Best brokers for news releases such as NFP

Hi,

I am fairly new to this, so please pardon me if I miss something obvious. It appears that some brokers who generally provide good spreads (eg., Oanda ~ 1pip for EUR), widen their spreads significantly during news releases such as nfp. I am using a demo account at the moment and wouldn't shift to live for some time.

I have read in a few places that it is not a great idea to trade nfp, but regardless, are there any brokers who provide consistently good spreads ... ? As I am still in the phase of deciding which brokers to choose, it'd greatly help if you can offer any insight,

Thanks in advance,

- Raj.

From what I know of those brokers which guaranteed fixed spreads either won't guarantee order fills or "lock" up your account on news release times

No broker, and that includes big banks, will guarantee fill orders during major news releases. So, to answer your question, in my opinion, no - there are no brokers that will guarantee fix spreads during news.

Other factors aside, who are the brokers who offer fractional pips ? Oanda seems to have great spreads, are there any others that offer similar or better pricing ?

PLEASE correct me if I am wrong but if you are already in the trade at news time (short or long) and your stops are wider than the spread, then you have nothing to worry about. (Except the market moving against you. :-))

Just for information..Minimum deposit with Dukascopy is just $10k... unless changed in last two month. and I understand from a recent post here on FF.. minimum lot size as low as $1000 is now acceptable. However Ive not confirmed that.

As to spreads.. IMHO..The WORST combination is a marketmaker with "variable" spreads. IMHO its a serious matter thats not given anything like enough attention on forums. In mant cases, analysis of the sellside operation of these brokers tends to decend into a broker-knocking exercise..quicky followed by a broker defense by an "experienced senior trader/member. The whole goal of exchanging objectively collected data is lost.
When my MT4 broker (..a marketmaker that operates a variable spread quote) switched to 5 digit quotes I began running an indicator I found here in FF that logs spread by the tic, and adapted it to allow the output to be analysed in excel. The results have been very interesting... I will say no more.members run similar logs on their own MT4 Brokers during London session.
(5Majors and 2yen crosses) and form their own judgements.

Anyone who may be interested can use the attached indicator.( SpreadOnly_Recorder_v1).adapted by me but originally written by Zen_Lowe...(mine provides smaller txt files that can be more easily imported into Excel). The simplest analysis is average. Just average the spreads from 08:00 GMT to 17:00 GMT or for whatver times you normally trade.. to get a crude picture. Someone with Excel programming skills may be able to create a template for more detailed analysis..hourly/mode/median etc.(please)

To accomodate the log files (recording only time and spread) (txt files actually) it is necessary to create a directory in /experts/files directory called /Spread_Recording. The log files automatically labeled/named by date pair etc.. will end up there.

Zens thread is called Spread Recorder (195290)..Its been quiet for a couple of months. If you use this indi or his original, and get results.. posting them there might be useful..and help make the sellside product more transparent.

Regards

My reference interbank data feed comes from http://www.ctnsystems.com/ Very tight spreads and huge liquidity http://www.ctnsystems.com/pricegw.html

You can compare it with ECN broker like AmiFX, ATC, Dukascopy, FXDD, London Capital Group, MB Trading, IB etc.

Then you will see very quickly which broker offers excellent spreads and has good liquidity provider.

There are big differences!

Integral had added more LP to their system.

Now it's another good forex feed with very tight spreads: http://www.truefx.com

Oanda is simply the best. However i hate their interface.

If only OANDA had metatrader.

the truefx.com shows fantasy spread！
Does it means Integral brokers have that spread？

I've compared TrueFX with several currenex broker.

Spreads are little better or little worse.

I compare IB with truefx. truefx is a Little better in E/U A/U G/U. But still need to look into a live account ，because it means nothing if the best bid/ask size below 0.5m.

You can compare ECN broker spreads live at http://www.fxintel.com/live/ . It gives you an idea of how different the spreads can be between brokers. For the most part it's a close race between FXOpen, ATC and MB for lowest spreads.

thanks! i'm with Alpari, they have a new pro account that gives spreads that are similar to ATC but with a min deposit of 20k

- note tried the demo account with fxopen, gbpjpy is what i trade, and the spread shown on the website compared to the demo, is off by 3-4 pips

Have been using Oanda demo for some time. Great spreads ! Not sure about ACM, but the last time I checked, their prices weren't as great as Oanda's.

I didn't compare it with demo. It matches the live spreads pretty well with a small delay. I'm scalping it with 2 pip spread right now

Dude Oanda is a dealing desk maker makers .. y would u use them . Beside their platfrom kinda sucks also ...