Dear Elite Traders, After approximately an hour souring forms and discussion boards for an answer I'm astonished by the lack of clear, concise, and unbiased information. I can't be the only one curious as to which brokers are leading the pack at the pro/semi-inst level. And I'm not talking about Forex dot com here... I mean the FX brokers that corporations and businesses use to hedge their overseas revenue risk, I'm talking about the brokers that the traders who are too small to go Prime use - the 100k accounts the 250k accounts, etc. I'd really like to know what those of you with high performance projects use (day trading, EAs, the big boy tools) - money managers, SMA type accounts. Operations like this or even a large scale personal trading program. Not basement investing. Not Ameritrade! Let's just ignore spread and commissions for a moment.. Putting that aside the remaining criteria are a trifecta of: user interface(usability - also management and reporting features), aesthetics, and security (encompassing safety of funds, guaranteed SL, transparent quotes, etc). Just to be clear... Please no Plus-500, no UFX, no *** damn Forex(dot)com [No offense, these are likely great for the recreational speculator, but they just don't make the cut when it comes to industrial grade] For instance a multinational business (25-100 employees), who need to hedge their currency exchange rate risk. Or a used car dealer who imports from Japan and needs to make multiple transactions and hedges daily. The majority would just call their banker and have him do it or the slightly more resourceful folk use their banks' online brokerage platform (think Citi). Then there are those even more resourceful or large enough to have a financial department and they use ______ ?? I know I've heard FXPro thrown around as an industry standard - they have the vault feature and multiple accounts, etc. But there's got to be more.. I know many corp finance fellows and Interactive Brokers certainly isn't a staple... which is the broker I've seen most mentioned here. Anyone with constructive suggestions would be greatly appreciated. I am looking for the raw data here so I'm able to make an informed decision which will involve a large amount of resources, affect a lot of people, and become a long term solution for us - so please don't try to mess me around with affiliate nonsense or chop shops.. Thank you in advance
Thanks Xandman, Trade_Canada. FXOne and New Edge both look interesting. Although still slightly more on the boutique side. Downpruf.. why would I want to speak to Mr. Askew - his reputation doesn't seem that polished. Notice that I didn't end the sentence with a question mark, Ill just assume it was a practical joke.. Okay - for boutique brokerages; one very nice one I found in the past few months is MahiFX, I haven't traded with them but their UI is spectacular. Still seems to be more geared for recreational traders and speculators. If you fall into that category take a look at Easy-Forex, they have some nice features advertised for their webtrader that most MT4 platforms don't have. Here are some examples of an institutional level FX broker; (Please correct me if I have any mis-information here) Tier One http://www.migcapital.co.uk/ (Current Frontrunner) http://www.fxpro.co.uk/ (Runner-Up) https://www.barclaysmarginfx.com/ http://www.citifxpro.com/ http://www.rbsm.com/ http://www.dukascopy.com/ Tier Two http://www.cmcmarkets.com.au/ http://www.pioneertrader.com/ https://www.varengoldbankfx.com/ (unsure) http://www.hantecfx.com/ http://www.igmarketspartners.com/ http://www.lmax.com/
Nobody on the institutional side uses Metatrader. Citi offers it to the retail crowd. The link your provide for IG is their white-label site. Here's the link for retail: http://www.ig.com/uk
Thanks donwnpruf. Do you think a small multinational business or emerging fund manager would use MT4? To simplify we could define the criteria as account size of between 250k - 500k and leverage requirements of up to 1:50 (possibly 1:20). Thanks for the tip for IG, do you know much about this broker? And just out of curiosity, what do you use yourself?
You can't allocate (in MT4) between accounts. I wouldn't think anyone on the buy-side would stick with MT4 for very long. IB offers very tight mkts for spot FX; 50x on majors and 25x on crosses (as they are synthetically composed). You can arb futures and cash on the same platform. I have used IG UK in the past for vanilla and exotic options and they're fine.
Right, but to some extent the brokers themselves compensate for the limitations of MT4. For example with FXPro you can have a master account and manage the multiple subsidiary trading accounts under your umbrella. You have whats called a Vault where you can withdraw money from one account and deposit it in the vault, then move it to another account at a different date. The setback though is that their reporting is terrible, it doesn't give you a real-time breakdown on the holdings and exposure of each account, etc.