Hi, I'm new to these forums. Is there a good resource (or two or three) that rates forex brokers and is reliable? I've found several ratings sites but I'm skeptical they were put there by the brokers that are highly rated on their sites. Are there any ratings sites that are widely accepted to be legit? I saw the brokers section on this site but it's kind of limited with regard to forex brokers. Help in this regard would be GREATLY appreciated.
I always check brokers rating on different sites, it helps me avoid the mistakes, reviews and feedbacks it is great!
Trouble is, places like FPA will have just as many cruddy reviews of good brokers as they have good reviews. The industry is full of idiots who wash out and blame the broker instead of taking responsibility of their loss. Generally speaking, stick to well established brokers who are properly regulated. If you're in the US, check out Oanda (they haven't had a single NFA/CFTC action against them, unlike a lot of other popular US brokers.) Outside of the US, you get a lot more options when it comes to good brokers, namely: http://dukascopy.com (excellent reputation and great execution... but need a decent deposit to get a good commission rate.. if less than $~10k, look below) http://pepperstone.com (newer broker but ASIC regulated, segregated funds, Integral price feed which is awesome) Anyhoo, just some thoughts...
i often hear dukascopy is good? how is it compared to IB ? the commission doesnt look that much different?
The commissions scale with volume or account equity size, and it's a set structure so you don't have to negotiate with a rep or anything to get really thin commissions if you push a lot of volume. The execution quality is excellent. You trade on their SWFX ECN that has a lot of other participants along with liquidity providers.. so placing orders within the spread is allowed. You get a depth of book for SWFX too... spreads are very competitive for a commission based broker (~0.5-0.9 on average for EUR/USD for example. Some might think other ECN brokers offering 0.1-0.4 pip spreads are tighter but they simply have higher commissions and dress the quotes a bit.) Fully chartered bank in Switzerland, with Swiss government deposit insurance. However, if you'd like you can hold your funds at another Swiss or Euro bank and setup a bank guarantee instead so the control you have over your trading capital is rather high. This, plus the good execution, is the main reason why so many large account traders will flock to brokers like Dukas. Then there's the little things.. like how their JForex platform has server side trailing stops, so you can set a trailer and close the client knowing it will be executed properly (plus when a trailer is set on the server side the order has the least possible delay to be executed which helps a lot with slippage on trailers.) Or like being able to merge open orders... say you flattened your exposure to a currency pair by creating a position opposite to your open position. Like being long and short 1 lot of EUR/USD at the same time... Instead of having to exit both trades and pay a bit more spread wise, you can merge them together and the open prices of both set the total P/L... no additional commission either. (Way better than how MT4 handles open orders like that, where you have to close both and can't do it at the same time, as in MT4 one must be closed and confirmed before the other can be sent for closure.) I have nothing but good experiences and good things to say about them. . . The only complaint I've ever heard was that they don't directly support Metatrader... but for that there's a bridge program people can use that's 3rd party to get it working. So unless you live and die by some holy grail EA in MT4, this shouldn't really be an issue where you'd have to look for a bridge anyhow. Other software like MultiCharts can directly connect to Dukas (with execution) on an API level without the need for a bridge, so you have other options as well if you're not crazy about JForex.