I need broker help!

[late apex]

Quote from taboni:

What does "half decent" monthly volume consist of. Everyone will discount depending on what kind of volumes you are putting through. I currently trade about 12-15mio per day and I get a discount on my amount from Hotspot. I can't believe that Coes would cut their $70 posted price by more than 60% for the kind of volume I am trading.

Well, you'd better believe it. PM me for details, if interested.

IB is a good option for anyone but it isn't a great enough difference in price for me to jump from a broker I am comfortable with.

Absolutely, commission rate is obviously just one of several key factors in choosing a dealer / dealers to do business with.

 

[Fxtrader1982]

First and foremost I would like to take this time to thank you all for your opinions, suggestions and recommendations.

I have being looking into FXall and FXconnect too and if I have to I will split my account into an ECN and Retail broker. I would only use the retail as a back up. What do you all think? My current retail broker is Fx-solution but i think they lack the liquidity for multi-million dollar blocks.

Who would you all recommend as far as;

-Liquidity
-Fast execution (no requotes if possible).
-Stability
-Phone order execution (Account executive)
-Good company reputation

Thanks again,

Jurgen

 

[Hoi]

Quote from Fxtrader1982:

First and foremost I would like to take this time to thank you all for your opinions, suggestions and recommendations.

I have being looking into FXall and FXconnect too and if I have to I will split my account into an ECN and Retail broker. I would only use the retail as a back up. What do you all think? My current retail broker is Fx-solution but i think they lack the liquidity for multi-million dollar blocks.

Who would you all recommend as far as;

-Liquidity
-Fast execution (no requotes if possible).
-Stability
-Phone order execution (Account executive)
-Good company reputation

Thanks again,

Jurgen

Very good decision to split your funds into two Broker-accounts. No matter how well you selected your brokers, at some moment in time one will malfunction and you can use the other as backup for hedging your positions.

I can only give comments about the IB-ECN (Interactive Brokers):

-Liquidity
The 4 Major banks (DBK, UBS, BearStearns, JP morgen Chase), are quoting constantly about 30 million in Bid and Asks in the majors. And when you take that 30 million out in one trade (if you are that big) then it will be immediately filled with 30 M again.

-Fast execution (no re-quoting)
When you hit the Bid(Sell) or Ask(buy) it will immediately execute.
Sorry, but re-quoting ?? That is impossible on an ECN like IB. It is a real Exchange, the Bids and Asks are from the MarketMakers and the other traders, and are really in the order-book, so when you hit these prices, it is yours!

-Stability
Well, this needs some more explanation. IB offers Futures, Stocks and Options for more than 20 years, but Forex is only offered for about 1.5 years now. It took them one full year to develop their ECN-model and platform. In this year they invited the big banks to become the MarketMakers on the IB-ECN, and one by one they were added. During this period many things went wrong (you have to understand that these MarketMaker had to connect their systems to this ECN as well, to do quoting and trading). But from October 15 this year, the moment that the Deutsche Bank became fully operational, I have not seen one problem anymore. And what is more important for us traders: every added MarketMaker will narrow the spreads and add liquidity! I know that IB is still working on adding more big Banks to their system, but the current situation is very good already.
October-15 was also the date when ButtonTrader decided to implement Forex-trading for IB-TWS. Have you seen the videos on the ButtonTrader web-side? All that is shown can be used for Forex trading, which makes it unique in the industry.

-Phone execution
In the 6 years that I am with IB, I never called them. So I don’t know how it is done. I can only tell that they offer to close positions by phone (not open), and it will cost additionally. But you said you will have a second backup-broker, so you have your risk-management in place and can hedge.

-Good company reputation
Well, IB is one of the biggest in the industry and ranked #1 by Barron’s. And your funds are protected by SIPC.

Hope it helps
Hoi

 

[mokwit]

I think the IB FX model is superb. Very tight spreads that easily compensate for the commission and spread model. I don't really understand why someone would trade with the bucket shops since IB introduced IDEALPRO.

I think some people have unrealistic expectations regarding quotes in a fast market, I am told that the interbank EBS system also has huge spreads going into numbers and if you get filled it is because of a limit order left there on behalf of an 'asleep at the wheel' corporate treasurer. Certainly in the voice broking days you would be quoted "your risk" but not to the extent that the bucket shops invoke requotes.

I have been a critic of IB on issues related to platform reliability on this site but the fact is they addressed these issues and the platform has been stable and reliable since. It was always better than for example the so called award winning platform of a European FX broker I tried, gauged me hugely with a requote before crashing and that was in demo mode!

I also think Button trader is a superb front end and also allows me to trade FX on the same interface as other instruments and benefit from BT features and functionality. I can chart the prices IB is actually quoting via Sierrachart.

I am not affiliated with either, just a user of both and (now) happy with IB (always happy with Buttontrader)

 

[Fxtrader1982]

I would like to thank all of those who have posted information regarding broker selection. It is vary thoughtful and appreciated.

Has anyone had any experience using oanda? If so, was it on a live or demo account? What problems were incurred and what responses were giving? Has anyone personally tried their Api? If so, what did you think?

Thanks,

Fxtrader1982