Quote from crgarcia:
Amen.
As simple as that.
Quote from Hurricane:
I compared live quotes from one forex broker (no commission) to quotes from IB (charges commission) which come from participating banks. The forex broker's quotes were consistently 2 pips wider, one on each side. It was obvious that the broker could pass all orders directly through to a bank and pick up 1 pip per transaction. So much for no commissions.
Quote from ryank:
I enjoy trading futures but those damn forex.com commercials on cnbc made me try out their demo platform to trade fx. Are pip bid/ask spreads of 5+ normal? That seems pretty darn wide. I've always wondered what a bucket shop looked like, this must be a good representation.
Quote from voodoo11x:
it matters on the price of the PAIR....which is a ratio.
right now the eur:usd pair is currently at 1.4679.
so if you buy the euro (go long) and the exchange rate goes to 1.4779...and you sell...then you made a 100 pip profit.
you don't actually just buy a currency, it matters what price you got the currency for in relation to the exchange rate (euro vs usd ratio).
the most common pairs are the eur/usd, usd/jpy, gbp/usd, euro/jpy, etc.
so just follow the exchange rate and how each currency changes in relation to each other (i.e. the pairs mentioned above.)