Nothing stops one from trading currency futures or through a serious ECN broker if he/she suspects his dealer is manipulating quotes. I agree that there are shady FX bucket shops, but companies like Dukascopy, LMAX or Interactive Brokers are 100% legit ECNs and can't be accused being part of shady bucket shop business. Ability to make a living in FX depends on ability yo exploit edges provided by FX market fluctuations. Choice of a broker is tactical moment, one can always change it if feels something is wrong, so it's not critical really.
Have you read this : http://www.elitetrader.com/vb/showthread.php?s=&postid=1902877&highlight=Mt4+scam#post1902877
Nope. Looks like a list of crappy dealers. Absolutely agree there are plenty of them and that's exactly what hurts the image of FX market. But in reality I have no idea why would anyone settle with some company from that list. As I said before, some very interesting offers in this market lately. With mere $10K or so one can now participate in true FX ECN with liquidity provided by major banks. It wasn't possible just a few years ago. Don't you think after all that IB's IDEALPRO for example is as crappy as some Cyprus based dealer? Both offer FX trading to retail clients.
http://www.dukascopy.com/swiss/english/about/company/ "2010 Dukascopy Bank SA Dukascopy is authorised by the Swiss Financial Market Supervisory Authority FINMA to conduct banking activities." Key is they provide access to SWFX liquidity pool, it has amazing depth.
if liquidity stops for a second in all pairs 1 second after big news release, say technical glitch, stops will be triggered and executed at unbelievable prices and one can lose way more than account. do they have any safety circuit for that ? as i understand CME futures have something planned in this situation.
You are correct Cornix. Fxbook uses the investor password on MT4 and they take around 3-4 hours to verify your trades. Welcome to the discussion. It's always nice to chat with profitable trader. I recently opened a futures account to do some trading on the ES. If I detect that the currency futures are better, I'll switch those. For now, I really like the EURJPY because it can move 30-60-90 pips in a single swing. If I can get a piece of those moves, I'm happy. If there were a US-traded futures contract for that pair, I'd be smiling Surf, I'll tell you about the only chicanery I have experienced: The account with the very high return is with IronFX, based in Cyprus. Sometimes orders take a few seconds to go through. To place a limit order, price has to be waaay away from the limit price. Essentially, they force you to put in a higher-priced market order. I've complained but nothing has been done. Another area where I think that there is a LARGE degree of chicanery is with automated systems on MT4. I tested some EAs that did fabulously at 1 broker, but blew out the accounts at 2 other brokers. Other people had the same experience. I'm convinced that there has to be some sort of MT4 plugin that allows brokers to screw your automated system if it's on a LIVE account. This is why I trade manually. I recently saw a system that looks viable both manual and automated. I may pay for a coder to code it up for me, but I'm hesitant due to past experiences. I don't have anything negative to say about Dukas or Thinkforex. Both are very excellent honest brokers.
No idea. But CME is not panacea as well, especially outside of RTH and/or during periods of daily downtime. Flash crash comes to mind too, when people just couldn't get out of positions. That's trading, it always was risky and there are more risks than just volatility.
Brazil: Wish you all the best in trading futures! My own choice of index futures is NQ. Much better overall volatility than ES and still liquid enough (for average of two digits number of contracts at least, size I normally trade now).