Review of Open ECry (futures broker)

[brownsfan019]

	Quote:	cooter
	Browns, For the main account, that is true. Ask them for a non-expiring demo to go along with your main account and they WILL charge you.

Not necessarily.

I guess it depends on who you talk to and how much business you are doing with them. I have a total of four demo's, all of which are non-expiring, and do not pay a dime for them.

[AbeSmith]

The person I emailed said:

"After the trial expires the demo software is $24.95 a month if you have a real money account or not."

[brownsfan019]

Abe,
My suggestion is that you email your contact when it's close to expiration and just explain that you are still demo'ing the software and would like an extension. If/when you decide to trade live and they see commissions coming in, you can always request that the demo be extended. At most brokers, incl OEC, there are the 'standard business replies' and there are the replies you get if you ask the right people after showing you are going to do business there.

The bottom line is that OEC is in the business of making money and they would prefer to get it on the commissions, but they also can't provide unlimited use demo's for people that are not trading there. $24.95/mo is not much in my opinion if you still need more time to paper trade.

[AbeSmith]

	Quote:	brownsfan019
	Abe, My suggestion is that you email your contact when it's close to expiration and just explain that you are still demo'ing the software and would like an extension. If/when you decide to trade live and they see commissions coming in, you can always request that the demo be extended. At most brokers, incl OEC, there are the 'standard business replies' and there are the replies you get if you ask the right people after showing you are going to do business there. The bottom line is that OEC is in the business of making money and they would prefer to get it on the commissions, but they also can't provide unlimited use demo's for people that are not trading there. $24.95/mo is not much in my opinion if you still need more time to paper trade.

I'm not sure if I will go with OEC for real trading. My computer locked up twice so far using their demo, and it seems they are a relatively new company with not many clients and I may want to go with a time tested company for real trading. But for paper trading it looks like a good platform if it does not lock up too much.

$24.95 is around what I pay for Interactive Brokers and Sierra Chart. I could cancel IB and Sierra to cover that cost. But the thing I like about IB, please correct me if I'm wrong, is that they have relatively low margin interest rate. I was not able to find another broker with such low rates for small money accounts. Although I plan to day trade, I would like to one day also do swing trading and long term trading. It seems that Interactive Brokers is a good broker for that.

[brownsfan019]

In another thread, I posted some info on OEC and thought I'd duplicate it here for reference.

NFA BASIC details - http://www.nfa.futures.org/basicnet/...d=0326789&rn=Y

RESULT: VERY CLEAN SHEET. That's important to me and hard to do in the futures biz.

FCM Capital Data direct from the CFTC - http://www.cftc.gov/marketreports/fi...fcms/index.htm

I attached the June 2007 FCM Financial Data Report to this post.

As you will see, segregated customer funds totaled over $29 million as of this report. Is it the most? Nope. Are they as tiny as you may be implying here? I don't think so.

For me, working with OEC has been the best broker I've EVER dealt with. This includes going from Alaron, to ProActive Futures and Mirus Futures. The only one I will warn of is Alaron. I just didn't like what I saw (and paid). ProActive and Mirus are good, but as an IB, there's only so much they can do on commissions to be competitive.

With OEC, I feel I get a broker that is 'small enough to care, but large enough to not worry about'. I know, sounds corny. Maybe I should write a jingle for them.

[cooter]

	Quote:	brownsfan019
	For me, working with OEC has been the best broker I've EVER dealt with. This includes going from Alaron, to ProActive Futures and Mirus Futures. The only one I will warn of is Alaron. I just didn't like what I saw (and paid). ProActive and Mirus are good, but as an IB, there's only so much they can do on commissions to be competitive.

So, how are you finding the OEC Trader and DOM compared to your other broker's software?

[brownsfan019]

	Quote:	cooter
	So, how are you finding the OEC Trader and DOM compared to your other broker's software?

Good question cooter. For the most part, it's on par or exceeding previous softwares that I've used, including the $500/mo T4 that I was on. I have one thing that I am working on getting them to change though - I would like the DOM to re-center more quickly. In a volatile time, the price can be off-centered quite a bit and I don't care for that. I'm hoping they can consider at least giving the user the option to re-center more often. What are your thoughts on that?

[cooter]

A few thoughts...

A button on the DOM itself to manually re-center would be nice. Something where you could easily turn on and off centering on the DOM itself, without having to mess with the DOM settings dialog.

The volume histogram feature on the DOM is a long overdue addition.

The new tiered brackets (called Strategy Order) is somewhat clunky in operation, and only has three tiers (five would have been optimal), but it does allow users to save separate bracket profiles for each DOM.

Market if Touched orders are finally supported in this release, and are available on the DOM.

One thing you might want to do is compare the speed of the OEC DOM versus another brokers, though. I was surprised to find the Transact AT just a smidgen faster than OEC, for both CME and CBOT contracts.

All-in-all, this upgrade (3.1.1.1) is well worth the wait.

[ant]

	Quote:	brownsfan019
	RESULT: VERY CLEAN SHEET. That's important to me and hard to do in the futures biz. FCM Capital Data direct from the CFTC - http://www.cftc.gov/marketreports/fi...fcms/index.htm

Hey brownsfan,

Thanks for the info you've been providing on OEC. I've actually been taking a look at them as well based on your recommendation. One concern I have about them is that they barely have $1M in net capital. I would expect a company in a strong financial position to have more like many others at the link you provided. I don't know if I could get past this. Does this concern you?

[brownsfan019]

	Quote:	ant
	Hey brownsfan, Thanks for the info you've been providing on OEC. I've actually been taking a look at them as well based on your recommendation. One concern I have about them is that they barely have $1M in net capital. I would expect a company in a strong financial position to have more like many others at the link you provided. I don't know if I could get past this. Does this concern you?

I was more concerned about the segregated accounts number since that represents client assets. $29 mill is not a ton, but enough for my consideration. As for the net capital, it is above the requirement set by the CFTC and NFA. I'll email my contact and see what the response is to that number and let you know what I find out.

My biggest concern would be that NFA report. If there were a ton of cases and arbitration, I would not even bother looking at the CFTC report, regardless of how much money is at the firm.

Like I said, I think with OEC you are getting a firm that is constantly improving their software for their traders and large enough to be a player, small enough for you and me to trade there at competitive commission rates.