Best FX broker for scalping - pro traders opinion only pls

IMPORTANT, READ BEFORE YOU POST: I am ONLY interested in opinion from experienced traders, as voucher system is obviously flawed, I don´t want to limit it this way, but I beg you - if you are a kiddo playing with microlots and couple hundred dollars blowing 30th account in a row and blaming "that naughty broker" for all that, please spare me (us) of your opinion. I want to keep this discussion on a certain level. Thank you!

NO FLAMING, NO BLAMING of brokers, I am ONLY interested in constructive opinions. NO NOOBS who just blew their account and blame everyone except for themselves.

Primary focus of this thread is to help myself obviously, but if it establishes itself and helps other traders as well, even better.

*****

Hi fellas,

I´ve been in the business for almost 2 years now (before - 3 years of studying and 1 year of demo trading), being scalping 99% of the time as it´s closest to my nature - and will very probably continue scalping further on.

Currently, my broker starts to slightly piss me off. I wont name him as I don´t want to make any harm to anyone´s business and also, it might be just me, but the more I am successful, the more situations that I would describe as "dirty tricks" occur to me. Requoting, slippage, SL hunt, often disconnections of my platform at crucial moments, these are all part of the business, ey? No broker plays for you, it´s you against him. But there are certain boundaries and I feel as my account grows bigger, my broker is throwing bigger and bigger obstacles in my way.

******

Anyway...

As a scalper, what I am basically looking for is pretty obvious:

GENERAL:

- trustworthy - registered with authorities in respected country (US, Western Europe) and with clean record. No Cyprus, Russia or Cayman islands...
- big player - properly capitalized and with an established position and reputation in the market
- good, intuitive and reliable platform (MT4 is not necessary, I use it for demo purposes and some charting only)

SCALPING FRIENDLY:

- immediate execution of Market orders, as well as SLs, PTs, Limit orders (as I open and close vast majority of my trades manually, the 1st condition is the most important)
- low spread (mainly EUR/USD and AUD/USD)
- low commisions (I don´t mind paying commisions if it´s worth it)
- reliable price feed - no sudden spikes nowhere to be found in other broker´s data etc.

After MANY hours browsing many forums, review websites, comparison sheets etc. etc., I narrowed my (I don´t say it applies generally) my selection to basically 4 brokers, sorted alphabetically:

1. Dukascopy - swiss bank (if you do finance, you know why swiss means business), respected ECN, but some reviews reported many problems with their platform, also problems with slippage, sudden price spikes, also they are not exactly the cheapest ones.

PROS - ECN, swiss bank, reliable, clean record, well established, flawless support, appropriate spreads, higher account leverage (100:1)
CONS - not exactly low commisions, platform technical problems, sudden price spikes, reviews claiming they take opposite trades

2. Interactive brokers - everybody knows them. They are one of the biggest in the business (talking about retail level), many report problems with their support, they are generally very cheap, but they focus mainly on futures and stock trading (if you are trading indices like E-mini Russell, they are obvious choice), their platform may be too complicated for some and also some (not me) might have problems with minimum deposit ($10k). High ranks by Barron´s on yearly basis.

PROS - US, UK based, reliable, clean record afaik, well established, overall cheap, big player
CONS - main focus on futures&stocks, complicated platform, bad support, min. deposit might be high for some

3. MB Trading - ECN, as IB, they are ranked high by Barron´s and many other, overall (spread+comm) they seem to be very cheap, although I´ve also stumbled upon some reviews complaining about their poor services (large slippage more than compensating low spread, slow execution, requoting, technical problems...), They support MT4 which might be advantage for some.

PROS - ECN, good reviews, clean record, seems to be reputable, very cheap, MT4 support
CONS - a few alarming reviews, support issues, not largely capitalized

4. Oanda - plenty of you guys use this one, although it´s the MM (you usually don´t want to scalp with market maker but they´re said to be the "best" for scalping among them). But they openly admit it on their website and many favour Oanda for (at least they claim it) fair, transparent and opened environment which is more than a lot of brokers can offer. They are one of the big players as well although I´ve also read some disappointing reviews and they are not exactly cheap as well. They are also well known for huge spreads in news time.

PROS - well established, used by many scalpers, no commision, usually good spread, good platform, MT4 support
CONS - market maker, some reviews blame them of dirty tricks, not a clean record, huge spreads during events

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Well, that´s just about it. As written above, I welcome opinions from any experienced trader, primarily those, who have ANY experience with one of these (or obviously any other, if it´s a good experience). I will gladly add those you have good experience with on the list and into the poll.

Thank you for helping me to find the best current solution in the market for a scalper.

Happy pipping to you all.

obv depends what you mean by scalping. and it really depends on your deposit account size + monthly turnover. I find it hardly to believe you've been doing this for 2 years and don't know who the big players are.

