Dukascopy established 2 retail brokerages, Alpari US and FXDD to handle U.S. clients who were force through regulation to close their direct Dukascopy accounts. These were literally a "pipeline" direct through to Dukascopy's trading systems, and fortunately we didn't have to deal with those brokerage's "legacy" systems, but could trade directly on the ECN. Alpari fairly recently left the retail business, which left us with FXDD. They did a fine job of administering and providing us with NFA compliant FIFO statements for our Dukascopy ECN trading. Now FXDD has sold its retail business to FXCM, and FXCM refuses to take on the JForex client base. FXCM's retail spreads are 3x to 4x wider than Dukascopy's, but as you serious traders know, there's more to a brokerage than just the spread..... So this cuts us off (temporarily, at least) from the huge advantages offered by Dukascopy's access to the SWFX ECN for retail traders through the JForex API. Dukascopy was blindsided by the action by FXDD, so we are hoping they will take action and establish fairly soon another U.S. brokerage which will give us a "portal" onto Dukascopy from within the U.S. as residents. Anybody else think the U.S. regulation has gone just a bit too far ? I say that in jest, since almost everybody feels that way..... HyperScalper
Looks like IB is literally the last semi-honest ecn fx broker with an actually decent API. If IB goes down, it literally is over for the retail US fx market, americans would either have to give up on citizenship and go abroad, or trade futures, which aren't as liquid. No more retail currenex for americans, even though currenex,hotspot, integral, etc. are american. P.S: Don't even think of mentioning the king of bucketshops, fxcm, it amazes me how it is still legal, while all the actual relatively honest retail fx brokers have been chased out.
Hi Everyone, As part of FXCM's acquisition of FXDD US accounts, we created a special profile on our No Dealing Desk (agency execution) with spreads more comparable to the JForex offering you've been using. Over the past week, our Active Trader department has been able to find solutions to meet the needs of many JForex users whose accounts are being transferred to FXCM. Any interested FXDD clients can email activetrader@fxcm.com to discuss these options.
I have a heavy investment in JForex API and, apart from the significant but minor issue of the spreads, there are dozens of other reasons that FXCM cannot be compared to the clearly superior STP/ECN offering at Dukascopy for my trading needs. In my opinion, if FXCM offered JForex as part of a white label program, it would seriously undercut your current Forex operation which I am sure is quite lucrative in both spread takes and commissions. I've instructed my clients to withdraw funds, and wait for Dukascopy to find a solution. Or, I've suggested clients move to Interactive Brokers if we are unable to find a solution through Dukascopy's "white label" marketing program. HyperScalper
Don't feel obligated to bash FXCM or other Forex brokers just to promote IB ... (Nothing against IB by the way)
Not bashing them, I'm just stating the facts. FXCM retail openly states that they are a dealing desk, they also notoriously sell even their order flow for their 'NDD' alleged retail accounts to institutions via their FastMatch ECN with Credit Suisse, so you would be getting ripped off either way. IB may do some market making sure, you're not trading on the the interbank market, but spreads are reasonable, as IB's business is mostly based on commissions rather than profiting from trading against its clients. It's not as if IB is the only option, there are other available retail ECN brokers, but they are not available to US Citizens now. The fact that the CFTC is chasing away actually decent ECN fx brokers from us citizens, but also simultaneously allowing the most egregious offenders like FXCM and Gain Capital should be considered disturbing.
FXCM does have a No Dealing Desk (NDD) service for Forex transactions, on top of the dealing desk model.
In case you mixed it, I explained how even with their 'NDD' service they still openly sell their retail order flow to institutions like in their JV w/ Credit Suisse with their FastMatch ECN. Gain Capital does the same thing with Gain GTX. Now, of course, the resident FXCM rep is going to say, it is all done in the name of 'price improvement', etc. but in the end, they can spew whatever propaganda they want, the fact is that they are sending their retail order flow to be pilfered by institutions, similar to PFOF for equities, except this space is less properly regulated in this context (With PFOF, at least the NBBO must be met in range), thus spreads are even worse in comparison to PFOF schemes.
Trade currency futures at CME then, if you believe FX brokers are eating your lunch. It's liquid enough, unless you are a "whale" and like to trade 200 to 1000 contracts or more per position.