One word: Oanda or IG?

Snuskpelle said:
I'm trading with both. Oanda works better with small positions, on IG you really want to have min 10k per position due to (large) commission.

On Oanda's financing charges: https://www.oanda.com/us-en/trading/financing-fees/ or (if you're not US bound and need to know about indices/commodities?) https://www.oanda.com/sg-en/trading/financing-costs/

IG has a lot of other stuff than forex and indices to trade though, so if you need to mix in e.g. equities that would obviously be preferable.

As for these "brokers" "trading against you". You can compare their prices vs another price source. If they do stand on the other side of your trade or not, it otherwise doesn't matter if you get a market based price (beyond counter party risk). What does matter is the spread that's going to be larger than on market, and that is also manipulatable. I haven't excessively seen that from these two though, it's clear Oanda is keeping me in the trade as long as possible.

For the record, I also have IB but in my country IG is more convenient (also than Oanda) due to better interfacing with the Swedish tax system.

As for shorting US dollar: Make sure you actually understand what you're doing and not just superficially do so. You're not going to make money based off the latest clickbait headlines on e.g. Zerohedge.
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Thanks Snuskpelle! Same question for you as I asked JSOP above. Also, you said "it's clear Oanda is keeping me in the trade as long as possible" - that sounds kind of scary. What are they doing to to try and keep you in the trade? I don't like the sounds of that one bit.

Thanks!
 
Saltynuts said:
Thanks Snuskpelle! Same question for you as I asked JSOP above. Also, you said "it's clear Oanda is keeping me in the trade as long as possible" - that sounds kind of scary. What are they doing to to try and keep you in the trade? I don't like the sounds of that one bit.

Thanks!
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Basically meant that I haven't observed something to indicate that they would be manipulating spreads to e.g. trigger stops. That is just a discretionary anecdotal assessment though. Usually every thread on this contains a claim that CFD platforms try to screw over customers by stopping them out, which is not my impression on Oanda nor IG.

I am only trading index futures and commodities with Oanda and my ability to answer if their standards would be different for forex is thus limited accordingly. Comparing is as you note more difficult for a decentralized market, particular as Oanda's product obviously is very derivative to allow currencies to be bought down to 1 unit.
 
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Thanks Snuskpelle. I was really getting at the part where you said you did notice Oanda trying to keep you in trades as long as possible - what were they doing in particular?
 
Saltynuts said:
Thanks Snuskpelle. I was really getting at the part where you said you did notice Oanda trying to keep you in trades as long as possible - what were they doing in particular?
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See above explanation, first paragraph. It's an expression, the logical opposite of trying to take me out of the trade as soon as possible. I.e. the root fear of people using CFD providers is that they are somehow stopping=taking you out of trades by manipulating mid price or spread.
 
Ohhhh, I see. You were saying that you were not witnessing any foul play to get you out of the trade, hence your conclusion, which conclusion was a good conclusion, not a bad one. Thanks.
 
Saltynuts said:
Ohhhh, I see. You were saying that you were not witnessing any foul play to get you out of the trade, hence your conclusion, which conclusion was a good conclusion, not a bad one. Thanks.
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Yeah sorry, I could have been more clear.
 
Saltynuts said:
but since there is no central market for foreign currencies, how do you KNOW you are getting a fair price?
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You don't. That's the tricky part with retail forex. It's an OTC market; the prices are the result of negotiations between the two counterparties aka the trader and the market maker aka broker. So since the market maker/broker is much better capitalized, guess who wins in the negotiation? The market maker/broker is free to put in any price they want. Stop-hunting, requoting, order rejection at the last minute, delayed quoting is quite common. What essentially what you are trading in retail forex is really a CFD. Some regulatory bodies like ASIC in Australia actually require the brokers registered with them to publish a disclosure document to clearly state this fact so feel free to find any ASIC regulated broker and go to their website and read their disclosure document and you will get an idea of what they are.

Saltynuts said:
Is there not some central price reporting agency or site or something that has like reference prices so you can compare those to your broker's quote?
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No. The only thing you have is basically the info. from those general news sites like bloomberg or reuters and etc.. There is NO central market, NO central price reporting site for reference. Every broker is free to quote you whatever you want. It's your choice whether you want to take it or not. Think of the Retail forex OTC market as a bazaar where you haggle the prices with the vendors/sellers except you sign a contract with the vendor/buyer to deal exclusively with him for each transaction.
 
Snuskpelle said:
Basically meant that I haven't observed something to indicate that they would be manipulating spreads to e.g. trigger stops. That is just a discretionary anecdotal assessment though. Usually every thread on this contains a claim that CFD platforms try to screw over customers by stopping them out, which is not my impression on Oanda nor IG.

I am only trading index futures and commodities with Oanda and my ability to answer if their standards would be different for forex is thus limited accordingly. Comparing is as you note more difficult for a decentralized market, particular as Oanda's product obviously is very derivative to allow currencies to be bought down to 1 unit.
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index futures and commodities is different. Real index futures and commodities are traded on central exchanges. I don't know if Oanda is actually a FCM registered with CFTC to be a broker in these products. But chances are you might be trading CFD's of index futures and commodities, in this case, the same thing that happens in retail forex will also happen in index futures and commodities.
 
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