for some time it required several thousands of dollars to open a trading account with
futures brokers. when fx brokers came on the scene they had a different business
model that included much lower account minimums, 'mini lots', free chart/order entry
programs with free realtime data, and demo accounts. a standard lot is for $100,000
of the eurusd, a mini $10,000, and micro lots of $1,000
futures brokers' account minimums eventually came down to $2,000 and earlier this
year AMP Global Clearing reduced their minimum to $500
the one outsider is the fx broker Oanda who's always offered account minimums from
$1 up and no fixed amount lot size
initially fx brokers offered up to 500:1 leverage and while that's still available in the EU
and elsewhere, in North America it was decided people couldn't handle that amount
and the leverage was lowered to 50:1. a major difference between futures and spot/fx
was that overnight vs daytrade fx margin didn't increase, whereas futures daytrading
margin increases in order to trade B&H o/n
with AMP and some other futures brokers one can trade the 6E contract with $500
while the o/n margin is $4,320.00 :
http://www.ampclearing.com/trading_hours.html
fx margin on $125,000 at 1.41533 at 50:1 leverage is $3,538.33 daytrade margin as well
as the margin to trade B&H o/n:
http://fxtrade.oanda.ca/account/margin-calculator
my trading experience with Oanda's FXtrade platform is instant fills at the market price
not sure if their MetaTrader 4 platform is as fast, isn't with other brokers I've used
Oanda's spread used to be a minimum of 0.9 pips on the eurusd but that may have
risen some, as well, all fx brokers' spreads widen during news/economic releases as
well as during 'fast' markets and can widen in Oanda's case up to 20 pips
trading the 6E via AMP's NinjaTrader and the CQG feed is fairly fast, but the Bid/Ask
spread is usually 1 or 2 pips for market orders; r/t commissions is under $5.00
there's a difference between the price of the 6E vs fx - 1.4107 vs 1.4134 while side
by side chart price formations are virtually identical, futures close for 1 hour at 5pm EST
so, bottom line, in North America daytrade futures but in the EU etc daytrade spot
since one lot can be traded with only $250 - day and/or o/n -
http://www.fxpro.com/
both fx and futures brokers have the same regulators