Best US Broker

Hello Traders,

I have been trading forex for a while and have mostly used one broker. That broker is FXCM. However, with recent happenings, I'm going to investigate other brokers. Can any of you give me a review on brokers within the US that you have used? FXCM has one of the best platforms which is why I'm hesitant to leave. Finding a broker is the hardest part of trading forex. Any opinions would be greatly appreciated. Im sure other traders would love to hear you opinion as well.

Important Factors
No Dealing Desk
Trading Platform (Very important to have good software. Not MT4)
Low Spreads
Low Slippage
Wouldn't hurt to be able to trade equities from the same broker

Brokers I'm Investigating Currently
Interactive Brokers
MB Trading
CitiFX
Etrade Forex (I think this is FXCM though)
Oanda

I have been using MB Trading for a year and a half now and have done well. Never experienced any thing that seemed shady or anything. Execution is fast, my ping to their server is only about 16 ms average which is good.

I use their MB Desktop Pro, but also have a demo of their cTrader to mark up charts differently. cTrader is a pretty cool platform.

Their spreads are pretty good, but I have been considering opening another account at Interactive Brokers for scalping, because their spreads are so good. I have compared certain times where IB spread on say GBP/USD was .1 or .2 and on MB Trading it was like 3 or 3.2. Even factoring in the commission of 2 per side minimum on IB, that is a way better deal. Plus you end up at a better starting price with such a small spread.

Every quarter the FX Brokers in the US have to show their account numbers, profitability % that quarter, etc. IB tends to always be in the top 1 - 3 spots every quarter. One explanation is the 10k minimum account size which filters out people that don't know what they're doing with hardly any money. But another reason is that the razor thin spreads are an edge over people with spreads far wider. Being able to trade multiple products through IB also seems like a big positive over other pure FX Brokers, if you are interested in doing more with one account/broker. The fact that they have such a global offering is extremely appealing to me and I would think other serious FX traders, since we already follow global news, why not profit in other global asset classes.

I tend to agree with you on the 10k minimum. I think it kinda weeds out the newbies. For someone to commit 10k to an account means they are probably committed. The one thing I dislike about IB is their platform. It's awful and confusing. They support NinjaTrader and just about anything else as long as you could get it connected. The only drawback to using NinjaTrader is you have to pay extra for quotes.

I've been using Interactive Brokers for several years without any problems. Their trading platform is poor so I use Ninjatrader connected to IB but you only need this if you're a scalper. You can trade most markets(futures, forex, equities, options) with them. Commissions on equities are pretty hard to beat. Most equity(& equity options) trades are around $1-$1.50 per trade. Futures around $4/round turn.
If you want "tick" data (needed for tick, renko, range charts) then you need to pay about $50/month for the data but if just using minute charts the data from IB is good enough. That data costs $10/month but is free if you do a certain amount($30 commissions I think) of transactions a month.

Since you use NinjaTrader, how much extra are you paying for this platform? Do you pay extra for certain data like level two quotes etc.?

I paid $995 for a lifetime license for Ninjatrader but they do lease it for $50/month. They also have a "FREE" version but haven't tried it.

If you want "tick" data (needed for tick, renko, range charts) then you need to pay about $50/month for the data but if just using minute charts the data from IB is good enough. That data costs $10/month but is free if you do a certain amount($30 commissions I think) of transactions a month.