On the pure retail I've trader with Interactive brokers and Dukascopy and didn't have any problems with them. for high end volume there were at least 5+ discussions this year so a simple search on FF will give you the best answer. naturally for commission in scalping I would go no higher then 18/mil with the obv tendency to get lower in the 10/mil range.

kind regards

Hi Rikers,

thanks for your opinion. Firstly, I am not going to publicly disclose my account size or monthly turnover, I am sure you´ll understand - that´s simply not anyone´s business and I don´t think it harms the discussion in any way.

Secondly, I thought scalping was a commonly understood term - generally speaking, it would be trading mostly on small TFs, going only for small movements in PA, holding position only for a short period of time (in my perspective, it´s max 20 minutes - or 4 bars on M5, as you wish, unless I have good reasons to do otherwise)

You don´t look around if you are satisfied, you start when you are not.

Oh yes - I digged all those old threads but I found them messed with whinners and representatives or respective brokers, usually unable to find lots of really useful info from experienced traders, lots of flaming, but almost no facts...

Which one would you pick if given choice, IB or Duka?

Duka over IB purely because of the lower commission I get. Still, if you don't have a big volume oanda is always a better option. If you don't trade around news. If I remember 1,2 is something you can't get spread + commission on other retail brokers no mater how you put it.

vote 1 for interactive brokers. hard to go past book trader for scalping.

admd.com vcapfx.com

http://intlfcstone.com/foreignexchan...s/default.aspx

Hey PoundTrader, I appreciate you posting links here, but it would be nice if you found a spare minute to advocate for those...

You can scalp with any of those brokers, does not matter which one. It's only a matter of personal preference. The only thing that might be important is the leverage. Oanda and IB provide 50:1 as a maximum, whereas MBTrading and Dukascopy provide 100:1 which for me would be a reason not to use a 50:1 broker.

As for the bad reviews: For absolutely every broker you can find one or more bad reviews. I would not trust those reviews unless you made bad experiences for yourself. Anyone can post a bad review to the internet without having an idea about forex or whats going on in general.

>>Oanda and IB provide 50:1 as a maximum, whereas MBTrading and Dukascopy provide 100:1 which for me would be a reason not to use a 50:1 broker.<<

Incorrect- MB trading or for that matter any U.S broker will/can offer only 50:1 maximum.

And to answer the O.P's question- I think you have pretty much narowed it down to the best 4 brokers...Asking for a consensus is only going to confuse you more. Everyone's just going to advocate their current broker. (Like me for instance, I am very happy scalping with Dukascopy.)

Best of luck on your search, but you can't go wrong with any of the 4 you have listed.

U don't have to choose a US broker. MBTrading is a UK Broker, not a US broker and offers 100:1 leverage

http://www.mbtrading.co.uk/faq.aspx

Agree. I've trade with MBT, Dukascopy, and Oanda. I've only had good experience with all three. I'd rather not scalp with oanda, as they are a market maker. Dukas, MBT, and IB's trading costs are all a bit large, >1pip on eurusd. I'm currently trading with Pepperstone, and am getting a total trading cost of <1 pip on eurusd.

1) Oanda

I have been using Oanda for almost 1.5 years since June 2010. Oanda is registered in US, but I am with Oanda Asia Pacific (OAP) which is a subsidiary of Oanda Inc. OAP is registered with and regulated by the Monetary Authority of Singapore, that is one of the reason I've chosen OAP.

Spread on major pairs (EUR/USD, AUD/USD, GBP/USD and etc.) are one of the lowest you can find in the Asia Pacific region, so it is scalping friendly. The best time for scapling is from London open to NY close, EUR/USD spread is about 1.2pips, and 1.8 pips for AUD/USD, and 2pips for GBP/USD. However, the spreads will be widened to 10pips (20 pips for some pairs) 30 seconds before major news release, and last for about 2 - 3 minutes. OAP does not charge any commissions, everything has been built into the spreads.

OAP's platform is java based, I won't say it is excellent, but after a while I get pretty used to it except the charts (I use MB Trading demo account for charting purpose). The platform stability seems improving. When I first started, the platform would go down at least once a month, especially during NFP. But since beginning of 2011, the platform was pretty stable, no major down time. Price feed is reliable as I compare its price feeds with those in MB Trading demo account every now and then. Btw, OAP started to offer MT4 not long ago, I have never tried that so no comment.

As a MM, slipage seems less a problem, I normally get about 0.1 - 0.2 pips slipage during volatile market, no problem in execution of s/l or t/p (on full lots). However, no hedging is allowed, i.e. you can't have a buy and a sell EUR/USD trade open at the same time, I understand that this is because of the US regulations.

There is no minimum deposit requirement, so it is good for beginners. But do note that there are limits on the position size, for EUR/USD, the limit is USD10 million, any amount beyond that will not be auto-executed. Leverage is 50:1, but it does not mean a lot to me as the most I had used was 20:1.

