Greetings my friends! Today or tommorow starts my first trading account with real money. I've opened Forex Mini Account with GFT UK Ltd. I've already transferred the money which was as little as possible to minimize the risk but to start a real play. Me and my friend have deposited together.... 500USD ! (Ok, it is funny, but it is only a beginning. I come from Poland... a rather poor country in Mid-East-Europe, so if they cheat such a poor guy.... ) On this thread I will write about what kind of service GFT UK gives to its clients. At the moment I am a little short of time, so only give here a link to their page: http://www.gftuk.com/forex/market-info/mini.asp where You have important information about both accounts - standard an mini (in the appriopriate link). Notice their wide spreads... And the rollover policy: when You have the mini-account, You do not profit from rollover! You can only loose: "However, if you are holding the foreign currency with the lower rate of interest you will pay financing as follows. Your positions will be closed at the current rate and reinstated at the current institutional swap rate plus .5 ticks if you have a long position and minus .5 ticks if you have a short position." So why I have opened an account with GFT UK? Because they offer very big leverage 1:400 and a very little initial deposit (minimum 500 USD in UK and 250 USD in USA). The next thing is that their spreads are told to be fixed, and the variety of currency pairs is big enough. I've been speaking to my "advisor" from The Company, asking about filling the limit orders. (It is obvious that filling instant orders is often delayed by many brokers, but I will play mainly with limit orders.) She told me, that they cannot guarantee the price with limits, but only "the best possible" price. Ok. I told her, that exact filling of the awaiting limit orders is one of the most important things and if they tend to fill in a distance from them or will not fill them too often, I will resign. I was informed, that withdrawal of money does not cost anything. Summing up: I am giving GFT a try. This may be a good "commercial" for them to draw attention of small capital or to show up as scammers. I will let You now about every transaction I make, every fill and all my observations. Cross Your fingers for me and have a look here sometimes to see, how am I doing and what do I think about GFT UK Ltd.
I know you're excited about trading a live account and normally I would wish you the best of luck, but this is just plain crazy. The $500 isn't the funny part, what's funny is you've opened a Base10 (mini account) that has a minimum trade size of 10k, with a $500 account! Do you realize that as soon as you open a trade you will be down between .5 and 1%, and that's without the market moving one pip against you, that's just spread! What stops are you planning on using, 20 or 30? That's at least 4 to 6% risk per 10k trade. Sorry but this was a bad idea, there is no way you can use any sort of acceptable money management like this, you would have been better off opening an account with Oanda and traded any size you like from 1 unit upwards. At least that way you could have learnt how to trade and manage your money and risk, even if you ended up losing it all at least you would have gained some practical trading experience. I understand $500 is a lot of money in Poland, do you really want to just throw it away within a few days (or weeks if you're lucky) and get absolutely nothing in return? Sorry to be so negative but you need to be realistic. Maybe it's not too late to draw out your money from GFT and open an account with Oanda. On the other hand if you're just playing around then why not enjoy spending the money. why don't you and your friend go down to the local casino and play roulette, have a few drinks, enjoy the atmosphere, hell you'd have a better chance of making some money! Even if you lost it all you can at least remember a good night out.
Cabletrader, thank You for Your help and advice. I am good at maths and I know about the fact, that I will be down 1% with entering a single trade. But my trading strategy will be choosing trades which may last for days. There is no other possiblity, than playing with minilots of 10000 with GFT mini-spot forex account. I will open waiting limits or wait for opportunities during sessions with several different pairs to diversificate (no single currency in an open trade will be the same as in another trade). If I loose 33% of my initial deposit, I stop and probably withdraw all money.
Go with mbtrading. You can trade any size you want and the minimum is like 400 or something. It says 10k minimum on their site but you can trade any size. Also the spreads are much better than these bucket shops. Even if your strategy is solid, the odds are stacked against you to make it with suck high spreads. With mbtrading you can trade like 100 lots if you want which is very minimal risk even with a 500 dollar account. Best of luck to you.
forest, I trade mini lots too with GFT and dont have any problems..i keep stops to around 30-50 pips..and i was taking that risk when my account was only 175.00..but I grew my account o over 500.00 as of today. IM me with any questions. cm69
Personally I think that 30-50 pip stops is way too much. 1st of all I will keep to a basic rule: never risk more than 10% of the whole capital. This rule is extremely important and well justified. Why? If You loose f.e. 10% from 100units, You will have to make 11.111% to get back to the initial 100, which is almost the same as 10%. But if You loose, lets say, 33%, then You are left with 67units and You will have to make 50% out of it to get back to the start. So it is much easier too loose than to win! (WHAT A DISCOVERY)
A FIRST REMARK ABOUT GFT SERVICE. BEFORE I have opened the account a "advisor" was responding to my e-mails as quick as possible (even 10-15 minutes). After I have already deposited the money to their account, today, I am waiting already 4.5 hours for response to a first mail and 2 hours for the another, which was a question. THAT IS A VERY BAD SIGN!
I totally agree with cable on this one. Don't be crazy, you are trading too big for that account size ESPECIALLY ESPECIALLY ESPECIALLY when you have a dealing desk trading against you (possibly). They can damn near wipe you out with one "aberration". Oanda is a market maker, yes, BUT they also allow you to trade as low as $1. You can still trade a $500 account just like you would a $5000 account, just in a smaller size. It's great for scaling up and growing into a larger account. I can vouch for Oanda, and just to be fair I am making a deposit with EFX group to give them a shot. I am hesitant to do that as they have a very low net cap and there's just "something about them" that is not right it seems. I have had really no desire to even try anyone out since finding Oanda because they are awesome all around....but I want to be able to use NinjaTrader and EFX Group is the only viable option for fx right now. If I find EFX to be garbage, you will all hear about it, and if they suck, then I'll just have to do without NinjaTrader. Sorry to go on a tangent about EFX group, but the point is, with a small account, stick with Oanda, as you will get filled at good prices and they are an honest shop from what I've seen (every broker has some questionable moments I've found)....then once you get comfortable trading, feel free to try out other brokers...but be careful. There's a lot of scam shops out there wanting to puff your head up and make you think you're a hotshot trader so you'll make a deposit with them and get reamed. Oanda is no hype no BS from my experience. Enough about them, best of luck in your endeavors. Just TRADE SMALL.