yes & yes & probably happened to a couple 100/1,000? people on this site, and 10,000s out there, welcome on board suggestions, let me try to summarize what i've learnt after 6 mths on ET: - simplest and safest seems to be: forget spot fx and trade exchange-traded cme efx / eurexus fx products instead, via interactivebrokers.com aka IB or any other futures broker of yr choice (xpresstrade.com ?) - now if u want to continue on the fx spot trading route: . preferably always use min. 2 brokers / ECNs (multi-dealer platforms) and hide your trading pattern as much as u can (hedge on the other platform and unwind on both 1hr later... may cost u spread, but much less to no aggro like above-described from yr broker(s) ) . if u use an ECN-type platform (unless u r trading a pair for which there happens to be only one liquidity provider... always worth asking/checking..), a dealer can't penalize u for hitting him in fast mkts since you'll exit yr trade at the 'best available' price anyway, therefore what happened to you at fxcm wld not happen... still good to have a 2nd broker / ECN acct elsewhere (in case the other goes down temporarily or whatever... costs more K but thats peace of mind...) . reputed "tight spreads" single-dealer brokers: oanda.com , seems if u wanted to go with only 1 (single-dealer) broker to limit the hassle, this shld be the one... - liveable (i.e. some people incl yrs truly did get screw*d badly occasionally, but...) "fixed spreads... ahemmm" single-dealer brokers: ac-markets.com , forex.com , saxobank.com , ifxmarkets.com - reputed ECN model type platform: interactivebrokers.com, hotspotfx.com , currenex via fxcmpro.com (yeah, fxcm again... i use them, so far no complaints), there's been mention of coesfx.com , fxdd.com , interbankfx.com and a couple others... run a search on ecns, u'll find them as i'm sure u'll be aware, the above is totally incomplete and am sure u'll get more answers as a result and people may give me some grief over naming / not naming this or that broker / ECN but... hope i didn't confuse the hell out of u... hope it helps a bit... going to bed now, good luck with yr trading! cheerio
Get the names of 10 people you know and trust, close your account down and reopen another one , repeat until FXCM has felt your wrath. Then go on to another market maker,etc.........
So what is the best way of making money in forex? is it to go for hundreds of pips with a small position, or go for a small amount of pips with high leverage? Are there conditions or set-ups which give the client an edge in the market, in which one should exploit with higher leverage?
Perhaps investigate some brokers' company structure, in order to find out which ones have the most staff (? for manual operations?) and then don't expect much from them. Find out also which ones, that could be heavily employing highly automated operations, would have the minimum staff, and then try them and see what would happen when trading with them. I would guess probably many, if not most, of them would deploy/ use fairly (dynamically designed/ custom-made) intelligent algorithms to run our stops, that should be basically logical and reasonable, imo, as they are market-makers. However, after GAINing much painful experience, we could learn and understand some of their market-making algorithms in order to know how to improve our own strategies and tactics to be survival in this challenging FX business. Just my 2 cents.
I fell out my chair when I saw this one;-) There is no best way of making money other than the strategy that suits YOU best. If you've got some good strategies see what they would do under longer time frames. I've been told no market maker will care how much you win as long as the strategy is meant to hold for 5 minutes or longer. I myself use hourly strategies because there is far less noise. But in a market maker's defense...It is what it is...Why get mad about what they won't let you do, and instead praise them for what they will let you... Although putting you on manual just flat out sucks...I suggest go learn how to program to their sockets and teach them a lesson. There are certain conditions you could exploit like hedging but I wouldn't suggest you try doing them until you could program a computer quite well or become a pro at the markets. Vizion
Topic: Large account 3,000K ! (GBP) http://www2.oanda.com/cgi-bin/msgboard/ultimatebb.cgi?ubb=get_topic;f=18;t=000549#000005
The guy did well from oanda. Over what period did he achieve this? I think it is possible, i just think you have to ante-up on days when you have an advantage and play small when you havent. The difficulty is finding out when you have that advantage and exploiting it.
From your question, I gather you don't use stop-loss orders or limit orders -- the latter either as take profit or as entries. Stops and limits supply the fx dealer with the price targets to hit, avoid, and job. They are the food of his profit machine. That's why I say the dealer decides who wins, who loses, i.e., which trades win, which lose. It's also why the dealer loves customers who, not knowing any better, use systems and other nonsense in the belief that stops and limits at magic numbers will make them profits.
Does anybody think "Algorithmic Trading" would be useful? http://www.elitetrader.com/vb/showthread.php?threadid=57790