Questions to ask broker to determine if they are ECN?

[wintergasp]

Hi,

There may well be a thread on this already but I didn't see it.

I was wondering what questions I should asking brokers to determine whether they are genuinely ECN brokers or not?

So many seem to say they are ECN brokers, but it's becoming increasingly difficult to confirm which genuinely are and which aren't.

Thanks!

Rom21,

I have been working as a market maker in FX for many years using complex algorithms in a multi-venue environment. I have also been working as an HFT quant on the futures market and started my career in hedge funds over 9 years ago so I hope that my experience can be of your help.

The truth is that it all comes down to the account size that you have. On average a broker (such as FXCM ) spends 1,000$ in marketing to get a new client. If you were to trade 100 lots and close your accounts, they'd make what... 200$ ? 300$ ?

The 1k$ cost of marketing doesn't even cover office or other overheads it's pure marketing.

Now let's imagine that the broker doesn't execute you. The average account size at FXCM (last time I checked a few years ago) was around 4,500 $. Using the 90% rule, i.e. 90% of the clients lose 90% of their money within 90 days, you can quickly see how trading against the client is more profitable and how being a pure ECN makes no money.

The few guys who give you a real direct access, like FXCM 'no dealing desk' just sell your flow to institutional clients so you end up getting ripped off in the "best bid" and "best offer" that you see + you'll get slipped.

FXCM used to sell their flow to market makers as retail flow only (e.g. only clients from FXCM) which was very appealing, we would basically buy the directinon of the market this way.

The only way you'll make money in FX is if you have a proper setup with a primer broker that will charge you 100k£ / year in minimum fees, servers colocated in NY4 and LD4 near the price matching engine, and deal directly with venues such as Currenex, FastMatch, Integral, FXAll, etc. Those are the venues where brokers such as FXCM get their pricing.

Indeed, when a broker says they work with 17 or 20 big banks, they don't work directly with 20 big banks, they work with Currenex (think of it as an Exchange for big players) and it just happens that 20 big banks give price to Currenex.

I would advise you to trade Futures where the market is centralized and everyone see 1 price from the exchange. As of today, you still cannot find a single hedge fund that has consistenly made money in FX over 5 years without being a market marker or a high frequency trader in some ways.

Regards

PS: To be fair with FXCM, you could try their Pro platform: http://www.fxcmpro.com/ but I doubt you'll open an account for less than 5k£ / months minimum fees.

 

[forker]

Why would a hedge fund dive into forex. There are few instruments which doesn't make a well diversified portfolio. Added to this there is the central bank risk and I would think there would be less arbitrage opportunities due to high liquity. I would be interested in seeing some of their HFT strategies.

 

[wintergasp]

Why would a hedge fund dive into forex. There are few instruments which doesn't make a well diversified portfolio. Added to this there is the central bank risk and I would think there would be less arbitrage opportunities due to high liquity. I would be interested in seeing some of their HFT strategies.

Arbitrage is not connected to liquidity at all, rather to whether a market is fragmented or not.

There are a lot of hedge funds that do HFT and even long term macro trades on FX...

 

[moka2]

Rom21,

I have been working as a market maker in FX for many years using complex algorithms in a multi-venue environment. I have also been working as an HFT quant on the futures market and started my career in hedge funds over 9 years ago so I hope that my experience can be of your help.

The truth is that it all comes down to the account size that you have. On average a broker (such as FXCM ) spends 1,000$ in marketing to get a new client. If you were to trade 100 lots and close your accounts, they'd make what... 200$ ? 300$ ?

The 1k$ cost of marketing doesn't even cover office or other overheads it's pure marketing.

Now let's imagine that the broker doesn't execute you. The average account size at FXCM (last time I checked a few years ago) was around 4,500 $. Using the 90% rule, i.e. 90% of the clients lose 90% of their money within 90 days, you can quickly see how trading against the client is more profitable and how being a pure ECN makes no money.

The few guys who give you a real direct access, like FXCM 'no dealing desk' just sell your flow to institutional clients so you end up getting ripped off in the "best bid" and "best offer" that you see + you'll get slipped.

FXCM used to sell their flow to market makers as retail flow only (e.g. only clients from FXCM) which was very appealing, we would basically buy the directinon of the market this way.

The only way you'll make money in FX is if you have a proper setup with a primer broker that will charge you 100k£ / year in minimum fees, servers colocated in NY4 and LD4 near the price matching engine, and deal directly with venues such as Currenex, FastMatch, Integral, FXAll, etc. Those are the venues where brokers such as FXCM get their pricing.

