Well for brokerage houses I can tell you I tried almost all: mgforex (very good),fxsol (good), refco(bad),fxcm (bad and has alwasy been refco anyway ..that crap that now fxcm was buying the clients is a mith fxcm was always a leg from refco...metatrader (verygood), acm (good) saxo (good)... but certainly VT (visual trader) is the best one you trade directly in the chart, you can set your own alerts colors and techiniques with formulas and alarms, lines and arrows... you can bulid a black box with it like buy and sell even if you are not there... Is very profesional it tells you depending on your positions whats your margin call levels so you mesure your risks, and very important...it lets you hedge! if you know how to do it as you guys know you can make both sides profits... its 3 pips of spread...wich for me is the most realistic spread ...2 or 1 pips of spread...I dont think is real... if you buy and sell lots from 5 and up it gives you 1 pip rebate...so u save money wich emans u have already added something to the profit... they update it every once in a while and i know they are working again in a version for pdas so u can trade on the go...they use to have one for the last version but this one will be i think something we never saw... mg has also a very nice platform for pdas and cellphones... but cant hedge and i love hedging is the way i make money i never place stop loss i use hedging instead...and the less posible...my style is very aggresive not conservative at all...so i think for aggresive VT for conservative MGforex... well I hope this info helps... have a great trade guys!!
I'm sorry that I took so long to reply to you, but here are links that present some truth. http://www.elitetrader.com/vb/showthread.php?s=&threadid=61360&perpage=6&pagenumber=2 http://www.elitetrader.com/vb/showthread.php?s=&threadid=61418 I think the Forex retail industry's day is ahead of it. I see a positive future for it, but it will come with more regulation and the ECN model of business. But don't be fooled just because some people do make money now in retail shops. It is a wild west with price adjusting as the norm not the exception. Follow these links of people more experienced and smarter than I. ElectricSavant is correct in his assesment. LonEagle has been warning us for sometime now! I am a programmer by trade and price adjustments to eliminate losing postions by bucketshops easily happen at computer speeds. Hardly noticeable. But they do leave a trail and you can find it if you look carefully. Purchase an independent data feed and check out the deviations in price you notice. Separate sets of traders account for some of the differences but not all. Money is being made in retail shops, no doubt. But this is how I see it. What has been you experience?