It wasnt what I was told 2 years ago. Then I was told they are stale quotes, the platform freezes and so the prices don't really exist. I dare say the only thing to do is set up another account and see if it has changed.
I have now done a few trades and played around with their API. Average execution-speed for me was ca. 950ms (altho, i ping around 200ms to their servers). Spreads are good, the "inversed" quotes during fast markets dont seem to be a big problem for me. I think its hard to exploit them, the price might be anywhere after around 1 second execution speed. Maybe its possible with a really fast connection to them and an api-application.. Their api is pretty neat. Its done with COM-objects, you can hack something up pretty fast if you are familiar with a com-compliant language. Beats IBs java-thing in my opinion. They dont provide backfill-data tho, which makes things complicated if you need them. Esignal has their data in the GTIS feed ("3DFX"). In a FX account you can only trade FX, and no futures, stocks, etc. I think that sucks. Commissions are well, 50/mio. In the end, its comparable with other retail-plattforms like oanda. They dont have a dent on more professional multibank-plattforms with $50, but i think its ok for the retail-sector. They have a hard time competing with IB tho, IMO.
I can honestly say that out of the eight main brokers I am using for forex trading, MBT are the worst for fills except for FXCM and a couple of other bucket shops. I trade with a 170 strong trading room and not one of those traders including myself had a single good word to say about MBT or EFX. Their fills for news trading are the worst in the business, and then if that wasnt bad enough youre lucky if you manage to cancel the order in time resulting in a loss (they still get their commish though). Slippage is their real talent though because on the rare occasion you get in on the deal, youre gauranteed a seat right at the top of the spike. many of us have compared several brokers side by side on mutiscreens and enter before the spike....MBT EFX still fail to come close to the others. Even when market conditions are moving slightly quicker than normal similar problems can occur. The word is OUT.
Thanks for that Steve. I have just opened an account with EFX but wondered why I could not open a Futures etc account with MBT.
Actually, i just realized their $5 per 100k Units traded means $5 for USD/JPY or USD/CHF, but for example with cable at 1.9700 you trade 10 lots cable: 197000 GBP for 100000 USD, that means works out to around 9.9 USD comission per side. So effectivly you can add 2 pips on the cable-spread. Ã have sympathy for their platform and api-implementation, but this sort of commission just doesnt cut it.