IBFX - The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly
I hope no one minds if I cross post something I wrote over on the Forex Peace Army Forums:
Interbankfx.com - Forex Peace Army Forum
Despite the . . . less than stellar reviews,
(see
Interbank FX Reviews | InterbankFX Ratings | interbankfx.com reviews and ratings for details)
I decided to start my live trading with IBFX. There were several reasons for this:
1. I wanted a US based brokerage. I realize that this may not really be any safer than a foreign brokerage, but I do take some small comfort in knowing that I don't need to dig out my passport if it becomes necessary to express my feelings live and in person.
2. I wanted to use MetaTrader.
3. I wanted to trade microlots (10 cents/pip) or smaller.
These requirements left me with few alternatives. Of that limited selection I ended up choosing IBFX.
And now, the good:
1. IBFX miniaccounts allow you to trade nanolots (1 cent/pip), thus letting me scale out of microlot trades and also letting me do live experimental trades at nano-scale.
2. 19 pairs to play with (my demo mini account with them only had 10 pairs). Most of the available combinations of USD, GBP, EUR, JPY, CHF, CAD, AUD, and NZD.
3. Credit card funding - it took 2 days (as advertised), but they didn't charge my card until shortly before crediting my account. (That was a very pleasant surprise.) Also, it posted as a purchase instead of a cash advance.
4. Free deposits/withdrawals via check. NOTE: I haven't withdrawn any money yet, so can't comment on the success or speed of this method.
5. They sent out an email to customers warning that trading the NFP could be dangerous since prices could gap. Gapping prices is a bad thing, but I'll give them points for at least giving fair warning.
The bad:
1. Slippage - even during calm times, I get requoted frequently. Some of this is my pitiful internet connection. If that was all it was, it should happen fairly often on the demo account. It happens a LOT more on the live account.
2. Spread widening. I've seen GPBUSD jump into the 12-15 pip range during news reports with wide deviation from expectations. Today's NFP was an exception, since it was only a little better than expected. In this instance, the GBPUSD only widened a few pips. Unfortunately, a couple of the biggest surprise announcements (an interest rate cut and Canadian employment numbers) this week caught me off guard, so I didn't get to watch what happened to the spread during those extreme conditions.
3. A very special $20 "convenience" fee for using the credit card to put money in. Technically, fees for using credit cards violate the internal rules of Visa and MasterCard, but this is seldom enforced. I guess it cost me less than if they'd posted it as a cash advance.
4. They have none of the really exotic pairs.
The ugly:
1. Server freezes. I've seen several short ones (including one that spanned a major news report), a 10+ minute one at a slow point of the day, and then they did a fairly long one starting about 10 minutes or so after this morning's NFP report. I'm very annoyed about that one. I'd moved my stops on long-term trades in close, and had just started re-adjusting things after the dust was settling. During the freeze, 2 of my positions fell back into their "temporary state of emergency stoplosses" and then retraced past where they were at the beginning of the freeze.
2. When I first opened the demo account (while debating which of the limited number of brokers who met my criteria to use), I was surprised to see it could trade nanolots. I went to the online chat to try to confirm that this was also true of the live accounts. The rep kept going on and on about changing leverage and never would give me a straight answer. While the chat rep was looking up another non-answer in her list of default responses to questions, I called the toll free number and got the correct answer from the person who answered the phones.
