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LMAX = revolution?!?

  • #1,121
  • Jun 4, 2012 2:05am Jun 4, 2012 2:05am
Quoting justiciafx
ns_karthik,

I saw in one of your profies that you are from India and were working in Slovenia, UK and Dallas and CA as a very successful fund manager since 2005. I am wondering if you know anything about their laws about how forex are taxed in each country/city?
Best regards
Justicia or rather ns-karthik, this thread is supposed to be about LMAX as you are well aware...
  • #1,122
  • Jun 4, 2012 2:13am Jun 4, 2012 2:13am
Quoting justiciafx
ns_karthik,

I saw in one of your profies that you are from India and were working in Slovenia, UK and Dallas and CA as a very successful fund manager since 2005. I am wondering if you know anything about their laws about how forex are taxed in each country/city?
Best regards
Gotta laugh at these guys!
  • #1,123
  • Jun 4, 2012 4:25am Jun 4, 2012 4:25am
Quoting justiciafx
ns_karthik,

I saw in one of your profies that you are from India and were working in Slovenia, UK and Dallas and CA as a very successful fund manager since 2005. I am wondering if you know anything about their laws about how forex are taxed in each country/city?
Best regards
I can assure you for Slovenia, Spot FX gains are taxed 20% unlike other financial instruments such as stocks, options, futures, ETFs... which are taxed 40%.
  • #1,124
  • Jun 4, 2012 1:43pm Jun 4, 2012 1:43pm
Quoting govno
I can assure you for Slovenia, Spot FX gains are taxed 20% unlike other financial instruments such as stocks, options, futures, ETFs... which are taxed 40%.
I do believe you're wrong. Spot FX is not taxed (unless you're trading through a company, then it's taxed at 20%). Everything else is taxed either 40%, 20%, 15%, 10%, 5% or 0% depending on what you're trading and how long it has been in your possession.
  • #1,125
  • Jun 4, 2012 2:04pm Jun 4, 2012 2:04pm
For what it is worth:

ns_karthik did indeed hook me up with a $1000 direct full classic lmax account (including API access)

I signup up regularly with lmax, told him the signup, half a day later a lmax account manager contacted me and confirmed that i am indeed getting a full lmax account but i only need to deposit $1k instead of $10k. (he also refereed to him)

So commercial status / commssions or not at least the deal was honest. Credit where credit is due.
  • #1,126
  • Jun 4, 2012 3:52pm Jun 4, 2012 3:52pm
Quoting yoursong
For what it is worth:

ns_karthik did indeed hook me up with a $1000 direct full classic lmax account (including API access)

I signup up regularly with lmax, told him the signup, half a day later a lmax account manager contacted me and confirmed that i am indeed getting a full lmax account but i only need to deposit $1k instead of $10k. (he also refereed to him)

So commercial status / commssions or not at least the deal was honest. Credit where credit is due.
hmmm , kinda strange , why does LMAX only does such low min. accounts via IBs ? if its crystal clear that u get full access with them anyhow ?

sorry i dont get it
  • #1,127
  • Jun 4, 2012 4:17pm Jun 4, 2012 4:17pm
I dont get it either. It just costs them money, since the IB gets compensation. I doubt these affiliate websites bring in many genuine new clients, who only sign up because of the IB and have never heard about lmax.

I guess the original plan was to do most of the business through lmax broker members such as Armada, who provide client money custody and support, while lmax only provides execution services. That setup is the best for lmax, since it costs them next to nothing. But that seems to be tough going, Armada is the only broker-member so far.

This project was started by Betfair and Goldman around 2005, when retail FX volume had explosive growth rates since years. Now its stagnant/declining since 2 years, so all plans are moot anyways. It will be interesting what they put into the next BetFair investor report. Last time it was "signs of traction" in trading volumes.
  • #1,128
  • Jun 4, 2012 4:31pm Jun 4, 2012 4:31pm
I guess its about pure small lot volume increase. Don't underestimate the volume of retailers for a broker. It might only be 10% of the overall forex volume but for brokers its worth gold since retailers are like poors mans hft. Many small orders all over the place and it's double win for lmax. If they can match orders of two clients against each other they earn double spread without any additional costs. If they have to route / match orders with external liquidity providers they have to pay too. So for the client we are talking about less spread, faster execution, less slippage because there are some lots at pretty much any price and for lmax it's more liquidity / better client experience coupled with half costs / double income.

Decent brokers don't like to put that on their page though. $1000 makes you look like the ordinary bucketshop. They obviously don't want that.
  • #1,129
  • Jun 4, 2012 5:03pm Jun 4, 2012 5:03pm
I doubt they care that they look bad about the $1000 accounts. This was always targeted to retail customers from the outset. They never pretended to be institutional or anything like that. Do you really think 1k or 10K is that much of a difference, in the eyes of a "bigger" trader?

