Hi Magos,
FXCM takes regulations very seriously and believe it is in our clients' best interests to have regulatory oversight and transparency. That's why we are regulated in multiple jurisdictions across 4 continents and have over 80 employees in our compliance department as mentioned by our CEO Drew Niv in our previous earnings call. I know this doesn't mean that previous regulatory issues are okay, but we work to identify problems and make sure they are corrected.
We actively work with our regulators to resolve issues to ensure the best trading environment possible for our traders. For example, the NFA and FCA actions for positive slippage not being passed on prior to 2010 were mentioned earlier in this thread. FXCM reimbursed current and former clients who were affected in full. Furthermore, the changes we made in 2010 mean that FXCM is now
one of the only firms in the industry to pass on positive slippage on all order types including market and limit orders.
Note that some brokers may provide positive slippage on one order type but not others. Others might not provide positive slippage at all. Some brokers re-quote their clients when the price moves in their clients' favor but fail to re-quote when the price moves against them. There are no re-quotes at FXCM.
Furthermore, FXCM offers true limit orders on all the platforms we offer including MT4. That means our clients cannot receive negative slippage on their limit orders, only positive slippage. By contrast, some brokers treat limit orders on MT4 like market orders when triggered opening up the possibility of negative slippage.
When FXCM was founded in 1999, we were one of the pioneers in what is still a relatively young and quickly evolving industry that is retail forex. The key to our continued growth and success while others have come and gone is due in no small part to our ability to adapt to and lead change in this market.
The execution stats below are an example of this:
We compiled data from a total of 43,128,901 forex and metal trades executed over a six month period from August 2013 to January 2014:
- 73% of all orders had no slippage.
- 15% of all orders received positive slippage. (AKA price improvements)
- 12% of all orders received negative slippage.
- Over 60% of all limit and limit entry orders received positive slippage.
- 53.32% of all stop and stop entry orders received negative slippage.
In those 6 months alone, FXCM clients benefited from over $15 million in positive slippage.
As one of the largest brokers, we are under a greater amount of scrutiny and believe in
leading the way in transparency. That's a big reason why as of the end of Q1 2014 there were over 181,000 active trading accounts at FXCM with a total of $1.245 billion in client funds.
