FXSCALPER2 said:
I couldn't sleep last night so I decided to do my 'books'. I had lots of trades to account for. Boy, am I getting lazy or not! Anyway, It took me ages to sort all the cost of trading. What I found was amazing.
There is too much rubbish about 'deal desk' brokers these days. The direct access guys don't have to try hard because most traders lose and then blame the broker. It is a sight to behold, really. You can see all the losers going, 'it is not my fault after all'. Guys, it is your fault because, based on my experience trading with EFX, for example, can be very dangerous. Loo at the following facts
1- With my CMC account my stops and limits are always (I mean always, for years) excuted at the exact price I wanted. Market orders are either rejected or excuted at the price you want
2- With EFX, I have slippage on 63% my TTOs, trails, stops and limits
3- The spread on EFX can be very tight but you pay commission on every winner as well as loser. Many times, you will have a losing trade which slips a couple of pips, plus you pay commission
4- CMC's (and CS's) feeds are most of the time a reflection of what you see on EFX (plus spread) and they will be creamed by people like me if they moved the price by much to take out your stops
I will still scalp with EFX, but it is a nice myth for them to tell us they are better all round. The fact is: THEY DEFINITELY ARE NOT.
Hi Fxscalper,
I would be curious to see what type of trading that you are doing (news trading?) that you claim to get slipped 63%. Let me run through a few points.
1) “Market orders are either rejected or executed at the price you want” (with another broker). How can a market order by rejected? In other words, in a true market, when someone wants to buy at the market, they are expecting to be in. Personally, I don’t use market orders during wild times, but the definition of placing a market order is that you just want in. What you are suggesting is that you place an order through another broker, and if they CHOOSE not to fill you at what the offer was at the time you hit enter, you don’t get filled at all (or potentially get requoted). That would not be useful to most of our traders, who expect that if they place a market order, they get filled, even if it means 1, 2, or 5 (in a fast market) pips higher than where the price was at the split-second that they clicked the button. The whole point of a non-deal-desk platform is that you want execution, not requoting and rejection.
2) It is possible that you have the Price v. Speed setting on your account (go into Properties in the Navigator) set to Speed. It is a 1 to 10 sliding scale. If you have it set to Speed, then here is what happens. We get faster executions for your order (basically instantaneous) from ECN trading between clients. In other words, if there is a customer order on the server to sell and you are buying, that fill is literally as instantaneous as you can get. If your order routes to a bank, it takes the extra split second of hitting them and having to get a confirmation from them. If they are already hit, then the system hits the next bank (could be at the same price, could be the next price). Now, if you have your Price v. Speed settings closer to “Full Speed,” the system’s algorithms determine the activity of the market at the time and then look at what is available at the price that you are trying to get. Let me give an example. If the system determines that the market is heading up, even just at a reasonable pace, and if you have the slider set to speed, then it looks at the orders. Let’s say you are buying the EURUSD and the quotes is 1.2495 by 1.2496. However, let’s say that there is only 200 minis left at 1.2496 from the banks to sell, but we have customers looking to sell at 1.2497. The system in that case might determine that because you have a high speed setting, it should go straight to 1.2497 where we can get the size from the other customer, which is instantaneous, versus risking trying to hit the banks at 1.2496 and missing and then potentially not having the size at 1.2497 because someone else hit it, all of which can happen inside of a fraction of a second based on the volume on our system. The reason that our execution technology won Barron’s Best for 2006 is because we have these complex algorithms that were already in place from the stock side that can handle the logic. It basically says “how fast is this market moving right now, and what are the client’s expectations (based on price versus speed setting) for wanting to get filled?” If the client is all about getting the execution and not about getting the exact best price, then that is what the system does. So in that case, you might consider that 1 pip of slippage, but in reality, the system is doing what it is supposed to do. If you want it to always try to be slow and methodical about getting the exact bid or offer, then move the Price vs. Speed slider to Price.
3) You state that you had slippage on 63% of “TTOs, trails, stops, and limits.” This is an interesting comment. Let me elaborate. TTOs are “touch prices.” In other words, if you are long the EURUSD at 1.2500 and you put a TTO with an upper trigger of 1.2525 and a lower trigger of 1.2475, then if either price is touched (NOT if the bid gets to that price), then your order triggers a sell at the market. These are designed for people that want out when the market generally gets to a price. So the concept of “slippage” doesn’t apply to TTO. Second, trails. You can get slipped on a trail. Keep in mind that other platforms do not offer a true trail like we do. It literally moves pip for pip with the market based on your orders and turns into a market order if you stop is hit. Third, stops. Stop orders by definition can get slipped, although it typically only occurs in a fast market or as a reaction to your price versus speed settings. You can also prevent slippage completely on stops by using stop-limit orders, but then you risk not getting filled. Smart traders use Stop-limits for entry, because they don’t want any or much slippage, but they use regular stops for exit because they just want out. Finally, limits. You can’t get a worse price than your limit, so slippage cannot occur.
4) Guaranteed fills. I think that it is fairly well documented on the Internet that there are no platforms that “always” execute at the exact price you had orders in. Two points here. First, your sentence seems to be a contradiction. You said that you always got filled (on the other platform) and then you said that market orders are either executed or “rejected.” How can they be rejected if you are always executed? Second, and I don’t mention other platforms by name, but there are platforms that claim to fill under any circumstances, but now take their “fixed” quotes wide for news, which defeats the purpose. In reality, many platforms will basically fill stop and limit orders up to a certain size that floats under their radar (say, 20 minis). But talk to a guy running 50 or 100 or 500 in a trade, and there is no such thing as a platform that would guarantee the fill. Just think about it. The market shoots 50 pips in a blip, and they are supposed to fill a guy 5 pips into that move for 500 lots when they couldn’t get it themselves? They’re going to lose $22,500 just on that guy’s one trade? I don’t think so.
5) Here is the final piece, to me. Let’s take a fixed spread system that has a GBPUSD quote of 1.8550 by 1.8554. You are long, and you have an order in place to sell at 1.8553. By definition, you won’t fill until the platform decides to move their quote to 1.8553 by 1.8557. Meanwhile, at that point, they could have easily sold at 1.8554, 1.8555, or 1.8556, so they then have no risk to move their price up and buy yours at 1.8553. If they didn’t sell it to a customer who bought higher, they probably didn’t move their bid up until the true market price from the direct bank feed that they use was higher. In other words, they could actually get their quote to 1.8552 by 1.8556 and be selling the GBPUSD to their customers at 1.8556, but you still aren’t out at 1.8553. If the market then heads down, you didn’t get a fill at all. Meanwhile, on our system, if you have a sell at 1.8553, no one can transact business at 1.8554 until you are out. This means that in every case like that, you are either saving money, getting an execution ahead of where you would on a fixed spread system, and/or getting a better fill than you ever could on a fixed spread system. That alone is the reason, in my opinion, why direct access platforms are getting the attention over the old-school deal desks. Are there cases where your price plus commission is the same net to you as trading on a fixed spread system? Sure. Of course. But overall, the executions are far more efficient and should net you out better pricing, especially if you learn how to use the orders types and set the price vs. speed setting to a level that suits the style of trading that you have.
Hope this helps.
. I am prepared to bet that 95% of the time you would get filled at 53 in the case you describe whether using your platform or the others.