BTW: *IF* they were a marketmaker, they would potentially earn 1x the spread. But they aren't, so they never earn any spread, only commissions. Or are you saying, they are, in reality, a marketmaker?

There are also few client orders at all in the book. All you see is LP quotes (in half/full million steps). There is very little client to client trading going on.

And they certainly dont have to pay LPs, sorry but this is ridiculous. They charge them a fee when a client order is matched against them(obviously by far less than retail clients). Read the rulebook on mtf site.
  • #1,130
  • Jun 4, 2012 5:43pm Jun 4, 2012 5:43pm
Quoting shrike
I doubt they care that they look bad about the $1000 accounts. This was always targeted to retail customers from the outset. They never pretended to be institutional or anything like that. Do you really think 1k or 10K is that much of a difference, in the eyes of a "bigger" trader?

BTW: *IF* they were a marketmaker, they would potentially earn 1x the spread. But they aren't, so they never earn any spread, only commissions. Or are you saying, they are, in reality, a marketmaker?

There are also few client orders at all in the book. All you...
If they don't care why did they change the whole policies to look more professional? There is a big difference between 1 to 10k. 1) Most credible old brokers still sit around that number. 2) Most small retailers are in the <1k range with their accounts so 10k is way above the small fish retail market. For a large trader it is peanuts of course. This is more about the psychological thing for the masses. Does it make sense? I don't know... pro and cons there. For what they are trying to achieve i think its counter productive.

They are not a marketmaker from what i have read. Taking a spread markup does not necessarily have to do anything with making the market. I wrote it a bit wrong. They don't pay of course. It's what their liquidity providers "dictate" them. A perfect inhouse match should have 0 though. Chance is you won't get 0 though. If they are indeed providing 100% true market spreads and their inner market is 100% correctly calculated based on out/inside liquidity then yes they should not earn anything on spreads.

I don't think those orderbooks are individual orders. I would guess they are aggregated. Suspicious is that they are almost always round numbers.

Everything i say can be wrong of course i don't work for lmax.
  • #1,131
  • Jun 5, 2012 12:08am Jun 5, 2012 12:08am
Yesterday I found a review about a ns_karthik's site,I checked the screen shot and I am sure that Robert talked about him. ns_karthik claimed to be an approved Deutsche Bank Asset Manager and ran a financial/real estate scam site.

http://www.forexpeacearmy.com/public.../managed_forex

Robert, London
Rating:
Date of Post:2009-11-04
Review: The website is totally false with fake live results. The account they mention online is not even live account. I got this checked by IBFX and they have told me that account number Account: 1559458 me: Karthik N S is a demo account.

They talk about using Deutsche Bank Asset Manager but dont they realise that you need to have big funds. I would stay well away as I have heard bad things about this man.

The results are fake and the profit is fake. Demo account that has probably been backtested and Karthik is looking for some poor person to test.

Please stay away. They are very rude people and the website is full of lies. Does not even have a license.
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  • #1,132
  • Jun 5, 2012 3:01am Jun 5, 2012 3:01am
Quoting shrike
I doubt they care that they look bad about the $1000 accounts.
It seems they care. Remember Dukas several years ago? They also pretended to be a kind of "hard to get broker" deposit wise. Firstly they didn't want to mess with you if you had less then 50K to deposit with them. Afterwards 50K were reduced to 10K. And now they are happy to open an account for less then 1K. I think they try to impress retail trader with this hard to get attitude and after then they "make you a favour". Which doesn't mean they are bad or something. They just try to distance themselves from a common bucketshop. Just IMHO.
  • #1,133
  • Jun 5, 2012 5:11am Jun 5, 2012 5:11am
from LMAX terms and conditions:

free access to LMAX historic market data (account type) classic: 1 month, premium: 6 months, pro: unlimited

those guys are silly..
  • #1,134
  • Edited 6:45am Jun 5, 2012 6:32am | Edited 6:45am
Quoting Black Fox
This guy has some shaddy history here on Forex Factory.
Just read first few pages of this thread:
http://www.forexfactory.com/showthread.php?t=240177
As per his first posts,he had only 6 months of experience and he knew nothing about forex leverage on Jun 5 2006...

