Well, clearly you are a Matchbook employee. I just wonna let folks know that forex is NOT a short term vehicle, especially the spot market.If you watch the futures market on IB's TWS during Europe and early US sessions, the spreads are 1-4 pips wide and maybe a playable daytrading market during those hours. What's wrong with selling a blackbox? It's probably true that the money in forex are made intermediate to long term, and my blackbox proved that... but this is not my style, and I am willing to trade other people's money with it.
doz, Thats fine. I don't care if you sell a black box FX system, though im a little confused because you say "I just wonna let folks know that forex is NOT a short term vehicle" and you also state "It's probably true that the money in forex are made intermediate to long term, and my blackbox proved that... but this is not my style, and I am willing to trade other people's money with it." So Im wondering why the conflicting thought. By the way, Im not and employee of Matchbook. Im not employed by the financial industry in any way. I am an individual trader and I happen to know some people who do trade FX and know the markets how they work. My info comes from them explain it to me and them me looking at their screens. Best, Mike
Not a short term vehicle, the money is made intermediate to long term... what's so hard to understand here. Talked to some dudes at hotspotfx today, the spreads are bit better... 3 pip for EUR and JPY, 5 pip for CHF and GBP. Their platform is also ECN style, the software still needs some function (stops, OCO etc), which are done manually through the phone. Commissions: $5 per unit ($100k) for price takers, $0 for price makers. No software fee. There is a demo and they claim the prices on the demo are basically identical to the live system. May worth a look.
"Currency Trading Is Now Regulated In The US: FXCM Becomes The First Firm To Register Under the New Regulations" http://www.fxcm.com/press_releases.html http://www.nfa.futures.org/basic/details.asp?nfaid=0308179&name=FOREX+CAPITAL+MARKETS+LLC Hopefully the first in a line of many.
geeez, what happened to matchbookfx? the website is gone ???? ----------------------------------------- apparently the site was down for a few days.
WarEagle's post describing the forex industry is very accurate. Most of the forex brokerages are bucket shops to some extent, even the more reputable ones. The biggest advantage I find in forex is that there are no overnight gaps since it is a true 24 hour market. The most difficult part of trading forex is finding a good reputable broker. Also, as I believe WarEagle mentioned, there is no insurance on any funds deposited with these brokerages. So, if the brokerage disappears, so does your money. I'm not sure to what extent the latest NFA regulations protect the public from such things. As far as SFA regulation of brokerages overseas. I do know that clients funds are used by brokerages in the UK, and should the brokerage become insolvent for whatever reason, the client would become a creditor of the brokerage company. Good luck in trying to get your money back. Most of the brokerages out there will claim to be "market makers", which is just their fancy term for saying that they will be getting one price from the market and quoting you another, which is biased in their favor.
Gemini, I haven't used them, but from going through their website, they look a lot like MatchbookFX. I think that an ECN-like system would be the only fair way for small traders to compete in FOREX. The problem with MatchbookFX, and also ChoiceFX I would imagine, is volume, or rather lack thereof. While I don't know their volume statistics, without sufficient liquidity, you are forced to just sit on the bid/ask all day waiting for someone to take your price or play their spreads which puts you right back where you started with the usual "bucket shops". Perhaps the liquidity is good or getting better, since I haven't traded with them I don't know. But I think it would be better if you could get all the ECN outfits to join their order books together. Probably won't happen until some consolidation occurs. I'm not willing to risk it until I see some published numbers on volume. Ideally I'd like to see the time of sales for a few days. I still have faith that someday spot FOREX will be viable for the rest of us. Good luck in your search, Kirk
WarEagle, Apparently choicefx purchased matchbookfx. They also claim to have a lot of liquidity by virtue of the fact that they have a lot of "liquidity providers", which consists of a number of banks and any other FX firms that would like to participate in offering quotes. Somehow they claim to offer a 1 pip spread with a small commission or a 2 pip spread with no commission. I have not tried their platform, so I'm not exactly sure how this works yet. It sounds very interesting though.
I actually had an account with Matchbook, due to the rumor circling around this board about their 1-2 pip spread. But the fact is ChoiceFX is making the market at 5 pip spread all the time. You may see 1-2 pip occasionally, but just not the kind of thing you can rely on when calculate your risk/reward. For small traders playing a few $100k units, Globex futures are generally better. see EUR, CAD and JPY from IB's TWS Go observe for yourself.