Indeed, when a broker says they work with 17 or 20 big banks, they don't work directly with 20 big banks, they work with Currenex (think of it as an Exchange for big players) and it just happens that 20 big banks give price to Currenex.

I would advise you to trade Futures where the market is centralized and everyone see 1 price from the exchange. As of today, you still cannot find a single hedge fund that has consistenly made money in FX over 5 years without being a market marker or a high frequency trader in some ways.

Regards

PS: To be fair with FXCM, you could try their Pro platform: http://www.fxcmpro.com/ but I doubt you'll open an account for less than 5k£ / months minimum fees.

Could not agree more with you on "I would advise you to trade Futures where the market is centralized and everyone see 1 price from the exchange.

It seems you are more knowledgeable in this industry and I urge you to elaborate in simple terms why Central exchange traded instruments are better than OTC fx there is a separate discussion going on with the FXCM rep

 

[forker]

Arbitrage is not connected to liquidity at all, rather to whether a market is fragmented or not.

There are a lot of hedge funds that do HFT and even long term macro trades on FX...

Isn't arbitrage buying and selling of securities in different markets to take advantage of different prices for the same asset. Doesn't liquidity have a relationship on the pricing on bids and offers as well as the spread.

 

[wintergasp]

Isn't arbitrage buying and selling of securities in different markets to take advantage of different prices for the same asset. Doesn't liquidity have a relationship on the pricing on bids and offers as well as the spread.

You can have a 10,000 contracts bid on 1 venue and a 200 contract bid on another venue that's arbitrageable, just like you could have 10 contracts and 2 contracts, so the liquidity (10k contracts is more liquid than 10 contracts) doesn't necessarily give you a hint at whether there are arbitrages to do.

The "arbitrageability" of a market is only defined as whether it's centralized or not.

If you deal with options that are not very liquid (e.g. a put option on Soybean Meal at 3 standard deviation of the market price), you may find 1-2 bids on the exchange. So you will talk to dealers in the pit (yeap, there are still dealers in the pit for options and especially on stuff like Soybean or Wheat), and you can talk to 15 market makers who will each give you a different price. The odds are you can sometimes arbitrage quotes between different market makers (e.g. buy from one and sell to the other).

However, in most cases, there's a gentlmen agreement that says you won't do it. Otherwise dealers figure it out and stop working with you. So the arbitrage game is actually not that easy.

Virtu Financials makes a lot of money arbitraging but that's because they were the first ones to do it. And nobody wants to hit their bids / offers anymore (except maybe retail flow from retail brokers).

Today I'd say there is more of a compliance / regulation arbitrage. There are so many dumb regulations. For example there's a volker rule that says that if you have a large order to manage for a client, you are obliged to unload some of it ASAP through bids from market makers. So Virtu tells you they want to buy 50m$ from you at a better price than the market and you HAVE to accept, because it's a better price than the market....

Virtu lose money on the 50m$. However, Virtu knows that, if you accept their offer, it's because you have a 2bn$ or 5bn$ stack to unload, so they'll sell 100m$ quicker than you (the bank) and hence arbitrage you. They'd be net short 50m$ and know that you still have to sell 4.95$ bn of it. This is more of a "we buy the direction of the client" kind of arbitrage than actual price mismatch.

 

[Jason Rogers]

I have been working as a market maker in FX for many years using complex algorithms in a multi-venue environment. I have also been working as an HFT quant on the futures market and started my career in hedge funds over 9 years ago so I hope that my experience can be of your help.

It seems you are more knowledgeable in this industry and I urge you to elaborate in simple terms why Central exchange traded instruments are better than OTC fx there is a separate discussion going on with the FXCM rep

The truth is that it all comes down to the account size that you have. On average a broker (such as FXCM ) spends 1,000$ in marketing to get a new client. If you were to trade 100 lots and close your accounts, they'd make what... 200$ ? 300$ ?

The 1k$ cost of marketing doesn't even cover office or other overheads it's pure marketing.

Now let's imagine that the broker doesn't execute you. The average account size at FXCM (last time I checked a few years ago) was around 4,500 $. Using the 90% rule, i.e. 90% of the clients lose 90% of their money within 90 days, you can quickly see how trading against the client is more profitable and how being a pure ECN makes no money.

Welcome to the forum, Wintergasp

Something to keep in mind is how marketing costs vary by broker and by region, and can be as low as $100 per account depending on the country. Countries with higher marketing expenses also tend to be the ones with higher account sizes resulting in more trading volume per client on average.

