Still using them for options...best so far IMO next to IB. TTO for options is great and commissions are pretty good too. Sounds like they suck for Forex though. Sorry to hear that Sounds like you were right Reaver (as usual)
Dukas I think you are in the ball park on this. A few guys here tried to set something up with them and eveything presented did not add up, i.e. bank guarantee trading for funds safety that no one could get, aggregate platform of feeds from Currenex, hotspotfx, their own, and something else. With that man feeds, the spread should be better than any on feed by itself, but upon comparison, we were getting better spreads with hotspotfx platform directly than their quotes. Overall feeling left you feeling kinda dirty when you were done with them. IB's fx platform, well, it sucks, especially if you are more familiar and comfortable dealing with the ubiquitous graphical frontend trading of just about every other fx broker. Ease of use? not exactly. If you use them, it is best to get a front end to work with the TWS like buttontrader or Ninja. I prefer Ninja as it gives a little automation and the graphing is far superior than IB's own. And yes, it is worth the $60/month for the person who will respond that they have to pay for it. Compare IB's commission structure to MBT's: MBT charges 150% more than IB does. And yeah, CS sucks and I still can't close out all balances to flat no matter how hard I try. Hotspot is probably the best ECN for straight spot fx trading. If you don't need to hedge futures vs spot and you are doing scalping or directional trading, look at them. Platform is a little tough too but rates are 3/100k (MBT is 66% higher) and has better depth than MBT. Drawback vs MBT is margin (50:1 which decreases to 33:1 on balances over 100k - or at least it used to on the retail platform; they have been making some changes over there recently so you'd have to double check.) Based on your needs and preferences, both IB and Hotspot would be a better choice than MBT
Nah man, I am wrong plenty...I just try to be wrong smaller. ha ha Do you get pretty decent execution on your option trades?
Unfortunately the retail side of HotSpot was just bought out by FXCM. Link They're not buying the platform nor the price feeds, just the clients. A shame, I only heard good things about HS FXr, and never heard anything about FXCM Active Trader..
Oh man that is shitty news. No way in hell would I have an account with FXCM in any form or fashion whatsoever.
Wow! That really sucks! I didn't see that. Scratch what I said then about Hotspot unless you have 100k to go on the institutional level. Like Reaver said, Run! Don't walk as far away from FXCM as you can. Any broker that does not charge a commish is manipulating prices, no matter what he says.
It must be a new ECN offering as they do charge commissions, nothing great, $5 per 100k notional dropping to $3.5 after 10M/month. I tried the demo for the heck of it, spreads and depth are inferior to other venues, especially the depth. 5 levels deep and not breaking 10M on any majors.. Pic
With 10k trading minis they're all on the other side of your trade and they'll manipulate quotes to suit their book and their liquidity providers quotes. Way too much marketing hype surrounds so-called ECN-style and non-dealing-desk 'level playing field' marketmakers, most are just rehashed bucketshops at this level, same game just a different name.