Need Help Choosing a Forex Broker

[ionut442]

Hello,

I'm new to forex and I want to make a live account (I had a demo but I want to begin real trading). The thing is that I want to begin with a micro account and after some months of practice maybe I will invest more. I've done some internet research and acording to my criteria (minimum deposit 100$, laverage >1:200, low spreads, No stop hunting, No price manipulaton, decent trading platform, no freezes) here is what I found:

http://www.fxcm.com/
http://www.fxopen.com/
http://www.deltastock.com/english/home/deltastock_home.asp
http://www.fbs.com/

If you are usign any of this brokers and you can share some pros and cons I would be grateful. Also, If you can recomand me other broker that meets my criteria, please let meknow.

Thanks,
Ionut

 

[Rhody Trader]

Why do you think you need available leverage of more than 200:1?

 

[ionut442]

Why do you think you need available leverage of more than 200:1?

I'm not very sure if I want to use a leverage bigger that 200:1 but it will be helpful to have this option avalaible (just in case). Let's say this is not the most important criterion. :cheesy:

 

[Rhody Trader]

Oanda is good for micro account trading (no minimum deposit or trade size), but only goes as high as 50:1 on the leverage. That's more than enough for the vast majority of reasonable traders. Some folks don't like their charting, though.

 

[ionut442]

Oanda was one of my options but I found some reviews on the internet that made me change my mind:
- Huge spreads during news releases
- Slippage during news releases
- Slippage during normal market conditions
- Sometimes orders are activated at prices, which are not displayed on charts. Custom sevice reps blame the platform.
- Default stop loss/take profit
- No hedging
- No trailing stop
- Charts can be better

 

[Rhody Trader]

I've been with Oanda for many years and have no complaints about fills or spreads. Yes, spreads widen out around expected volatility events, but that's not uncommon. It happens in the interbank market too. Not sure what you mean by default stops and take profits. You can set them up to be that way in a couple different ways, but you don't have to use them. They've never allowed "hedging", for which I have no problem because it's nothing more than an accounting gimic and makes no positive difference to your bottom line (though it could have a negative one), but if you absolutely must carry offsetting longs and shorts Oanda has for sub-accounts.

 

[TrendTracker]

Ionut,

I know this is not exactly what you are looking for but I thought it might help be helpful to you as a future reference. I've been using Interactive Brokers for almost five years now. Their system has been reliable and customer service helpful. Spreads are as low as half a pip and execution is fast.