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Looking for a decent broker?

  • #1
  • First Post: Jan 21, 2015 2:02pm Jan 21, 2015 2:02pm
Dear friends,

I'm looking for my next broker, i would appreciate any advice on such choice.

What i look for:

- A financially stable broker
- A serious one, one that you can trust
- Decent spreads
- Able to offer at least 200:1 leverage
- I don't really care if it's ECN or STP or MM or whatever, as long as it's stable, trustable and offer decent spread and good leverage.

I'm currently with fxcm, but the situation with them is deteriorating very fast, so i'm just taking in consideration the idea of switch for something more stable and serious.

Any advice is appreciated!
  • #2
  • Jan 21, 2015 2:06pm Jan 21, 2015 2:06pm
Right now my eyes are on:

-Xtb
-Fxpro
  • #3
  • Jan 21, 2015 6:19pm Jan 21, 2015 6:19pm
I'm also mainly looking at FXpro. I haven't come across any other brokers that have decent feedback that provide negative balance protection.
I don't have an account with FXPro but they seem to tick most of the boxes for me.

Features:
- negative balance protection
- forex, shares and commodities (although forex mainly)
- leverage 1:1 - 1:500
- trade through chart in fxPro web platform
- allows hedge with the same margin
- decent web platform very much like MT4
- ECN broker
- decent customer support
- regulated broker
- no charges to deposit into and out of accounts for currencies in GBP
  • #4
  • Jan 21, 2015 8:21pm Jan 21, 2015 8:21pm
Quoting rjm101
I'm also mainly looking at FXpro. I haven't come across any other brokers that have decent feedback that provide negative balance protection. I don't have an account with FXPro but they seem to tick most of the boxes for me. Features: - negative balance protection - forex, shares and commodities (although forex mainly) - leverage 1:1 - 1:500 - trade through chart in fxPro web platform - allows hedge with the same margin - decent web platform very much like MT4 - ECN broker - decent customer support - regulated broker - no charges to deposit into...
They do 1:1 leverage? Good to know, I was wondering about that. I've been trying out their platform (cTrader) and I quite like it. I'll probably still use an MT4 demo feed as it's a little easier to handle than their charts, but the depth of market, equity graph, complex TP & SL stuff all looks pretty good. Got a few lazy fills on demo, but I guess they are doing closest market fills rather than off exchange MM style fills - which is overcome by DOM anyway.
"Risk comes from not knowing what you're doing." - Warren Buffett
  • #5
  • Jan 22, 2015 12:50am Jan 22, 2015 12:50am
Ok so i played a little with both FXPRO and XTBUK, here my view:

Both are based on UK, a stable country, and both are regulated.

XTB UK:
Pro: Absolutely the best spreads, for example as i'm writing this, eurusd got 1.1 pips (no commissions), and it's the average more or less.
Other pairs too have great spreads, and so gold, oil, the stock indexes (great spread there!), not bad at all.
Pro: Leverage 1:200
Cons: No negative balance protection.

FXPro:
Pro: Negative balance protection.
Pro: Leverage 1:500
Cons: Poor spread, eurusd 1.9 while i'm writing, and overall the spread of every other currency and gold oil and stock indexes are way worse than xtb.

So.. i'm naturally inclined to opt for xtb, however there is more.

Activtrades (uk)!

Pro: Uk based broker, regulated, insured etc.
Pro: Long time broker, serious and trustable.
Pro: 1:400 leverage
Pro: Best spreads i've ever seen, eurusd right now 0.8pips (no commissions), overall every currency pair have the best spreads i've ever seen, and also in oil gold stock indexes etc.
Pro: Negative balance protection (? i'm not 100% sure about this yet)

So.. i think this activtrades looks pretty good, anybody have some experience with them?
  • #6
  • Jan 22, 2015 9:41am Jan 22, 2015 9:41am
Quoting spaceduck
Activtrades (uk)! Pro: Uk based broker, regulated, insured etc. Pro: Long time broker, serious and trustable. Pro: 1:400 leverage Pro: Best spreads i've ever seen, eurusd right now 0.8pips (no commissions), overall every currency pair have the best spreads i've ever seen, and also in oil gold stock indexes etc. Pro: Negative balance protection (? i'm not 100% sure about this yet) So.. i think this activtrades looks pretty good, anybody have some experience with them?
They seem to support negative balance protection but I would check the legal docs to make sure.
http://www.activtrades.co.uk/index.a...e=faq#negative

I'm only looking at brokers with negative balance protection as it will help me sleep at night. Stop losses wont help much with events like last weeks SNB CHF.
  • #7
  • Jan 22, 2015 10:09am Jan 22, 2015 10:09am
Yeah they do, its in the customer agreement PDF

http://cdn.activtrades.com/documents..._agreement.pdf

Section 34. Negative Protection
  • #8
  • Jan 22, 2015 11:12am Jan 22, 2015 11:12am
is there any broker that does guaranteed stop-loss protection?
  • #9
  • Jan 22, 2015 11:14am Jan 22, 2015 11:14am
Quoting rjm101
{quote} They seem to support negative balance protection but I would check the legal docs to make sure. http://www.activtrades.co.uk/index.a...e=faq#negative I'm only looking at brokers with negative balance protection as it will help me sleep at night. Stop losses wont help much with events like last weeks SNB CHF.
It really looks good, great spreads, negative balance protection, high leverage.

