[jonbig04]

Some of us who trade futures are thinking of also looking into spot forex for various reasons (small position sizes, volatility, flexible trading hours etc).

However there seem to be a lot of horror stories surrounding spot fx and I'm a little tentative about just picking a broker out of thin air. I'm hoping some of you spot traders can chime in with some general tips for us futures guys.

My biggest question is what to look for in a broker? There are a million of them out there. Any other tips about trading spot that us futures traders wouldn't know are appreciated.

[MidKnight]

Check out a thread started by Cory on this topic of spot FX and brokers. The only other tips I can comment on are that price movement is not a reflection of the last trade as it is in the futures market. Because spot FX is decentralized, it is impossible to ever know the last trade. What you see updating on the charts is strictly a bid/ask change and most charting packages will represent price as (bid + ask) / 2. Also, because you use volume in your attempt to asses breakouts, you will not have this available on the spot FX world.

Welcome to the dark side

With kind regards,
MK

[weed]

hey friend

i trade with oanda, and do my charting with metatrader 4 with a feed from alpari

i'm sure you've heard all kinds of horror stories about spot fx brokers.

oanda is way too big of a corporation to mess around

(except for news times) the spreads on the majors are 1 pip during the overlap of london and US trading sessions (1:00 EST to 11:00 EST is the best time)

my favorite thing about oanda is the fact that you can have any position size you want, 50:1 lev (if you like that stuff), and no miniumum acct balance

you can open an acocunt and deposit 25 cents and trade to see if you like it.

like i said my favorite thing is flexible position sizing. if your account is 100k and you are only down to risk 2k on a trade, it doesnt matter how far your stop needs to be for your particular setup, you can just adjust your # of units until the distance to your stop shows you 2k (the $ value from entry to your stop is displayed at the bottom of the window where you enter your market/limit order.) it also shows you the $ val to your TP

another huge selling point for oanda is flawless execution, the second i buy/sell i'm filled no worries.

a couple months ago i was holding a position over the weekend and my stop was pretty close and price gapped WAAAY up past my stop but they still honored it

my only complaint is their charting software is really weird. their platform is java based. its cool that you can trade anywhere there is an internet connection, but it takes a long time to get used to their bare bones charting software. that's why i downloaded MT4 and opened an unlimited demo with alpari (both are free). hope that helps

[weed]

to the guy who said something about breakouts in forex

i'm a breakout trader and i don't use volume. trade the london/us overlap and you're straight.

everyone that i know that has traded for decades and pays their bills trading is a breakout trader in the spot FX market none of this futures nonsense (lol)

and i'm sure there are people here who are scared of the tick volume that is available for spot FX here let me post a chart

[macdfx]

Originally Posted by weed »

and i'm sure there are people here who are scared of the tick volume that is available for spot FX here let me post a chart

Tell us what this "tick volume" is ....when you post the chart.

Thanks.

[weed]

penny stocks are you joking. reported you equity!



"Tick volume is defined as the number of price changes. Each time trading moves to a new price, the number of ticks by which the price has changed is added to the tick volume."

from http://www.ptti.com/html/help/tick_vol.htm

i dont really use the volume for much except for looking at stopping volume on the daily

but then my strategy is too simple to mess with abstract concepts like volume trend or s/r

[jonbig04]

Thanks for the responses guys. I'm still searching around for brokers. I don't need volume while I'm trading, I just miss it because I hate using time based charts. I've been watching a few pairs for the last couple days and am trying to get into the groove of them.

[weed]

Originally Posted by jonbig04 »

Thanks for the responses guys. I'm still searching around for brokers. I don't need volume while I'm trading, I just miss it because I hate using time based charts. I've been watching a few pairs for the last couple days and am trying to get into the groove of them.

you cant beat trends that last for years

thats why i trade breakouts into the trend, take half off at 1:1 and let it ride without looking at it for days. you can take some off here and there in whatever amount with oanda to smooth your equity curve