Also, you refer to a 90% rule when it comes to traders. Here’s a 90% rule to keep in mind when it comes to brokers: Roughly 90% of commissions are earned by a broker come from the top 10% of clients, those who tend to trade the biggest size and who also tend to continue trading their accounts for much longer than average. Incidentally, the average account life is around 1.5 years not 90 days.

Furthermore, the comparison I’ve drawn between the pricing for FX futures and FXCM’s No Dealing Desk (NDD) forex execution model specifically refers to our Standard and Active Trader accounts types which have account opening minimums of 5k and 25k respectively.

I would advise you to trade Futures where the market is centralized and everyone see 1 price from the exchange. As of today, you still cannot find a single hedge fund that has consistenly made money in FX over 5 years without being a market marker or a high frequency trader in some ways.

In regards to the pricing advantage I highlighted for retail FX traders going through FXCM, I believe your comments about your own trading prove a point I made in an earlier post. You say you don’t know of a single hedge fund that has been profitable in the FX market over 5 years without being a market maker or employing a high frequency trading strategy such as your own firm is doing. These market makers and HFT firms such as your own go to great expense to maintain a speed advantage over other market participants.

Virtu, one of the top market makers in the financial markets, spent $68 million last year (according to their 10k) on communication and data processing which includes co-location and connectivity to data centers and exchanges, market data, etc. Even spending £100k / year as you mentioned would still mean you’re vastly outmatched against the top market makers on exchange. Retail FX traders cannot hope to match the technology budgets of institutional trading firms like yours or Virtu. Therefore, a key advantage FXCM provides to retail traders is that HFTs and banks can only act as price makers, not price takers on our NDD model. This model also presents advantages to the banks and HFTs that are liquidity providers on it:

As you can see, the profile of participants trading behavior at the institutional level is significantly different than the profile of participants at the retail level and therein lies the key to creating the trading environment for our liquidity providers to give better pricing to retail clients. On FXCM's platform, the liquidity providers do not have to constantly watch their back, worrying about predatory high frequency trading because the liquidity providers are only allowed to be price makers for our Retail Clients. They know that liquidity provider A (who may be a predatory liquidity provider on the futures or institutional market) is not allowed to cross over and take a price from liquidity provider B. Each liquidity provider is only allowed to take orders from Retail Clients. This creates a trading environment for liquidity providers to offer tighter pricing without fear of being picked off by another liquidity provider’s high speed trading algorithm.

I would recommend that you take a look at the study and FAQ linked above as we go into a lot more detail about the study results and market dynamics. :smart:

This is a key reason why the execution study showed that forex traders received pricing on FXCM's NDD model that was equal to or better than futures 81.34% of the time: http://www.trade2win.com/boards/for...oker-determine-if-they-ecn-4.html#post2815998

The few guys who give you a real direct access, like FXCM 'no dealing desk' just sell your flow to institutional clients so you end up getting ripped off in the "best bid" and "best offer" that you see + you'll get slipped.

The results of the execution study prove this to be incorrect. In fact, on-exchange slippage is not factored into the study. The comparison of each order in this study was based on the price of the executed FXCM order versus the best quoted price from the CME. For that reason, this methodology heavily favors the CME since it assumes no slippage on their part.

Again, this study is not to suggest that FXCM is better than any one venue. To their credit, institutional venues such as the CME, Reuters and EBS provide a valued service in the FX industry and are excellent trading venues. Our liquidity providers require this to trade otherwise they would not be able to make markets for FXCM’s retail clients or their own clients. The transparency of pricing and market data on the CME sets a standard for global trading which many FX market participants look to as a benchmark.

This study is meant to show how different customer segments are better suited for different venues. While institutional clients are best suited to compete with each other at the large venues like the futures market, we believe that retail clients are better suited for our trading environment as detailed in my previous posts: http://www.trade2win.com/boards/for...oker-determine-if-they-ecn-4.html#post2813550

 

[moka2]