Of course nothing always is 100% cool, so the negative side on this broker is that it is not ECN/STP, basically when you make money they loose money.

Now, if you trade for make money, i guess this can become a problem (? just guessing), so i'm not yet 100% sure of joining them.

I will think about it though
  • #10
  • Jan 22, 2015 11:16am Jan 22, 2015 11:16am
Quoting stoplossmatt
is there any broker that does guaranteed stop-loss protection?
ETX captial do it and I think IG do as well. It will cost you £10 per trade with ETX. I emailed them to understand exactly how guaranteed it is but they've not bothered to get back to me. This was 4 days ago.
  • #11
  • Jan 22, 2015 11:30am Jan 22, 2015 11:30am
I am in the same position and trying to find a new UK regulated broker. Most seem to be MM spread betting brokers and very few ECN brokers.

Narrowed it down to FxPro and Vantage FX UK. Both have been around a while and seem legit STP/ECN. Vantage has a "Raw" account plus commission but not sure on the spreads.

Edit: It says of FPA that Vantage canceled trades of alot of clients due to an EA they were using that took advantage of price delays.
  • #12
  • Jan 23, 2015 2:15am Jan 23, 2015 2:15am
Really difficult now...

Seems the things are clearing out, but maybe we will see 1 or 2 brokers going bust still.

I think I will wait for some time, like 1 or 2 weeks and then go on to open real account. For now its just research and demo playing.

But still my eyes are on FxPro for now. Any cons for them? They seem to be good.
  • #13
  • Jan 23, 2015 3:44pm Jan 23, 2015 3:44pm
I'm still looking, ActivTrades has a bunch of bad reviews relating to poor execution times.

As someone whos only just started to look into forex I find the reviews of forex brokers hugely contrasting. The majority reporting X broker to be a scam whilst the other 50% claim broker X to be decent.
  • #14
  • Jan 23, 2015 4:07pm Jan 23, 2015 4:07pm
Quoting spaceduck
Dear friends, I'm looking for my next broker,.........
Infinity Futures is great.
Without VSA, you're playing checkers while the Smart Money plays chess.
  • #15
  • Jan 23, 2015 4:39pm Jan 23, 2015 4:39pm
Quoting rjm101
I'm still looking, ActivTrades has a bunch of bad reviews relating to poor execution times. As someone whos only just started to look into forex I find the reviews of forex brokers hugely contrasting. The majority reporting X broker to be a scam whilst the other 50% claim broker X to be decent.


I would say

Oanda - is not perfect but by far the best in my thinking
- the only bad thing is there spread over news or weekends can be crazy


teb63
  • #16
  • Jan 23, 2015 5:08pm Jan 23, 2015 5:08pm
Quoting TEB63
{quote} I would say Oanda - is not perfect but by far the best in my thinking - the only bad thing is there spread over news or weekends can be crazy teb63
Oanda is a perfectly good example, see here...
http://www.forexrealm.com/brokers-re...oanda/#reviews
  • #17
  • Last Post: Jan 24, 2015 1:03am Jan 24, 2015 1:03am
Quoting TEB63
{quote} I would say Oanda - is not perfect but by far the best in my thinking - the only bad thing is there spread over news or weekends can be crazy teb63
Mmm, Oanda really doesn't make sense, first of all is an MM, so you cannot make profits on the longterm (as your profits are their losses, the relationship would become a little bit weird after a while).
Secondly, have 50x leverage, that is what i'm running away from.

Activtrades also i've read that they are implementing (not sure about this, i may be wrong, just rumors) 50x leverage same as fxcm, so i forget about them too.

I mean, the only reason why i want to run away from fxcm is their new margin requirements, apart from that, fxcm remain the best fx broker for me.

Anyway, HiddenGap suggested Infinity Futures, that is very interesting i never heard of that before, i will look into it, thank you!

And thank you teb63 too!

I must say right in this moment the winner is xtbUK, they also offer shares of the UK,US,IT,ES,PL stock exchanges (around 400 instruments in total), so a vast selection of markets, the majority with tradable spreads, but not really interesting for me (i continue to prefer the 24h/24 fx market), anyway just shared here in this post.
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