As IB is not a MM in the ECN, and FX interbank is basically an OTC trading, I would have two questions with this kind of "small-scale" or "simulated interbank" ECNs: 1. How about our stop loss orders that have been placed before the situations happening like this Friday would have no MM (as counter-parties) to deal with when needed? 2. How would we be assured that the partipating MMs' servers will be running smoothly during the situations happening like this Friday?
I would guess, perhaps by its nature of retailing FX we couldn't find a perfect or ideal firm/ broker, likely at least not now. Personally I would try to evaluate and listen more from the comments made by some profitable FX traders, particularly when sometimes they mention they turn to profitable or become more profitable after switching to a new firm. Many other comments about such as how powerful/ elegant is the charting, how user-frinedly is the staff, how big the firm size, etc. would be secondary, in relation to traders' profitability. Just my 2 cents.
Oddtrader, you should send a PM to Steve_IB, asking these two questions. My prediction is that he will give you satisfactory answers, which will show that even in those situations you mention, you are way better off on IB than with a bucketshop. And you should ask him to answer your questions publicly, by posting his answers to this thread, so everybody can see.
So, right when NFP numbers were released today, Oanda went down? Coincidence? And CMSfx went down? Double coincidence? And CMC went down? Triple coincidence?
I would rather send PMs to the traders using IB for comments. When your profitable account is significantly LARGE one day, all the stop loss orders previously maintained on IB's server during this kind of quick and extreme movements would be very interesting. Is there any trader here actually trading with IB on Friday? Your experience would be valuable to us. BTW, what is the fx firm you use?
I was trading the Ideal Pro on Friday, but I got the wrong time of the release date and missed seeing how IDP performed. It was good an hour after though (when I thought it was due).
I was trading IB at that time, IDEALPRO behaved very well, I was even surprised about the tight-spreads (I have recorded the whole session in ButtonTrader and will measure the real-spread histogram during this session later in playback-mode). I did trade the Globex-FX-Futures thought, during the news-release (scalps in EUR and GBP, which were very profitable). I could have traded IDEALPRO as well, but my trading-system is still based on watching the moves in Spot (second charts in ButtonTrader) and trading the Futures (First chart side-by-side). I will probably switch to IDEALPRO in future (for some of the currency-pairs).