There seems to be a hint of a theory that somehow for retail trader exchanges are cornered by HFT and institutions and because of that it is not good for retail traders and they are are better off with OTC FX! this is scaremongering
Retails traders do trade currency futures. Currency ETF specially in case of Currency futures
There are 10000 contracts available and 1:20 leverage and with exchange transparency! CME and others do also provide "valued service" to retail clients. so on key points there is lot of merit on Exchange traded products which the OTC "broker" won;t highlight , in all these discussion all these advantages are ignored
- Ability to hedge
- Global transparency
- all contracts noveted by the central clearing exchange
- cross hedging with options
- ability to do spreads
- Currency ETFs like FXA/FXB etc and options on them
- ABSOLUTE no conflict of interest with trader/ investor
- Some brokers are covered under SIPC even if the CFTC does not have such insurance
- High end trading platforms such as CQG/TT/ RT

against OTC FX
- No central clearing each brokers is a "island" , broker and venue is same
- Possibility of Conflict of interest
- NDD/ STP/ ECn hard to prove can fail
- Low barrier of entry in many countries
- NO ability to hedge/ spread trade
- Lot of dodgy practices due to existence of MM model!
- Ability to have a MM model in first place
- Limited globally popular trading platforms
- Crazy leverage 1:200/ 1:500 in some countries ( business model is based upon most failing due to large leverage)
- Turnover looks big becasue of crazy leverage

 

[Jason Rogers]

There seems to be a hint of a theory that somehow for retail trader exchanges are cornered by HFT and institutions and because of that it is not good for retail traders and they are are better off with OTC FX! this is scaremongering
Retails traders do trade currency futures.

Hi Moka,

My goal isn't to scare anyone, simply to point out 1) the characteristics of an institutional market maker and 2) how market makers can operate on exchange vs. with FXCM. These points explain why FXCM is able to offer a better price at which the client’s order is executed versus the quoted price on the futures market as shown in our recent execution study: http://www.trade2win.com/boards/for...oker-determine-if-they-ecn-4.html#post2813550

Specifically, FXCM LTD was equal to or better than the quoted futures price 81% of the time compared to the spot equivalent quoted futures prices on the CME leading to potential savings of $42,529,156 for FXCM LTD clients.

Currency ETF specially in case of Currency futures
There are 10000 contracts available and 1:20 leverage and with exchange transparency!

Since we are discussing what FX futures offer retail traders compared to FXCM's No Dealing Desk (NDD) forex execution, it's important to keep in mind the vast disparity in trading volume for FX contracts of different sizes.

The following table found in the execution study FAQ (Question #36) displays the average daily notional trading volume for the E‐micro (M6E), Emini (E7), and Euro FX Futures (6E) contract from December 24, 2015 to January 26, 2016.

Average daily notional E‐micro trading volume makes up a mere 1.1% of total EUR/USD futures volume and E‐mini trading volume makes up only 1.4% of total EUR/USD futures volume. There is relatively very little participation in the E‐micro and E‐mini contracts (where it would be expected that most Retail Clients would participate) compared to the standard FX futures contract.

This is particularly relevant to retail traders when you consider that the E-micro and E-mini contracts are not fungible with each other or with the standard Euro FX futures contract. That means, if you trade E-micros, you are limited to the E-micro contract pool of liquidity to offset your contracts (similarly, E-mini traders are limited to the E-mini contract liquidity pool), which you can see is considerably smaller than what is available for the standard Euro FX futures contract.

It's also worth keeping in mind that the E-micro contract size (12,500 currency units) is still over 10 times larger than the micro lot (1000 currency units or 1K) minimum trade size FXCM offers to retail traders with NDD execution. Furthermore, on our NDD model, liquidity providers offer a minimum liquidity of 1M (one million currency units) when they’re quoting, and our retail client benefit from that large liquidity pool to have their orders offset with NDD execution whether they are trading 1K, 10K, 100K or greater and any derivation thereof such as 156K.

CME and others do also provide "valued service" to retail clients. so on key points there is lot of merit on Exchange traded products which the OTC "broker" won;t highlight , in all these discussion all these advantages are ignored

No one is denying the value of institutional venues such as the CME. As I have said in my previous posts, our liquidity providers require them to trade otherwise they would not be able to make markets for FXCM’s retail clients or their own clients. That said, it's worth considering how different customer segments may be better suited for different venues.

After all, if the CME was such an appealing venue for retail traders to execute their own FX trades, you would expect to see more volume in the E-micro and E-mini contracts relative to the standard FX futures contracts, but the volume data show otherwise. In fact, the CME recently delisted some E-micro FX contracts due to the lack of interest: http://www.financemagnates.com/inst...certain-fx-contracts-amid-zero-open-interest/

Why would the CME delist their E-micro FX contracts if they were popular with retail traders?

