MB Trading Futures - Introduction

If limit orders work the same, then it means there is no order type in MBT that guarantee entry or exit, which is completely oposit what is possible on stock exchange. If market order or limit order with price worse than current price (Milan example) doesn't guarantee execution then I think it's not quite acceptable for professional investment.

Justin are you planning to change execution model in the future or it won't be ever possible ?

Pavikogm,

Not quite sure I understand the comment. A market order guarantees an entry or exit. It does NOT guarantee the PRICE. How can any price be guaranteed in any market? As a seller, you need a buyer. As a buyer, you need a seller. I’m confused as to why we are pointing to one order or perhaps a couple of orders at the same single moment of trading where buyers and sellers were scrambling out of the way and suggesting that the market order didn’t do its job. It did exactly its job. It got the customer out of the trade once someone was found to take the other side. That IS a market order in any market. You trade stocks, you don’t have a guarantee that the bid you see will be your fill. Options, the options exchanges issue warnings about fast market environments stating that fills aren’t guaranteed all the time.

It feels like people are still wrapped up in the deal desk model of FX, where the broker was the execution and for a while they would “guarantee” an execution. Until they didn’t because they couldn’t and all of that language was removed. I agree that in this particular case, the length of time on this one order that occurred for this one customer in these unusual conditions is unfortunate. However, we don’t change the execution model to account for the thinnest moments of activity in the market. The market order remains exactly what it should be…a request by the customer to buy or sell at whatever price it takes. That doesn’t mean we just send your order out to some bank and let them slip you 25 pips and have the quotes never get to that price. The system has to continually try to hit the actual best bid and best ask over and over in a market where the updates by all of the participants are occurring by the millisecond.

Let me ask you a question, and please be honest. Let’s say that the EURUSD is at 1.2810 by 1.2811 and you go to buy 20 at the market. Let’s say the offer moves to 1.2812 and you immediately get filled at 1.2850, almost 40 pips higher, and the offer doesn’t move above 1.2812. And the reason is because we sent your trade to the bank at 1.2811, but they had just taken a print, and as far as they were concerned, they didn’t want to sell anything else until 1.2850, but since we gave them a market order, they can do that. What are you going to say to us (or the NFA for that matter) when you got a fill at 1.2850 and the offer never went above 1.2812 in the near-term? You’re going to say “I got screwed by 38 pips” (and you’d be right). And we would then have to say “Well, you wanted the market order changed so that the bank that got the order, if they were done at the price they had been showing, just filled it at the next price where they had an interest.” That’s the only logical conclusion about what you’re saying.

Stocks are no different. You go to buy 5000 shares, there’s tons of market makers and ECNs showing 100, 300, 500, 1000 shares. It isn’t true that one of them will fill your whole order necessarily. You get multiple prices sometimes from different sellers.

I think this is a great conversation overall. Look at the comments we get on these boards from time to time. There are people that still believe that we trade against our customers because of the language in the online application about being the counter-party. Well, we keep saying we don’t, and this pretty much proves it. Obviously, if we were the other side of a trade, there would never be the chance of a delay in getting an execution like this. But there is no fluid central exchange in FX, yet. Our ECN does operate exactly like the fluid exchange that we all want to see, but there isn’t enough liquidity just on the ECN to satisfy all of our customer buying and selling. For that to be the case, half of our customers at any one moment would have to have buy or sell limit orders up and half would be buying and selling at the market. Just like we wouldn’t rely solely on ISLD or ARCA in the stock, we need the other market makers to route to. And that’s why we have the banks. We have to be able to route to them as well when the ECN doesn’t have what the customer needs. And when you have to route out to another destination, there are rules, and technology requirements, and it becomes a market.

Think of it like this. Our system is already set up to do exactly what everyone wants. And there may be another broker or two that is set up the same, I make it a policy not to mention other brokers (for good or bad). But let’s be clear. If everyone opened an account with one of those brokers (like us), then each of those customers is potentially going to place a limit order from time to time that adds to the liquidity of the fluid market that you want to see. Every account opened at one of the other brokers that still doesn’t charge a commission and operates in the spread either directly or through kickbacks from a bank DELAYS the move of the FOREX market toward the ultimate market environment that we all want to see. Do you see what I mean by that?

