Just a mention. LMAX (London Multi-asset Exchange). A very interesting concept. JPM and GS are liquidity providers. Thompson Reuters. data. DMA model, no MM. Reasonable commissions (same as IB). I've just opened an account and am receiving 200:1 margin; great. I don't have to stick 10,000 + into some outfit's coffers at my interest loss. The spreads are truly great: <0.5 for eur/jpy/gbp/usd most of liquid hours. They have several api solutions which are FREE. They have just hooked up with Multicharts and offer platform free if 2.5 mil traded each month. The min lot size is a single mini lot (10,000). They are very fast and you get the price quoted. It's early days for me but I cannot see any drawbacks at the moment. The charts are okay if your doing minute based analysis. Only thing: not available to our freinds in the USA yet. But eurozone, fine.
This is in fact the only real forex spot broker around , have a look at their spreads http://www.lmaxtrader.co.uk/average-spreads Close your account with your crooked market maker who wants to profit from your loss...NOW
I've got an account with Oanda still but I'll use this for hedging and as a back-up. Oanda are good but clever, you know. I've noticed they 'freeze' their prices at crucial inflection points. Little games but it adds up. LMAX are getting me into the market instantly, no conflict of interest here. IB were good but being able to trade 100,000 with only 1000 on deposit and getting better spreads of 0.2/3 on eur/usd/gbp is tough to beat.
What's the minimum account margin ? Does the platform shows tick volume in charts? or can I have traded volume (from the LMAX MTF) ? Thanks!
Lmax traded volume is published on Reuters in realtime. Symbol EURUSD.LMX for example. Its not published on FIX or api.