oanda all the way , because the spread is everything , 100:1,not a problem , just deposite double the amount deposite , that's all . but you gonna get it back by the tight spread .
crazy it is. it's high pressure, but at this point i'm seeing if scalping profitably is possible in this. over 5 days of demo trading i'm up 18% scalping on using $3k as my assumed limit (even though most demos are higher). it could be that i've got to turn into an inverstor and not scalper.
i use oanda and am very happy with it, but im curious how can they keep the spread this low? kinda makes me think if there is something to worry about since all the big fx brokers usualy do the 3 pip spread on majors. could oanda just be raking in new client funds with some profit margin for them from the low spread and then BAMMM one day surprise us and there is no more Oanda>??? probably silly speculation but got me thinking about it. any thoughts?
my ignorance. i didn't see that oanda is down to 1.5 spread on E$. that's significant...50%. i saw it at 3 spread before. i guess i'll seriously use oanda and see how it would work then. maybe even put some trade in for longer term (more than 10 minutes)...
Janko, When its enough money, Oanda will work with you as far as a segregated situation or perhaps a letter of Credit. When your reach 50k give them a call...
ib and hotspot both have 2 pips spread on the eur/usd , so the real spread is probaly 1 spread on eur/usd , or they don't make money on eur/usd but make money on others spread ,so you know how much money other firm have made from us .
Neither IB or Hotspot makes money on their spread since they don't make the market. They make money on the commission you pay. The more you deal, the more they make. It has been some time since I worked on a spot desk in a major bank but I believe the prevailing spread in EUR is 2 pips with 1 pip being seen at times, which is what I witness on both of the mentioned platforms regularly. The guys who are making the market showing you 3 pips plus in EUR (and lets not even start about the 3 pips plus they show in USD/JPY which is always a 2 pip market) are doing quite well off you.
Hedging... I have been meaning to ask someone about this so when I saw this discussion I figured I would get this straightened out. I just don't understand how being hedged is any different than being flat. Someone mentioned a benefit of only putting up margin for one position...being flat requires no margin. Someone else mentioned it lets you stay market neutral until the direction of the market becomes more clear...so does being flat. The math for a hedge is the same as being flat...what am I missing here? It seems to me like the only difference is that you would have to pay the spread twice instead of only once.