To focus on this one order that executed properly given the conditions and just how things played out (i.e. there were no technology issues associated with the order, it didn’t get stuck anywhere, none of the participants were down, servers were working fine, etc.) instead of focusing on the 99.999% of other trades that we run in a month that behaved exactly the same but only took a second or two (or less) to fill implies that there is an inherent problem in the system. There isn’t. Our system operates the same way that execution behaves in other markets. Forex has just taken a long time to get moving toward that.

Hi Justin,

You did not respond to my post #5625 (7/25) but appear to have referenced my post in your last message.

Quote from your last post #5642

"There are people that still believe that we trade against our customers because of the language in the online application about being the counter-party. Well, we keep saying we don’t"

If you are indeed never a counterparty to our transactions, then why is this language in the disclosure? Why reserve the right to be the counter party if you have no intent do so?

Having this language in the disclosure gives you the right at anytime to change your mind and start being counter party to our transactions, does it not? If your intent is to never act as the counter party to our transactions, shouldn't the disclosure state that you will never be counter party to our transactions?

I am always skeptical of entities who state they will "never" do something, but then reserve the right to do it in the legal contracts and disclosures.

Would be interested in hearing from other traders as to whether they agree with me or think I'm off base.

Duke

MBT is always the counter-party but ONLY if one of their LP's is counter-party to them. This is done purely for "financial agreements" purposes, otherwise you would have to sign up with each and every LP.

Say you would like to purchase a 100k @1.3000. MBT takes the other side of that trade, as in being the counter-party, ONLY if one of their LP's is prepared to sell 100k @1.3000 and they themselves(the LP) becomes the counter-party to MBT.(An instant STP transaction).

MBT will never take the other side of a trade to provide liquidity as in the MM model. They provide the STP/ECN path for the trade to take place.

The fact that they are the counter-party is purely a technicality, but it has to be in the agreements you sign for legal purposes.

Hi Justin,

I have a couple of technical questions. When do you think the issue with the Navigator Managed Trading functionality will be resolved?

You said you had put a ticket in to OPS on June 10th, but it is still not fixed yet.

http://www.forexfactory.com/showpost...postcount=5374
http://www.forexfactory.com/showthre...76#post3788276

In the meantime is there a way to submit orders on multiple accounts simultaneously through the OE or L2 window. I only know of the right click option to select a single account. I have a couple of accounts I set up last month that I'm looking to fund, if I can have the ability to trade them simultaneously.


The other thing I'd like to know is if there is a functionality in Navigator to set a limit price and stop price automatically based on a preset instead of having to manually set the limit price and stop price manually on each order entry?

Navigator has this preset functionality for trailing stop. Why not for limit and stop price as well? Is there some way to set this up that I'm not aware of? If not, how difficult would it be to add this functionality to the Navigator software? It seems it would make order placement much simpler. (I have a feeling that most traders would appreciate this feature as well, since we usually know how many pips from entry we'd like to place our stops and what limit we would find reasonable when placing our trades)

Thanks,

Fudo

Hi Justin
Have one question,
When MBT Mobile will Be available? I have been waiting for While but no news or update about it
http://www.mbtrading.com/mbtMobile.aspx

This has been addressed a million times on this thread by newbies. Please just go back and read so we don't have to hear it all again. You don't have a clearing arrangement with the banks in their system, they do. In fact, they are the 100% counter-party to every trade that you do over their system because they have to match off with the banks on your behalf. That is the only way that the system works. That doesn't mean that they are trading against you, showing risk against you, or profiting from your losses, which is the key.

exactly

It's like you guys can't read.

I prefer to "cant read" than to mislead !

if needed i can provide as many screenshots. if i compare the spread between MBT and IB, the IB spreads are tighther than MBT.
i have seen it in USD.CAD, GBP.USD, USD.JPY.
Last i heard, both are ECN where the banks compete to provide the fills competitively. but the spreads dont match up.
manytimes, the bids line up but the ASK does not. here is the prob.
when i do sell stop, the fill happens when the ask moves below the stop price, then i end up entering a trade at a price which is less favourable than if i did with IB.

