MB Trading Futures - Introduction

it's OK now, working again, can you please explain why you guys have to go offline calculating the rollovers?

I run a couple of businesses. Don't know how much you are aware of how "support" works, but sometimes you get a guy that is new or doesn't know exactly what to say to the question. Or frankly (and you hope this isn't the case, but support is support) doesn't care that much. The funny thing is, if you look at this forum over the last day over which not really any big deal happened (an extended rollover, not the end of the world), the tone of the posts is flipped. Here you have Justin, who helps with explaining everything, and you can easily ask him and always get a proper answer within a day, usually sooner, about Live versus Demo feeds, etc. (for that matter, probably 30 people on this forum could answer the question for you, and it's already been asked and answered). Meanwhile, it seems that people that had a couple of actual trade problems (something Justin can't help with legally or probably technologically) are posting here as if Justin is supposed to solve that problem for them. Very strange. Every broker is subject to hiccups. MB's have been extremely rare over the last year and they tend to fix them quickly. I know someone who had a Take Profit on a trade that hit and wasn't filling when it hit the price yesterday and MB made good on the trade. As long as you end up where you are supposed to, they are doing fine.

u r so defensive when it comes to MB ! who said it is the end of the world ? but it is an issue , extended rollover my eye !! ...

+1....extended rollover my arse!!!!!!!

Roughtrader-

We don’t “go offline to calculate rollovers.” Rollover occurs at the same time as the interbank market pauses to complete what is known as “settlement” or “clearing.” Basically, all of the big banks stop for a few minutes and say “Here is the set of business that we did between each other for the last 23 hours and 55 minutes, please send me x money (or I’ll send you x money, depending on the case) to account for this.” At that point, trading stops temporarily. Our system also uses the chance to back up and reset servers (something that used to happen separately at midnight EST). Once the settlement and reset is complete, our systems come back up and reconnect to the banks. Once enough banks begin to show liquidity again, we turn on trading. We don’t need all of the banks showing their full liquidity, and 5 pm EST is a slower time of session anyway so not exactly the heaviest for liquidity. Usually, this whole event (settlement, server resets, liquidity coming back up from banks) takes about five minutes, and then following that, liquidity continues to increase as the rest of the banks reconnect. In the case of extended rollovers, typically, some of the banks don’t come up immediately, and so we don’t turn on trading. Keep in mind, most brokers are just desks and other brokers are desks that offset risk through banks when needed. If we had an active desk with traders, we could bridge these periods by providing you with executions. We don’t. We’re STP and ECN.

In the case of yesterday, the issue was a little unusual. It wasn’t just a function of a couple of the banks taking 5-10 minutes longer than usual. There was a bad file sent for clearing between some of the banks involved. If trading had turned back on before this issue was addressed, there could have been much bigger problems. We apologize for the issue. Things happen. Also, someone noted that Take Profit orders that filled while Meta were down were still given to customers after the fact. Let me take a moment to explain that.

As I have said before, when you have an MT4 account with us, we encourage you to ALSO keep that account up and running and logged into our Desktop software. Desktop is truly the “account level” activity for your account. MT4 is simply a front-end user interface provided by a third party that you opt into when you open the account. When you place a Take Profit on a trade in MT4, that order is sent as a Limit to our ECN (which, as everyone knows, we now pay you for doing so). In the case of yesterday, our execution systems actually came back up long before several of you seem to think that they did. What was happening is that MT4 wasn’t allowing you to adjust trades (you could place new ones though). The actual downtime due to the clearing issue was not multiple hours as a couple of people implied here. As long as execution is back up, that means your Take Profit (or Limits entered via Desktop) orders are sitting on the ECN and will execute, no matter what is going on in MT4. There were a relative handful of these trades where people may have still been experiencing an issue with MT4, but their trades that were already in the system were still fully supported and could execute if the prices hit. Note that when you have a Desktop account with us instead, not only do you get many more order types, but Desktop accounts come up the minute that raw execution comes back up. MT4 is an added layer, so it has to come up after, and in the case of yesterday’s strange events, the appearance was that MT4 was still experiencing problems, but the reality is that existing orders would still fill at Take Profit prices. There were some issues of not being able to change these orders via MT4 for a while, but that dissipated over time.

