Haggling

Hey,


Has anyone / successfully / haggled their broker for lower prices?

what do you mean lower prices? spreads? deposit prices? either way its not worth the worry if they change it for you they change it for everyone not gunna happen

regards damien

You pump enough money into an account they will give you a preferred status and lower spreads, not to mention spread rebates. Mini accounts need not apply...

You'll need volume to cut a deal but yes, reduced commissions and rebates are something you can negotiate. Why do you ask, have you got something in mind?

Na, I thought i saw someone talking about it in another post.

Only traders with a history of trading professionally have the power to inquire into lowering trading fees. This isn't something that you're ready for yet.

Volume based pricing can be found at some brokers... Dukas for example has a great system of dropping prices as your up your volume.

As for actually negotiating with brokers that don't already have a discount system built into their price model... do you really think they are going to waste much time with small accounts that will most likely blow up down the road?




Haggling over spreads or commissions isn't the same as haggling at a market. In the non-western world, haggling is pretty common if not expected... but brokers aren't merchants, so it isn't as simple as pushing them to cut into their markup on the transaction cost.

For example... Brokers actually have a metric to measure the cost of acquiring a new client. That's right, before you even fund your account you've probably set the broker in the red by quite a bit. This comes from a few things, but the two big ones are: The administrative cost of setting up your account and the advertising and promotion cost of getting you to consider them in the first place.

So if you are a small sized account with a low life expectancy, they gotta milk you for all they can before you bust out so they can recoup what they invested in acquiring you in the first place, let alone make a few bucks from your transaction atop of that.

This is why the introducing broker programs have become so popular lately... instead of paying up front for advertising, they let the IB do the ad work for them and only pay the IB when the client generates revenue for the company.

Thus is the world of retail forex brokers...

If you aren't a small account through (6 figures), push decent volume (500Mil+ a month), and you aren't going to bust out in a year because you're actually professional about trading (consistent volume without major drawdowns)... THEN you have a lot more leverage over the broker to haggle on price... the broker will see you can be a revenue source for them long into the future and would do a lot to keep you. But most people reading these boards aren't in this category (sorry to say..) and if you were, you'd probably already know how to work with brokers on the costs.

A good benchmark for commission prices by volume and account balance would be Dukas' pricing structure:

http://www.dukascopy.com/swiss/engli...ission-policy/

If you trade with a broker that only quotes spreads and is "no-commission" then you'll have to do your own analysis of your total cost of trading based on spread comparisons. Some brokers have tiered accounts with higher balances getting cheaper spreads... others you'll have to speak with directly (but be prepared to offer evidence of your volume and trade history before they commit to anything.)

Lastly, if you want to forget about all of this and go with a broker who treats 6-7 figure accounts the same way as a $50 account, check out Oanda.. their spreads are the same for everyone without exceptions and are often rather tight (during non-news times.)