Hi Allison,
Thanks for providing these additional comments. You made several points, so I'll try to address them one by one.
Spreads widen during news announcements, because the banks quoting prices widen their spreads during this time. A broker that does not widen their spreads, when the banks do, will either have to take a loss themselves or requote their clients, when an order comes in at a price that's no longer available from the banks. FXCM avoids this potential conflict of interest by using a No Dealing Desk (NDD) forex execution model. On the NDD model, we simply pass on the best bid and ask prices we receive from 10+ liquidity providers and add a fixed pip markup for our profit which acts as a commission. We make our money from the trading volume, not client losses, so we have no reason to trigger your stops. Also, your stop and take profit levels are invisible to our liquidity providers. Even on our new dealing desk option that offers lower spreads, we use the NDD price feed as a base to derive prices and execute orders. That means there are still no requotes and no restrictions on stop and take profit orders.
In regards to your comment about your trades opening sooner than you expected, it sounds to me like you're not taking into account the difference between the bid price and the ask price when looking at the charts. By default, the charts will show you the bid price in the market. That's the price you can sell at. If you have an entry order to buy, you need to monitor the ask price to determine when your order will be triggered. The ask price is usually 1 to 2 pips above the bid price, but as you noticed during news announcements when the spread widens, the difference can be even greater. You can view the ask price on the Trading Station charts by clicking on the "A" button in the toolbar as shown below.
If you prefer using the MetaTrader platform, it might interest you to know that you can now open an FXCM MT4 account with as little as $50.
Jason
Thanks for providing these additional comments. You made several points, so I'll try to address them one by one.
Dislikedthe spreads are ridiculous when there is any sort of movement in the markets.. execution of orders is misaligned with what i actually want. i will try to put an entry order in and they put me in 5 to 10 pips earlier. i get stuck in trades i didn't even want because they raise the spread and kick in my entry. then price goes against me when i never was supposed to be in the trade..this happens consistently. i've lost a lot of money because of them spiking their spreads just to put me into a trade. they do this to micro accounts all the time. kick...Ignored
In regards to your comment about your trades opening sooner than you expected, it sounds to me like you're not taking into account the difference between the bid price and the ask price when looking at the charts. By default, the charts will show you the bid price in the market. That's the price you can sell at. If you have an entry order to buy, you need to monitor the ask price to determine when your order will be triggered. The ask price is usually 1 to 2 pips above the bid price, but as you noticed during news announcements when the spread widens, the difference can be even greater. You can view the ask price on the Trading Station charts by clicking on the "A" button in the toolbar as shown below.
http://media.dailyfx.com/sales/micro...s/bidask12.png
If you prefer using the MetaTrader platform, it might interest you to know that you can now open an FXCM MT4 account with as little as $50.
Jason