Great theory, but the only misleading that is going on is you. It's already well documented what MB does. What you need to do is prove that you can get an execution that wasn't showing in the quote, and that might suggest that MB trades against us. Amazing how not one person has ever been able to do that. The rest of us have already run our tests, so start doing your testing and putting the results where your mouth is. I see a bid, I hit it. I see an offer, I hit it. I post a limit between the bid and ask, it displays immediately.

But we all know why you are here anyway. No one that didn't believe it would spend a second of their life coming by this thread to post nonsense unless they had an ulterior motive.

Your account is set to "Trade Through." Log into Navigator/Desktop and switch the preferences to "First Touch" and that won't happen. Also, maybe take one of their courses about their platform as they walk you through all of the settings.

Believe me the misleading is coming from group of members here working together in this thread like a gang and u know this , we asked alot of questions b4 and always get the same nonsense answers , sorry but this is the truth ,for example negative spreads !! which never happens with true ECN , forget i dont care and i have no motive , i currently trade FX futures and stocks and i dont trade spot fx , i just pass by to check FF from time to time and i entered this thread to c if there is any update , but what i saw : same members commenting the same comments ! , its stupid

Justin,

This is a screenshot from another NFA regulated MT4 ECN/STP broker. I think that maximum desviation/slippage it is technically possible and essential for me (and other traders I think).

smartman,

It would appear that your ECN/STP NFA regulated broker is taking you for a ride. Have a look at your order type window.....it says instant execution.....this is incompatible with ECN/STP. If it says Market Execution then you are dealing with a ECN/STP.

Hi,

I recently funded an MB account for MT4 before I got to read this tread. i have't started trading this brand new account but after reading trough this thread I am a bit uncertain on how I should proceed with my trading plan.

The reason why I opened an MT4 account is to trade using an EA. But from all I read it might not be such a good idea to do this, with all of MBs MT4 issues being posted.

Although I have traded this EA successfully with MBs MT4 Demo, I want to know if I can expect at least a similar performance in MB's live account? (Note this EA only uses market orders, with no SL and no TP.)

Also many posts say navpro is far more superior then MT4. would you suggest I just use navpro instead? Does navpro have Automated trading? Is it possible to write something like an EA with navpro?

See, you're still feeding the nonsense.

"Negative spreads."

Yes, an ECN only platform that is truly so liquid that it could handle all customer orders like an exchange wouldn't have negative spreads. There is no such ECN yet in FX. Justin has answered this repeatedly, and while I haven't seen negative spreads on the platform in a long time, they AREN'T JUST AN ECN. They are an ECN/STP broker, which means that the ECN has quotes just like the banks have quotes showing on the system. And one bank is not hitting another bank through the system. Thus, in theory, they could show a negative spread if two banks cross for an instant. How hard is that to understand? It has been asked and answered before!

Nav Pro is a much better option unless you need automated trading via an EA, as Nav Pro does not have an automated trading option. Nav Pro gives you much more control in terms of order types and I can't remember the last time I've read about anyone having any issues with Nav Pro in terms of an order problem. MT4 is basically a GUI interface one level above Nav, and it is very old software that isn't really up to the standards of a platform like Nav Pro (Desktop Pro is really the name now). Because of the extra layers and the general issues with MT4 when you strip out the deal desk functionality and plug it into their execution via a separate connection, MT4 will have issues from time to time. Justin will probably know the number, but I would count about 5 incidents where the platform went down for a few minutes since the first of the year. So if you have a very active EA that could get you in trouble if there was a short outage 5 times a year, then it might not be the best option, but Nav Pro won't work for you either then. If you can enter the trades manually, Nav Pro is the best option out there. If your EA is a more general EA and you check your system a couple of times a day, you'd probably be fine with it.

Hey Smartman-

Your screenshot is showing a deal desk function of MT4. Your ECN/STP broker ain't an ECN/STP broker.