Many, many, many, many traders will NEVER trade with FXCM. Most have used them when they first started out and that firm has left nothing but a BAD taste in the mouth of we traders. FXCM is known to manipulate their price feeds (by widening the spread and not charging a commission is price manipulation, amongst other ways too) and has numerous complaints filed against them with the NFA: http://www.nfa.futures.org/basicnet/Details.aspx?entityid=uy8vi7mVysc=&rn=N I guess you can be commended for not going with Gain Capital, tho.
Can you elaborate on your first statement please? Are you only looking for scalpers who generate a lot of trades / commissions? Do you automatically exclude those who may generate only 15-30 trades a week, despite doing well? I ask this because I wouldn't want to waste my time. I guess I don't understand the point of using fxcm in the recruiting process - from the 2nd statement. Why not just accept statements if it is a reputable broker? Fyi...your contact form submission on your website does not work Thanks.
Any feedback from those in the Evaluation Program especially regarding their use of FXCM for trading? Has 4xprop started exploring alternative brokers as it said it would do?
We will likely not ever hear from forex prop ever again. They were exposed and have likely moved onto less sophisticated fx boards, infomercials and sham wow type promotions. If they haven't folded from lack of interest.
I'm not sure what we were exposed as. Send us NO money for deposit, training, etc. and we let you trade firm capital without any losses coming out of traders pockets. Are you talking about an IB (not us), getting compensated for the account during the evaluation period? 1) Spreads are NOT increased by going through an IB...as a matter of fact some traders that are currently at FXCM and are participating in the EPP actually had their spreads REDUCED! 2) The fact that the IB is getting compensated is clearly disclosed in the paperwork as well as disclosed here on EliteTrader. We actually have been overwhelmed by the amount of traders that are participating in the EPP. The reason we are not more active on this thread is because we spend the day (and night) trading as opposed to spending the day on EliteTrader pumping this thread.
We are looking for active, short term traders. 4XProp makes no money on commissions. 30 trades per week would be on the low side but still acceptable if they were shorter term as opposed to swing trades. We do want to see trading in realtime as opposed to past statements. We are also working with a few other brokers to see if they can accommodate our needs. Our website submission is definitely working but please send us an email direct at info@4XProp.com. Thank You.
4Xprop, I think that if you clear this point up below it will help... If Trader A is a short term active trader that suffers no more than a 15% intraday DD Vs. Trader B who trades less but has the same DD.... Why is Trader A better for you? ES
ES, I will do my best to answer your question. The easiest way to demonstrate why A might be a more desirable trader for us is if we take your example to an extreme (just to make a point). Lets assume Trader A trades 10,000 times during the evaluation period, never has a drawdown greater than 15% and returns 100% on his account. Lets assume Trader B trades 1 time during the evaluation period and also never has a drawdown greater than 15% and also returns 100% on his account. Did Trader B identify a nice trend and put a trade on and have the discipline to keep it on to return 100%? What about next time when the trend goes against him and he's down 20%, then 30%, then 70% etc? Will he get out of the trade or let it fall 100%? How are his risk management skills? How are his position sizing skills? We only have a limited (in this case one) data point to work with. For all we know Trader B flipped a coin to decide whether to go long or short. Now lets look at Trader A that has made 10,000 trades (again, I am taking this to an absurd extreme just to make a point). We can clearly see that he did not get lucky in his trading and is not flipping a coin. We can see that he makes a little bit of money a lot of times. We can tell that he has excellent money management skills and knows how to take a loss. For us this is the type of trading we are looking for. We like to see that a trader is consistent over a greater number of trades. Trader B might have the same, or even better risk/position management skills than Trader A. But we don't have enough data points to know this. Traders B's trading results are not statistically significant for us to properly evaluate and not the type of trading we want to put our capital behind. We would feel very confident that when we hire Trader A his trading results will look like they did during the evaluation period....the same can't be said about Trader B. We might want to generalize and say Trader A is "day trader" and trader B is a "swing trader". Both are great trading strategies. But for us we are looking for more day traders. Maybe its because we come from equity day trading backgrounds and its what we understand most. I hope this helps!!
During the evaluation period and after it ! Evaluation period , IB , active trading , no thanks sounds dodggy to me sorry , and i dont care if i will get reduced spreads either .
4xprop, You said, "We are also working with a few other brokers to see if they can accommodate our needs." Good to know. I suppose we will hear about it here when arrangements are finalized?