Originally Posted by daedalus »

Trading against the broker... again... USING A REAL ECN avoids this complication all together! A broker like MB Trading makes their money off COMMISSIONS like any other broker. I've attached a screenshot from my broker applet... which shows the REAL TIME liquidity and spread on each pair that changes with market conditions.

Seriously, mate.

How do you think using an unregulated, uncentralized ECN is safer than a regulated currency futures market like the IMM at the CME?

Do you really know who is behind the market moves at your ECN? That price feed is manipulated like a bookie moving the betting line in order to attract bids.

Simple enough really.

Maybe some forex pros will come aboard to dispell this myth once and for all.

[daedalus]

ohhhhhhhhh my god.

1. I never stated that an unregulated market was SAFER than a regulated market. In fact, I said the opposite. What are we worried about with an unregulated market again? Whats going to happen? Am I going to wake up tomorrow and the market will have dissapeared? Will the world cease to trade currencies? Are all the banks all of a sudden not going to want to be able to hedge against currency flucutations? Give me a break!

As far as I can tell the only real downside to an unregulated market is that there is no quoted volume in spot forex, unlike in IMM at CME. But if you don't use it, whats the big deal?

2. THE PRICE FEED ISN'T MANIPULATED THROUGH AN ECN.

Go do some google searches on what an ECN is...

ECN don't dictate prices... thats the entire POINT of an ECN. What you're talking about is what bucket shops do like FXCM and any forex broker that offers a "fixed spread"... Those shops ARE betting against you and those shops DO manipulate order prices.

I'm not the one putting all of this forex b.s. myths in this thread. Every one of these arguments have been propagated for years by threads like this... Go do a search on the babypips.com forum and I think you'll find all the answers to the questions you've been searching for.

[brownsfan019]

daed - I am curious, so understand not an attack here.

What firms are like what you've said here where you just pay a commission and in theory the firms do not care if you win or lose? I would like to take a look and see a few examples of firms like that.

Do you personally regularly w/draw profits from your account w/o issues? Do you see any of these mysterious spikes that you do hear about?

[daedalus]

Originally Posted by brownsfan019 »

daed - I am curious, so understand not an attack here.

What firms are like what you've said here where you just pay a commission and in theory the firms do not care if you win or lose? I would like to take a look and see a few examples of firms like that.

Do you personally regularly w/draw profits from your account w/o issues? Do you see any of these mysterious spikes that you do hear about?

MB Trading (EFX Group) is their introducing broker and who I use personally. Even the big names for futures like GFT, etc are still all offering fixed spreads which means they are pretty much screwing you. EFX actually gives you Level II on all of the forex markets, which you can't really get with most bucket shops. But finding a true ECN is hard to come by as they are relatively new to spot forex. They are based on a traditional brokerage structure. Rather than paying a fixed spread like other brokers I pay a set commission for my trade and I get the best spread on the pair at the prevailing time. I mean, sometimes there is NO spread on some of the pairs, but with other brokers your still going to be getting hit with their fixed spread of 2-5 pips on every entry and exit. That is how the bucket shops make tons of money. ECN's charge you a commission to make their money and in return offer you the REAL prices and spreads in an unmanipulated fashion.

I have also NEVER had a problem withdrawing ANY amount of money from my trading accounts. I have a trader friend that trades 100 lots with dbfx.com (which I don't think is an ecn actually) but he clears between 100-300k a month and has never had an issue withdrawing more than 100k from them whenever he wants. That is one of the biggest myths that really hasn't been true for the past 5 years. You can access your funds any time you want with no problems. I've never heard of an instance where this was not the case.

Hope this clears some of this up!

[sevensa]

Originally Posted by brownsfan019 »

What firms are like what you've said here where you just pay a commission and in theory the firms do not care if you win or lose? I would like to take a look and see a few examples of firms like that.

Do you personally regularly w/draw profits from your account w/o issues? Do you see any of these mysterious spikes that you do hear about?

Interactive Brokers is one of them. I never had issues withdrawing money from my account. See the below link with regards to trading Forex with them.

http://individuals.interactivebroker...?ib_entity=llc

Originally Posted by daedalus »

MB Trading (EFX Group) is their introducing broker and who I use personally. Even the big names for futures like GFT, etc are still all offering fixed spreads which means they are pretty much screwing you. EFX actually gives you Level II on all of the forex markets, which you can't really get with most bucket shops. But finding a true ECN is hard to come by as they are relatively new to spot forex. They are based on a traditional brokerage structure. Rather than paying a fixed spread like other brokers I pay a set commission for my trade and I get the best spread on the pair at the prevailing time. I mean, sometimes there is NO spread on some of the pairs, but with other brokers your still going to be getting hit with their fixed spread of 2-5 pips on every entry and exit. That is how the bucket shops make tons of money. ECN's charge you a commission to make their money and in return offer you the REAL prices and spreads in an unmanipulated fashion.

I have also NEVER had a problem withdrawing ANY amount of money from my trading accounts. I have a trader friend that trades 100 lots with dbfx.com (which I don't think is an ecn actually) but he clears between 100-300k a month and has never had an issue withdrawing more than 100k from them whenever he wants. That is one of the biggest myths that really hasn't been true for the past 5 years. You can access your funds any time you want with no problems. I've never heard of an instance where this was not the case.

Hope this clears some of this up!

Yes, it does - and thanks for taking the time to explain your understanding of the difference between ECNs and FX bucketshops.

One question - how do you make sure that your $$$ are protected in the event of an unforeseen event, such as a firm bankruptcy, which happened to Refco. What then?

[daedalus]

Well MB Trading is registered with the NFA and they are some of the few that are going to make muster with the new capital requirements.

Beyond that what can any of us do if our brokers go bankrupt? I honestly am asking because you raise an excellent point that regardless of futures or forex, what does happen if our brokers go under?

Short of looking at their balance sheets every quarter/year what can we do to protect ourselves?

[minoo]

Use brokers who provide
'Customers Segregated Accounts' with Banks
and keep check on the credit rating of the particular bank

This is what I do with the money market account to transfer deposit to brokers affiliated trading accounts

I am not sure if this is adequate though.