 

[moka2]

'Why do you keep referring to CME as " Institutional venue" as if it is not for retail traders.... like thousands of OTC FX "brokers" there are hundreds of IBs for few FCMs and Retail clients can and do trade so stop all this BS about OTC is retail friendly and exchanges are not
Only reason for OTC fx to show such big volume is because ( but you wil never accept it)
- Crazy leverage
- Sleek marketing
- Low barrier of entry
again you are cherry picking to show the volume you combine all OTC Fx including all the other dirty rotten OTC Fx for tin pot countries along with more reputabel one like FXCM and Oanda etc, but then you should discount that volume by the millions lost by small players with $500 account
Cmon you are sounding more like a BInary Options salesperson day be day!
why don;t you answer each point I raised in previous post!

 

[Jason Rogers]

'Why do you keep referring to CME as " Institutional venue" as if it is not for retail traders.

Hi Moka,

The execution study shows that while institutional clients are better suited to compete with each other at the venues like CME, EBS and Reuters, retail clients* are better suited for our trading environment (FXCM's NDD model) where liquidity providers are able to offer lower pricing^ for the reasons I mentioned previously http://www.trade2win.com/boards/for...oker-determine-if-they-ecn-4.html#post2813550

... like thousands of OTC FX "brokers" there are hundreds of IBs for few FCMs and Retail clients can and do trade so stop all this BS about OTC is retail friendly and exchanges are not

Then why is the volume for E-micro and E-mini FX contracts so low compared to Standard FX futures contracts? (And why would orders with FXCM get better pricing than at futures or institutional venues?)

And keep in mind, E-mini and E-micro contracts cannot be offset with standard futures contracts, so retail traders using them are limited to a much smaller pool with which to offset their trades.

Only reason for OTC fx to show such big volume is because ( but you wil never accept it)
- Crazy leverage

I won't speak for other forex brokers but FXCM limits the leverage on our NDD model to 100:1 which is the same leverage the CME uses for FX futures.

Sleek marketing

Regardless of marketing, I would say there has never been more transparency to compare the pros and cons of FX futures vs OTC spot FX for retail traders to make an educated decision. And the great thing about this is that traders are able to vote for their preferred trading venue with their trading accounts. If futures were everything you make it out to be, then there would be an overwhelming bias by retail traders to go with futures.

We understand the burden of proof is on us, which is why we released the execution study to display exactly how our pricing compares.

Execution pricing is an important factor in any decision. Who wants to overpay? But it's just one of many such as customer support, platform costs, data costs, demo/simulation accounts, regulatory oversight, etc. which go way beyond marketing in a trader's decision making.

Low barrier of entry

This simply proves my point of how FXCM provides retail traders with an excellent solution for trading forex with NDD execution on trades as small as one micro lot (1000 currency units, not to be confused with E-micro FX futures contracts which are more than ten times larger in size).

Furthermore, as I pointed out in an earlier post, US forex brokers like FXCM have to put up at least $20 million in capital while the minimum for futures brokers is only $1 million.

again you are cherry picking to show the volume you combine all OTC Fx including all the other dirty rotten OTC Fx for tin pot countries along with more reputabel one like FXCM and Oanda etc, but then you should discount that volume by the millions lost by small players with $500 account

I mentioned previously that the latest industry report for Q2 of 2016 by Finance Magnates shows daily retail forex volume to be $335 billion (to say nothing of the over $5 trillion per day traded in OTC spot FX overall according to the latest BIS survey). It's worth noting that even if you choose to exclude the trading volume of smaller brokers, the same report shows the combined daily retail forex volume of the 20 largest forex brokers in the world is still greater than the $210 billion per day volume in FX futures across all futures brokers.


_________________________________________________

* FXCM's retail clients are defined as individual, joint and corporate accounts trading on our retail price stream.

^ Fees that a participant would pay on the Futures market, such as CME Exchange Fees, NFA Fees, FCM Fees, Clearing Fees and other commissions, were excluded from this study. Similarly, FXCM Commisions were excluded from this study.

 

[BigJayJay]

Nice thorough reply by FXCM. They have had a bad rep over the years but I've used them on and off and have never had any problems. Good for US traders too

 

[moka2]

Nice thorough reply by FXCM. They have had a bad rep over the years but I've used them on and off and have never had any problems. Good for US traders too

A broker with enough liquidity on both sides almost become a True Exchange.. and that then is a fair place to trade ...agree.. and hope big brokers like these act like that ...but at the back of the mind there is this niggling doubt ..
1) that at any given point would there be conflict of interest...would the "Business model" change to "Market Maker"
2) if a big broker has few institutions as their "Resident liquidity providers" what powers the brokers has as compered to large exchanges to enforce margins on those "liquidity providers" in highly volatile markets? thus protecting small players
That is all I am pointing out .. many people do not go in to that depth and "assume" that a private broker = Exchange

 

[p0box4]

Honestly only Interactive Brokers can be called ecn. Rest are either straight up market makers or stp brokers who b-books most trades and only passes on a few.