I’ve said on this thread many times that if you are trading manually, you should be using Desktop Pro. It has many more order types for professional traders, plus it is the direct access account-level of your account that taps straight into our execution. MT4 is a layer above that, which means extra hardware between you and execution, but it has far less flexibility and order control. That’s fine if you are using an EA, but I would suggest Desktop Pro if automated trading isn’t your thing. Desktop Pro accounts weren’t having the same problems after the clearing file issue yesterday, which was resolved much faster than the handful of complaints on this board were still coming in. At a minimum, log yourself into Desktop Pro and watch the Positions, Open Orders, Orderbook, and Messages windows, as they provide you with a clearer snapshot of your account and of any Messages the support desk is sending regarding maintenance.

Comments that I see when it was happening:

"And it was meant to be reputable broker."

"Maybe this crap about low spread and pay per limit is not worth it anymore."

"Well, look like MBT is not as reliable as I had hope to be. Much as I hate it, time to continue looking for a better and more reliable broker."

Sounds like end of the world talk to me when it wasn't. This is why some of us who believe in what MB is doing hang around these boards and get accused of being trolls for MB. Too many people take one little event (the first in a long long time if you don't count Demo) and make it out that MB has all of these issues. Just understand that the alternative if companies like MB were not around is just deal desks and wider spreads and slippage and manipulation and all of that junk. Whether you trade only with MB or with several brokers (I have two), we should be encouraging them and thanking them for what they have done for the industry and for putting someone like Justin out here to answer so many questions over the years (we're on post 7000 on this thread, for #&* sake). Which brings me to:

"You would think the rep would come on post something about what is going on."

"I just wished this rep would not disappear when trouble arises."

This occurred basically from 5-6 pm EST yesterday. Does Justin not get to drive home...or whatever? Justin has been answering questions in a timely manner since November 8, 2006 on this very thread (just click on the first post to see). Yeah, at this point, I feel grateful enough to the guy to stand up a bit for him when that type of nonsense gets posted. Just about any other broker that has tried to put a support guy on FF has been burned and ran away after about an hour when their firm blows out someone's account because they needed to pay the electric bill. But enough about that.

Thanks for the comments and thoughts. We do appreciate them.

No, I wasn’t driving home in traffic at the time. I’m closer to the West Coast. I was at the doctor during the “event.” Next time, I’ll try to plan my medical needs around “times of day where someone might mess up a clearing file.”

hope u r fine

@ Indytrader , defensive again , these clients have the right to complain again and again it is there money and savings on the line here , for god sake do u expect an "extended rollover" for a long time then nobody opens his mouth ?!

Not at all, do you even read what I post? There is a big difference between asking what is going on and talking amongst ourselves about what we are seeing and what is happening to try to help each other and "this one hour issue proves that this broker is the worst."

Maybe for you I need to spell it out differently, so let me say it like this. This forum is great for an open, rational conversation. But people hide behind logins to get overly nasty and make over the top nonsense statements. In a case like this, you get people that come in and are relatively new and they see posts like that and I don't think it provides a service to the industry. In fact, I think it hurts it. But, you can write and think whatever you want, as can I. It's a free world like that.

Who r u to stop them from posting ?! if they made a fake statement then yes i agree with u , but if someone has an angry moment because of a *** service then he has the right to post and complain as he wants , it is his money for God sake , u r taking this personally mate ...

I'M taking this personally? Wow, classic. I haven't written a single comment about you or tried to characterize your posts, although you have repeatedly done so to me, but "I'm" the one taking this personally? How about just move along on this, it's getting off topic.

When it comes to MB u take it personally , if someone said one word about MB u become defensive , look most your posts is about MB :

http://www.forexfactory.com/search.p...rchid=13585263

I think I've been fairly thorough in explaining why I am here. I don't follow other threads on FF, I just subscribe to this one to get updates.

goodluck

Does anybody have a link to to a page where I can leart how to use MBT Mobile or can anybody pls tell me how to close an open order on MBT mobile. Thank you

+1 LOL, he sounds as if he works at MBT more than the actual rep does

Got paid $240 so far in Limit orders, not a bad start. I think I might be liking this new pay for limit orders thing.

Order book -> Click on the order you want to close-> Cancel Order

Justin, you probably missed my question, could you please have a look here? http://www.forexfactory.com/showpost...postcount=6676

Thanks!