Interesting... I knew about the recent GAIN capital IPO, htough being absolutely clueless for OANDA and again - not knowing about forex.com fines. Basically, as the story goes ...forex.com was my first ever experience as a trader back in 2006 when i didn't even know the meaning of "technical analysis" let alone things like "volatility" "IPO" "put option" etc...etc. Anyway...then i lost all my money but can't complain of the service they provide - the platform was smooth and so was the customer service. A few more interesting and hopefully helpful observations from my side: - Forex.com and Saxobank are recommended (kind of) on the nasdaq website. - Saxobank appears not to be registered with SEC and they still offer stocks - crime in its purest form. BAscially saxo have terrible reviews online so they're outta question. - Why not Deutche bank and Barclays? If you can'y trust them...then yo shouldn't trust any financial institution out there. I guess their relatively high initial deposit and high spreads is what makes them not so popular...BUT - their minimum dep. isn't so high and the spreads are good - anyone trading with them? I guess for now i am leaning towards fxcm or...now that i made additional research - dbfx. But gotta...do a little more 'homework'.
do you mean that if i scale into a position in 5 to 10 pieces (instead of one single entry) then the commissions incurred with IB would be expensive? no issues with scaling in scaling out on spread-based brokers. does IB or Oanda have conditional orders like OCO/OSO or parent-contingent where i can enter to open a position and have preset stop and preset target in server?
you can't really trade below a certain minimum size with IB as it gets directed to another market segment (it's been quite a while but I believe it's 20000 minimum) where they have like 20 pips spread. Also there is a fixed minimal commission. So both of these things will kill you. Ib gets better (comparatively) as your size increases. But even then Oanda remains most likely the best choice no matter what. With oanda you can start with like 100 EUR, you'll have the same trading conditions as someone with a trading account of 300 K.
IB has oco-orders, oanda works a bit differently; best way to get to know oanda would be to open a 'game'-version and try out some things. However wait a week to really judge the system in an honest way as the coming week will NOT be a reference period due to holidays. As soon as it's january all will be back to standard, so be the judge at that point. Another point of advice, even though oanda has pippettes, don't try to game them there, there is just no point. I got mine switched on to pips, as an added bonus it's easier on the eyes too.
there is another site discussing brokers at www.ETisbetterandtheotherforumsneednotpostanymore.com with 6 years worth of posts so we don't have to repeat all here. but you are definitely VERY wrong about Saxobank
yup exactly, just switched to oanda the other day amid the recommendations on here as Interactive was getting expensive. Yup they both have OCO.
athlonmank8, since when does Oanda have OCO orders? Do you use some third party order entry software for Oanda? OCO orders are generally used by a trader when he does not know what direction the market will go...so he places a long and a short but does not want both of them to execute...they are sitting there as open orders...sorta like a channel..He just wants the market to decide and whichever hits first the other open order gets cancelled. http://www.investopedia.com/terms/o/oco.asp ES P.S. You can have stops and TP's but that does not mean OCO. OCO functions when you place TWO orders...Now each of those orders can have TP's and Stops...but if one of them gets executed the other standing order gets closed. This is not necessarily stop and reverse either. P.P.S. Oanda would get you long then if it bounced to the other side it might get short and that would be hedging and one of two things might happen...your long might get closed or the short would not execute....never tried it.
Have a look (just to compare) at TRADESIGNALONLINE.COM - they have an English version as well. I use it - for charting only - and am quite happy. Imo they are low priced however, see for yourself. Whether their forex data feed is good I don't know.
for the record I found something out: it's best to clear your JAVA cache each morning before you start to trade, that way neither oanda or PRT will clog up. I often did that anyway, but recently forgot a few times and got into trouble then. So it looks like it's not really Oanda's fault, it's more likely the people at SUN.