2) MB Trading

As mentioned above, I use MB Trading's MT4 platform mainly for charting purpose. I won't be able to offer much comment on MB Trading as I am using the demo only. Nevertheless, I noted that MB Trading used to be a US-based broker, recently, it created a MB Trading UK Co. for those non-US traders and offers 100:1 leverage, whereas the US-based MB Trading can only offer 50:1 leverage. Because of this change, MB Trading closed all demo accounts, and I have to re-register with MB Trading UK to open another demo account, and hedging is allowed under the demo account with MT Trading UK. And together with all the recent changes, MB Trading started to offer two types of accounts on MT4, one with commission and one without, I didn't read into the details, but you can check its website to find out more.

Spreads on demo account are very tight, EUR/USD varies from 0.8 - 1.2 pips. My understanding is that MB Trading is a true ECN, as such, scalpers may experience a lot of slipage.

3) Dukascopy

I only managed to try out the demo account which lasted 14 days (a bit short which make me wonder why as both Oanda and MB Trading offer unlimited demo accounts). I started to look for a non-US based broker since the MF Global incident so as to diversify my risk. Dukascopy is registered as a bank and regulated by the Swiss regulator. It has lowered the account opening requirement to USD1000 or equivalent, and to my surprise, it allows accounts to be opened in SGD (which is my home currency). Commission rates are tiered, the more you trade, the less commission you pay. I also found out that if you open an account with Dukascopy through an introducing broker, you could get back some of the commission in the form of rebate from your introducing broker, but this is all in theory at the moment.

The demo platform is java based, but the charting software is much more advanced than Oanda, to certain extend, even better than MT4. Being an ECN, the platform also displays the market depth which I was very impressed when I first launched the demo platform. Slipage will occur every now and then due to ECN.

One thing I don't like or rather I can't get used to is the overnight rollover. The rollover will mimic the actual inter-bank market, i.e. if you have an open EUR/USD trade, at the end of the day, Dukascopy will enter an FX swap on your behalf, the spot leg of the FX swap will close your EUR/USD trade, and any gain/loss will be realized in your account balance, when you log in the next day, the EUR/USD trade in your account is the forward leg of the FX swap based on the forward price instead of the original buy/sell price. This really confused me when I read my demo account statements.

4) Interactive Broker

No comments as I've never dealt with them before.

[quote=FXMastermind;5211906]
2. Interactive brokers - everybody knows them. They are one of the biggest in the business (talking about retail level), many report problems with their support, they are generally very cheap, but they focus mainly on futures and stock trading (if you are trading indices like E-mini Russell, they are obvious choice), their platform may be too complicated for some and also some (not me) might have problems with minimum deposit ($10k). High ranks by Barron´s on yearly basis.

PROS - US, UK based, reliable, clean record afaik, well established, overall cheap, big player
CONS - main focus on futures&stocks, complicated platform, bad support, min. deposit might be high for some

Hi FX

Really think you should take a look at this page http://www.interactivebrokers.com/en...t&ib_entity=uk
rules change for scalpers. Not saying that this affects their suitability as a reliable broker to scalp with but just wanted to highlight for your style of trading it appears account can't fall below $25K without having a 90 day trading ban imposed.

U don't have to choose a US broker. MBTrading is a UK Broker, not a US broker and offers 100:1 leverage

I stand corrected. I totally forgot about MB trading's recently started UK arm.
My apologies to you.

Not a problem man, which broker do you use for scalping?

http://www.lmax.com/

The best, in my humble opinion. IB requires 10,000. They are market makers, at the end of the day. Their pairs are quoted in half-pips and you need to trade at least 60k to make it worthwhile ($5 min r/t). Charting and DOM are not great. I've compared Multicharts driven by MBT side by side with MC/LMAX and LMAX is faster with better granularity. Oanda is a market maker but is good for swinging the crosses. If you're a scalper that wants instant fills and great tools, then LMAX offers MC for free as long as you do the volume (2.5 million/ month).

Just FYI, if you're an American citizen, MB Trading UK will not provide you with 100:1 leverage. Any broker doing business legitimately in the US (this includes MB Trading) in any fashion is required by law to offer no more than 50:1 leverage to American traders.

The only brokers that will offer increased leverage to American citizens are those brokers not governed or otherwise bullied by American regulators. This is why a number of brokers just flat out do not accept American residents as clients. Not that this applies to the OP but I figured that this was left some what unexplained for anyone who stumbles upon this thread looking for more details.

Hey guys,

thank you all for your opinions so far, especially Xmen2 for his long analysis, let´s keep the discussion on this level, hopefully we gather more experience from other guys to help others to choose as well.

I´ve noticed some of you "lobbying" for LMAX (not only on this thread) but they are rather new brand in the business upon my taste and furthermore, they look pretty much just like another CFD - correct me if I am wrong. And since they are new, they wont have enough customers to match requests on their own and they will have turn to banks anyway...So what´s the difference?

Thanks Stu for that IB info.

EDIT: Browsed through JFK´s posts and it seems he´s pretty much LMAX representative, pushing LMAX all around. Perhaps I am wrong but it´s business after all and better stay watchful.

To my knowledge, IB is not a market maker for FX but offers an ECN.

And yes, Lmax is very good and so is Oanda.