small amount in that it means nothing to you.

On an off topic - my least-favorite clients to talk to are the EA people - they're the ones who buy the EAs, try to get them to work, have heard nothing but good about their EA, then they get on the live and eventually get killed. They don't know anything about trading - they were just looking for the easy button. So they buy the EA from some provider, pop it on the MT4 platform, and within a few weeks (if you're lucky), you'll hear from them about why the EA isn't working anymore. If you're lucky, they'll go ask the person who sold it to them. If you're unlucky, they'll blame you for being Lucifer and making their EA lose. If you're really unlucky, they'll threaten you, your children, and then post 18 billion messages about how you made their EA lose. I'm almost at the point that I'd like to ban EAs from use on our platforms, except for the fact that everyone would be calling the next day to ask me to reenable it. Sorry, just got started thinking about this because of the questions about demos versus live trading :-)