Best ECN

If you really believe that your trades with FXOpen end up with Dukascopy, you must be pretty naive and dumb to put any substantial money with an unregulated bucketshop in a tropical paradise http://cdn.forexfactory.com/images/s..._the_floor.gif




P.S. 2 minutes to reply on my message, do I smell a shill ?

only demoing with fxopen/ECN/MT4 and open an account with Dukas (regulated), commissions are much lower.

That is the only smart thing to do, demo with FXOpen and actual account with Dukas (regulated bank with account protection)

Are you allowed to have an account with duksacopy if you live in US?

Hi guys,

Listen to Flash, guy knows what he's talking about!!! As for best ECN, I think I would have to lean towards LCBFX (in process of opening a live account). I had used CMSFX Pro before and their spreads were just as good as LCGFX, but commissions a bit higher and liquidity not so great (comparing live demo of LCG DOM with live CMS CNX DOM).

Also, CMS no longer takes retail clients and doesn't take institutional without account size greater than 10M. So not trading with them anymore. Like Flash said earlier, most MM's CNX are retail streams and not actual inst. streams like LCGFX uses. I'll post back once I've gone live with LCGFX (end of next week?) and let you know my thoughts on them.

As for Dukascopy, I was going to go live with them about a year ago or so and never did. I had googled around and read everything I could, and to be honest, they seemed decent despite more than a few questionable things about them (used to be a MM back in the day - can take the tiger out the jungle but not the jungle out of the tiger...?).

Anyway, what stopped me from going live (after I got my PP notarized and FedEX'd it to them - out $100 bucks now) was that they got my docs and then said I needed to mail in other forms. I showed them emails with one of their guys - Raivis?- showing I had asked questions about these other docs and if the were needed to which Raivis said not needed. He then tried to say he never told me that, despite having the emails from him, and basically they just fucked me around. Even after I told them to piss off and shred my docs, Ravi emailed me for a couple months asking when I was going to fund my account and send the other docs. I guess 'fuck off' just doesn't have the same meaning in Switzerland as it does in Canada...

Point is, sorry for the long explanation, that if they can't even open your account correctly by telling you exactly what is needed and then they lie to you about dumb shit like they never said that when you have emails about it, how can you feel confident with trusting them with your hard earned cash...?

I'm sure others have had no problems and trade quite happily with them, but that's my story and I'm sticking to it. They will never have me trade with them after all that BS as it just painted a picture of incompetence and greediness of the worst order.

Cheers,

Venge.

Edit: In case you are wondering, I did fill out all the acct. opening forms they needed along with passport etc. The issue was that I didn't have a utility bill... so I asked if I could use a bank statement to which the reply was yes! Then once they received my docs, the bank statement was no longer allowed in lieu of a utility bill...That's where things went downhill as they wanted me to courier (another 50 bucks!) one utility bill to them with no apologies for fucking up and that it was I who was wrong!

Not easy sometimes opening an account with Dukascopy if you have some documents missing. I missed one document too. I don't think Dukas would hurt their business by making it so difficult to open up an account with them so I was thinking that it probably is the strict Swiss regulations that dictate all this just to make sure there is no money laundering taking place.

Hi Klrman,

Agreed that for opening a brokerage account anywhere that missing documents would be a bit of an issue.

However, my problem with Dukas was that I had clarified this with their sales person, and no documents were actually missing, just wanted to use bank statement instead of utility bill as all my utilities are either online or included in my rent (God love Canada for that!).

So if the sales person had said, "Let me double check?" and then said "That isn't possible" I would have had no problem. But instead he said that was fine, and then after already sending the docs and them receiving them he decided to renege on his prior agreement that those docs were acceptable.

To me, this was unacceptable and for screwing up something as simple as opening an account, it made me very leery of going live. I know accidents happen, but this was just incompetence or laziness (or both) on the sales guys part, and the fact that after all this was said and done and I told him that I would not continue with the account opening process yet was still hounded by him for months...Well that part of it points to something...strange...to be polite.

Looking forward to that. How big were their minimum deposit and trade size again? Something like 20k and 200k base currency, if I recall correctly?

I am quite happy with Interactive Brokers and will recommended them.

* Tight spreads
* No Dealing Desk
* ECN Broker

FX Open are an ECN, and they offer MT4. Hard to beat.

But large commission...

".. but large commission.."

It depends on your trade size, the bigger volume your trade the lower the commission. If you trade 0.1 std lot the commision is equivalent to 2.5 pips/trade. As lot size increases, commission will be lower and level off at 0.2 pips/trade when your trade size is 1.25 lots and above.

At the trade size of 0.6 lots, the commission is 0.42 pips about the same as ATC Brokers.

To be honest, I didn't even ask, but that's what I read/was told. However, I told them how much I would be depositing initially and nothing was ever mentioned about my deposit being too small. As for the 200k mins., once again, no idea. Flash maybe you can answer that one?

I'll try different lot sizes and see what happens... Anyway, they should get my docs at some point this week and will fund account asap. Should be up and trading by early next week at the latest...

Anyway, will post my initial experience in the next week or so.

I looked into IB and thought the comms. were a wee bit on the exp. side although other than that, looked pretty solid all around and they would def. be my second choice. Also, some decent charting software have interfaces built for IB connectivity which is a bonus as finding a charting package which can connect to currenex is near impossible. Need to build that for yourself likely...

I've never used FXopen and looked into them a long time ago but after reading a lot of mixed to negative reviews, I dropped them from consideration list as my capital is too important to trust to a broker (any broker) with less than decent reviews, even if the reviews may be less than accurate...

I'm sure I can waste my money myself, and have more fun doing so, without having a broker potentially screw me over.

A question I would pose to anyone is why would you ever consider putting your money with a broker who has many negative reviews especially when there are so many brokers out there? Spreads and comms. are certainly a factor to be considered, but not the end all, be all if your funds are ripped off or your broker potentially 'trades' against you, etc.

just a thought to mull over should you choose...

ATC has got good reviews lately. Anybody tried them?

Yes like I said...large...

No good...I tried them already...

20K deposit...200K size...but you can trade as from 40K...

I had tried their DEMO for almost 5 months (cautious about their liquidity provider FXCM). The execution is not as fast as other MT4 brokers that I used before (IBFX, FXDD, GOmarkets). The spread with commisstion adjusted is the lowest that I know of.

Then I started trading live with them because I have to close GOMarkets account. Eventhough the customer service is excellent, I am disappointed with the execution speed and the price executed on SL and TP is almost always off from the set SL and TP by 1, 2, 5 pips, on the worse side. As a comparison, there are no slips at IBFX , GOMarkets, and rarely slip at all at FXDD.

I am going to hang on with them for a month or two and see how it pans out.