I am looking at IB right now, its 2 points on euro, plus 1/2 point in brokerage to get in and another 1/2 to get out that adds up to a 3point spread. My friend told me his Oanda Accout is showing 1.6 points. So which one is better. Oanda. I am getting real pissed and I will shut this accout real quick if this continues $/cad on IB is 7 point at this moment that is a huge joke. Plus brokerage IB needs to get alot more competitive ..........
Something has changed at IB since the halfs were introduced. However, over the past couple days it is tightening up in the EUR/USD. Today I was filled at a half pip a couple times. It does jump out to two pips way more than it did. Or at least appears to. I got used to it being one pip for the longest time. Don't know what changed.
Answers to some questions/comments: "jumpy quotes": not all liquidity providers are giving us 1/2 tick prices. When there is improvement (or fade) from a 1-tick provider the spread can appear to be jumping out inordinately. But this should not be any different in reality than the situation before we went to half pip pricing. Nevertheless, I am hearing enough commentary that the 1/2 pip pricing appears to be on average worse, so we are looking into it bpatrick: I have not seen USD/EUR wider than 2 pips except for perhaps a few minutes from 17:30 to 18:00 when not all market makers have restarted after the 17:00 clearing day change. If anyone sees differently, send me an email with as much detail as possible (time, observed quote, size if possible) and I will figure out what is going on. I don't say it isn't possible, just that it is rare, and should only be when the liquidity providers aren't on. PNL display: IB treats FX trades just like any other asset such as stock. The numerator asset (for example $) goes into one balance (cash) and the denominator asset (GOOG stock) goes into another (stock position). The only difference for FX transactions is that both numerator and denominator are cash positions. Our handling offers the advantage that you can exit a currency position differently than you enter it. For example, I sell USD / buy EUR. Now I want to lose the EUR; I can do so by trading it against any other currency, not just USD. I am not an expert on what other platforms offer in this regard but I think the 'contract' based approach requires one to exit the currency position in the same way it was entered. In addition, I can be long EUR from USD/EUR trades and short it via CHF/EUR and the two EUR positions won't net, so these platforms would charge you the interest spread for both the long and short positions. IB nets, so there are no hidden costs. Anyone trading JPY/GBP in the funky holiday period at the end of April can see a great demo of the scale of real interest costs by triangling the legs against other currency pairs. Many pips. We hear the request for a contract based view of positions (and the associated ability to have a contract style pnl) and it will happen. I am working on the design now and it will offer a view layer on top of the existing cash balance position management so traders will get the best of both approaches. Margins: Sorry, 100:1 wont happen, at least not soon. Daily vols in most currencies are 0.55 to 0.81%. GLOBEX margins (overnight maint) are typically 1.4% of contract value for the majors and (surprisingly to me) 2.5% for JPY. The minors are mostly 2% plus. We will probably drop JPY to 50:1 in the near future because even if the GLOBEX margin seems high, the empirical volatilities are in the same range as the other majors, i.e. about 0.6% New Markets: Mexican Peso (MXN) and Swedish Krone (SEK) coming in 1-2 weeks. We expect to add about 10 more currencies over the next few months. gwac, Mr Oanda fan: Oanda has an absolutely legitimate FX offering. You will have to judge for yourself the quality of the platform when the markets move. IB charges a commission. This was a topic of intense debate within our products group and we finally decided that it was better to maintain our role as a nonconflicting, pure agent. We don't trade against you (as does Oanda and most other FX platforms). Our sole focus is on getting you the best possible fill. Without meaning to cast aspersions on the priorities of Oanda, it is hard to imagine their platform focuses on getting you good fills when they are trading the other side and therefore have a clear vested interest in having your trade go against you. Trade/Order problems: as stated by DEF, when you have a problem, contact Customer Service ASAP. Call or use the Chat facility inside account management. Sending an email is like sending it by post ... sloooowwww. We may not be able to fix a problem on the spot, but we take people who minimize the free option of time much more seriously than reports hours later. You would be amazed at the percentage of times someone calls to complain about an order problem 3-4 hours after the fact and when we look closely, we find the error went in his favor for 2 hours, he traded around it, and then when the market reversed, it suddenly morphed into a problem. As I am in charge of our service policies, I am on safe ground to say, report problems quickly to be taken seriously. Those of you who were with us 1 year ago, can testify to how much improved is IDEALPRO in just 12 months. We will continue to improve our FX offering and will fix bugs, design flaws, and pure market quality. -- Lot of words. I hope they are of some use. jcc
JCC I am not an Oanda fan, I am a fan of getting the best possible prices. I can live with a 1 point spreads plus brokerage on euro. That is what everyone kept saying was the spread on IB when I decided to get an IB account, but ever since I go it, it seems that it is always at 2 points. Right now euro is 1, funds 3, cable 3, $jpy 1. Which is great but it needs to stay at these prices.
Jcc Also I have no issue with the platform, it is great. Last note, funds is my favorite pair there has got to be a way to try to keep the spread around 3 points..... Now its back to 5 points, better than the 7 before....
Good job! At least you guys listen. I had sent a PNL idea to DAV and it looks like you guys are implementing it! There is an advantage to doing it like Interbank in regards to PNL. We just need a way to keep track of multiple positions. It looks like you guys have that covered! Check out the spreads and get back to us. At first I thought it was just my eyes. After all with the spread on EUR/USD being just half pips ---it will obviously move more visually. But something has changed. IT does appear to fill me more inbetween now. So there is alot going on between the spread. It has been better over the past two days. But at first it looked like u guys wrecked your great forex ecn. Publish a list of the new pairs you will offering (if you can).
Thanks for all this. Please include NZD (kiwi)in new offerings. I think it is important to keep charging commission for exactly the reason you give (if you can lower it all the better ) I have been with IB for three years and gave up on Ideal pro when it was first released. Very different now - I am using Idealpro more than Oanda recently.