However,this profile says that he started forex in 2003, he joined a Slovenian fund in 2005 and could help them grow from $800,000 USD to over 3 million USD...
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  • #1,135
  • Jun 5, 2012 8:13am Jun 5, 2012 8:13am
Quoting m.m.m.
from LMAX terms and conditions:

free access to LMAX historic market data (account type) classic: 1 month, premium: 6 months, pro: unlimited

those guys are silly..
History access is a bitch to maintain if you have a decent amount of clients which do a lot of api trading an such (also a reason why api access is restricted to deposit AND volume). Most broker systems are based on age old "carrier grade" oracle. Runs smooth if it runs but all in all its a POS. Not up for modern day tasks. If a lot request a lot of history data its an enormous amount of data. Just look at the dukas history interface. As soon as they allowed indicators to access the ihistory interface shit went down the hill big time. It's overloaded more than it's working. Just think about a strategy calculating indices. It will have to request historic data for like 20-30 instruments, multiple timeframes etc. Now you wanna put some emas above it so you fetch like 1000 or 2000 bars for smoothing and having at least some values worth watching multiply that by the amount of instruments and timeframes and a few thousand api users. Now if they continue at least fetching a few recent bars per baropen or tick fun really starts. You are looking at 6-7 digit amount of requests / second with a relatively small amount of users. Of course that can be easily handled with modern day databases like mongodb but 1) brokers don't use that kinda stuff 2) management stance is why invest in decent hardware if it runs "ok".

Plus: Most mini clients api stuff is either bugged, alpha quality, just testing things (overloading history access via excessive usage) etc. Clients doing api access via bigger accounts usually know what they do, don't do it out of boredom etc. Their api usage correlates with the amount of volume/trades they do so there is a reward for the broker.
  • #1,136
  • Jun 5, 2012 8:34am Jun 5, 2012 8:34am
I understand that it is a lot of data to move around.
Especially with lmax's policy to ship data only in the resolutions tick and M1 and D1.
But of what use is an API without historic data? And they do not care to state what happens after the free access expires.
And they want to charge money for (beta) API access already, lol.
So, one has to run its systems 24/365 or what?
But facts are that their web trader uses their API, so its free for everyone who uses web trader, but not if one uses it directly, lol number 1000.
And, their web trader has to get historic data every time one uses it (for free). But if you need it via API then it is different? Silly..
  • #1,137
  • Jun 5, 2012 9:04am Jun 5, 2012 9:04am
Quoting m.m.m.
I understand that it is a lot of data to move around.
Especially with lmax's policy to ship data only in the resolutions tick and M1 and D1.
But of what use is an API without historic data? And they do not care to state what happens after the free access expires.
And they want to charge money for (beta) API access already, lol.
So, one has to run its systems 24/365 or what?
But facts are that their web trader uses their API, so its free for everyone who uses web trader, but not if one uses it directly, lol number 1000.
And, their web trader...
Actually that was the norm in the past and still today with the FIX interface. It was pretty much impossible to fetch the data in realtime over the available connections / hardware anyways.

They charge you $60 a month if you are below $5k and 2.5mio or so volume.

The webtrader uses it yes but in a way that is not 1/100 as stressful as most strategies. The webtrader only fetches one symbol / one timeframe / visible bars. A strategy as i stated can easily fetch 10000x of that. Not even to talk about all the bugged self programmed strategies that go bonkers. Problem is you can't really put in speed controls since legit strategies also might need to fire rapid requests for real usage.

So what they try to do is keep the kids out with simple controls from the beginning on with the deposit / $60. One thing that is silly is the 1month/6month/unlimited access though. Double facepalm for that.
  • #1,138
  • Jun 5, 2012 9:23am Jun 5, 2012 9:23am
Quoting unknown4x
They charge you $60 a month if you are below $5k and 2.5mio or so volume.
So, you say that above these conditions both the API and the historic data can be accessed "free". Well, it's ok then. I misunderstood. Thanks.
  • #1,139
  • Jun 5, 2012 9:28am Jun 5, 2012 9:28am
Quoting m.m.m.
So, you say that above these conditions both the API and the historic data can be accessed "free". Well, it's ok then. I misunderstood. Thanks.
Yes any account gets API access but if you are below $5k and 2.5mio vol you get one month free and after that you have to pay $60 a month which is a fair deal since you had time to test it. Except for the level of history access that you get. That is just plain dumb.
  • #1,140
  • Jun 5, 2012 10:26am Jun 5, 2012 10:26am
Beside Armada, LMAX also provide MT4 platform directly (but it did not put information on their website). I have live chat with them. They sent me a link to download MT4, and said that min deposit from credit card is 1000$

We dont need Karthik for any reason. Seem he use our name to get some bonus from LMAX.

Does anyone try demo/live on MT4 platform from LMAX? Does it has any different/advantage with Armada service? Any issue with deposit/withdraw?
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