IB also takes the other side of retail clients FX positions.
Read their forms and disclosures.
All retail brokers take the other side one way or the other.

 

[gerryg]

IB also takes the other side of retail clients FX positions.
Read their forms and disclosures.
All retail brokers take the other side one way or the other.

Same with my broker Нotforex. Also read in their ToS that they provided execution venue services on some OTC instruments.

 

[moka2]

FXCM USA and CFTC / NFA

I am sure there will be some evasive answer ready by the company rep diverting the issue!
True ECN / NDD .. what a load of BS!
http://www.cftc.gov/PressRoom/PressReleases/pr7528-17
CFTC says:

" The CFTC Order finds that, between September 4, 2009 though at least 2014 (the Relevant Period), FXCM engaged in false and misleading solicitations of FXCM’s retail foreign exchange (forex) customers by concealing its relationship with its most important market maker and by misrepresenting that its “No Dealing Desk” platform had no conflicts of interest with its customers. The Order finds FXCM, FXCM Holdings, and Niv responsible for FXCM making false statements to the National Futures Association (NFA) about its relationship with the market maker.

The Order requires Respondents jointly and severally to pay a $7 million civil monetary penalty and to cease and desist from further violations of the Commodity Exchange Act and CFTC Regulations, as charged. FXCM, Niv, and Ahdout agree to withdraw from CFTC registration; never to seek to register with the CFTC; and never to act in any capacity requiring registration or exemption from registration, or act as a principal, agent, officer, or employee of any person that is registered, required to be registered, or exempted from registration with the CFTC.

 

[wackypete2]

This is bad for us clients who trade spot forex. The NFA and CFTC have driven out many of the brokers with their overbearing regulations and US clients cannot legally use foreign brokers (unless you have very large amounts of money).

Whether or not FXCM or most other brokers are NDD or ECN is just not relevant to me. I just want platforms and customer service that work properly (ie: I can make trades and withdraw my money).

Peter

 

[moka2]

This is bad for us clients who trade spot forex. The NFA and CFTC have driven out many of the brokers with their overbearing regulations and US clients cannot legally use foreign brokers (unless you have very large amounts of money).

Whether or not FXCM or most other brokers are NDD or ECN is just not relevant to me. I just want platforms and customer service that work properly (ie: I can make trades and withdraw my money).

Peter

How is this bad for consumer?
This is to protect clients from dubious practices!
Are you saying that the OTC industry should be allowed to engage in such deceptive conduct?
"I just want platforms and customer service that work properly"
"Properly" includes honesty and transparent markets!

 

[wackypete2]

How is this bad for consumer?
This is to protect clients from dubious practices!

OK, you just keep believing that...

Are you saying that the OTC industry should be allowed to engage in such deceptive conduct?
"I just want platforms and customer service that work properly"
"Properly" includes honesty and transparent markets!

That's YOUR opinion of "properly", NOT mine. My definition is in my previous post.
"(ie: I can make trades and withdraw my money)."

The CFTC and NFA are systematically eliminating all USA spot forex brokers. How do you think this is NOT bad for USA clients who want to trade spot forex and aren't very concerned with "dubious practices" because it doesn't affect how they trade?

That's all I am going to say. See my previous post if you have further questions.

Peter

 

[seekingTruth16]

OK, you just keep believing that...



That's YOUR opinion of "properly", NOT mine. My definition is in my previous post.
"(ie: I can make trades and withdraw my money)."

The CFTC and NFA are systematically eliminating all USA spot forex brokers. How do you think this is NOT bad for USA clients who want to trade spot forex and aren't very concerned with "dubious practices" because it doesn't affect how they trade?

That's all I am going to say. See my previous post if you have further questions.

Peter

But if they are dishonest then you can't trade and withdraw your money. If they can't be trusted on the no dealing desk, how can you trust them to execute your trades correctly? If they are dishonest they could stop you out when you weren't, or not fill you or slip you a lot more than they should.

I am not saying FXCM is responsible for anyone's losses, that's on the individual, but once the broker is shown to be untrustworthy, it's a slippery slope...