Guys, I spoke to turbo on the phone today. Pretty cool guy and experienced trader. I assure you that he's not connected with Global in any way.
Wow! I had forgotten about these guys. We've tested so many platforms and liquidity solutions that I did not remember about global. I never went to visit them. The commissions they wanted were outrageous and they though I was an idiot. They kept giving me bs about what real institutional commissions should be. What a bunch of crap. A newbie might swallow all that nonsense, but I've been burned too many times before to fall for it. I still haven't found a perfect institutional solution for heavy-duty scalping. Institutional platforms usually suck. It is also difficult to determine if there isn't any form of sophisticated manipulation going on in the background (like Currenex's famous "last look" feature that we've experienced first hand). If anyone else has found the institutional platform to really scalp, please let me know. Good luck to you all.
Can you describe the "last look" feature, or point us to where is has already been described? I have recently opened an account which trades on Currenex, and I would very much like to know what to look out for, and how I might minimize the ill effects.
ccooper, Currenex does not admit to a "last look" feature - but many traders do. It is difficult to prove that this feature exists than by experience. All these firms police themselves and it is difficult to bust them at their own game. The NFA is cracking down on forex websites and small firms like ours, when they should be going after the banks, FCM's, and institutional platform providers. Police them and you eliminate 90% of the problems in this market. Lon Eagle, we have tried ODL's Currenex (with Strategy Runner), BGC's Currenex (one experienced scalper that ran tests for us said that something funky is going on in the background - still trying it though), Capital Forex Pro's Currenex (will start using it now), and PFG (now trying their Platinum institutional platform with floating spreads with a particular trader that will be trading an institutional account from an allocator for us). I haven't tried HotSpotFxi because the visual liquidity and spreads look worse than for the above brokers. If PFG's Platinum platform works well, we might use it for more traders because the Currenex GUI just plain sucks. It's a pain keeping track of the current position P&L in real time and the total P&L. Since April, Currenex has also eliminated all market order functionality from their platform, which increases trade rejections significantly when the market is moving and doesn't let you place limit orders outside the market with one click. I don't know if your experience is any different.
I notice that Capital Forex Pro offers FxAll to clients as well as Currenex and some others. Did you see the spreads on that screenshot? If those numbers are for real, then they definitely deserve a look. I wasn't aware it was being offered to anyone other than prime accounts. Curious tho as to what leverage they offer.