I have just opened up an IB account with IDEALPRO access. I am looking to do automated trading. My understanding is that for FX they are one of the best in part due to the transparency of being an ECN, meaning they don't take the opposite side of your trades or go stop hunting like many FX FCMs are renowned for. What about executions though? Is there much slippage? I have not seen such on the quote window but what happens when you place an order? Will your orders follow closely to the historical charts? I know the commissions are pretty high in that they are set $ amount per trade, regardless of lot size. So if you did $1M in 10 lots, you'd pay $50 per that $1M. Frankly I don't care about that. So the question comes down to execution. Someone said in another thread they don't offer access to the Kiwi 25/5 so they are not for professional FX trading. I don't know that I care about that since I am not going to trade the Kiwi, but I am curious, what other ECN is there that does offer this and has the reliability and transparency of IB? I know there is HotSpotFX, but they don't let you trade FX futures or options. So I guess I am wondering if there are better options? I looked at DukasCopy but I don't trust that my code has to run inside their little application, nor do they have options/futures for FX either. I am looking for suggestions and advice before I begin trading with my real account. Many thanks.
I've traded up to around 800k on IDEALPRO and average slippage was around 1 - 2 pips. Though I occasionally encountered partial fills.
Thanks. When you say up to 800k, do you mean 8 lot / order, or do you mean 8 orders @ 1 lot each over the course of a day? 1-2 slippage on an 800k order I suppose is not horrible, but on a 100k order I would think that is a bit high no? But then again you said occasionally right? About partial fills, does that mean the unfilled portion remains sitting out there and fills later at a worse market price?
Also how does the IB paper account compare to the real account when it comes to FX? I am thinking it should be the same since liquidity is so huge for FX and (EUR/USD) and since I am placing 100k orders, maybe 250k max. Am I wrong? If I have working strategy in paper account, will it mostly transfer over to live with IB and IDEALPRO?
I was under the impression that IB didn't have an accurate paper account. I thought they gave false data on it. Meaning any strategy you have on there wouldn't mean anything.
Yes, I meant an 8 lot order. Partial fills can be positive and you may get filled at a better price. I've seen odd things happen like being filled for 10k, then 50k, and then the rest. As far as the paper trader, I used it at the beginning of this year and it seemed okay, but nothing is comparable to the live experience anyhow. Now I have an account at IB and one at Oanda. I do futures at IB and forex at Oanda.
I believe that's the free trial account, it's garbage from what I've heard. If you've got an account at IB you can request a real-time paper account.
Exactly. And in any case, I am not going to be using the paper account, I will be pulling down historical data and running backtests on my own machine, with estimates for latency and slippage, so it should be accurate now that I think about it, presuming the slippage isn't awful or inconsistent, and why should it be, this is IB after all and its FX, so it should be easier to simulate than small cap equities right?
Is Oanda as trustworthy as IB IDEALPRO? I ask because I was under the impression that with FX being unregulated and there being no central exchange, the only place that is transparent and safe to trade is real ECNs, like HotSpot, IB IDEALPRO, etc. Why do you prefer Oanda to IB for FX spot trading? And aren't the spreads better on IB anyway? (guess the commissions are higher though?)
Oanda is a bucket shop, and I suppose that's why I don't get any partial fills there But it's been reliable for me, I honestly don't have any complaints. I only trade the EURUSD and it has a nice 0.9 spread and no commissions like IB. Overall Oanda is fairly reliable and a lot of the better forex traders on ET use it I believe.