I listed 2005 just to show you how long I have been in this business. The fact is few if any DO NOT TRADE against their clients. This has been proven without a doubt. Use your own advise and use search. You are either naive or a bucket shop.
Brokers who bet against customers must disclose this information on their web site or they will be illegal. So just pick out brokers who disclose this information on their web to back you up. Do not claim anything without evidences. Don't fabricate facts.
FX is notoriously hard. Not impossible but hard. I think someone said it here before, you need to treat trading as business. So, make a business plan and manage your risk. You don't "play" with $100, you risk $100 per trade. You're in the risk management business when trading, otherwise it's gambling. Change your mind frame to that. Then deleverage. Risk 1% of your account equity on a trade. That way you cannot get broke and you won't have wild swings. Your opportunity cost of having a trading account is the risk free interest rate (T-Bills etc) you could earn elsewhere doing nothing. Before you trade, form a view on your FX pair of choice. Why do you think it should appreciate/depreciate. That's the hard part. Fundamental macroeconomic models typically fail here or are so vague that you cannot really trade off them. They may hold in the long term but you cannot stay with a position for months. Unlike banks and funds, you have no credit lines and get marked to market on a daily basis (futures) or worse, your broker may add some carry/overnight charge of some description, so holding a small position longer term might be prohibitively expensive or not possible. These are your constraints as retail trader. You could look at previous highs/lows, price behaviour around round figures and say 200 day SMA's. Or emerging market vs safe haven currencies vs. risk on/off. Commodity currencies vs oil. Just some ideas.
Very bad advice, 1 percent on a given trade is a huge risk. Death by a thousand cuts, in this case is just 100 cuts. if you day trading of course. Investing is a totally different story all together.
Keep in mind that if you have a losing streak your percentage will translate into a smaller notional amount. If you say 1% is too risky, what would you recommend? NB: I did have a position-trade approach in mind, not day trading (good luck with that anyways). I did not suggest to risk a full Kelly which would be higher but problematic with no track record or back-test results.
If you say "death" is just "100 cuts" risking 1% per trade, then you're assuming 100 straight losses without a win. Not very realistic unless the trade management is really bad. Even a poor trader will get a few winners out of 100 trades. You're saying if I trade MES with a $1,000 account, that $10 is a "huge risk" ?
1% of $10k = $100, depending on the underlying, the lot size and holding period one can calculate a daily, weekly etc VaR. $100 can be 10 lots a $10, 1 lot a $100. By 1% I do not mean the margin requirements but where the mental or placed stop is relative to entry. I personally stick to the 1% rule trading spreads and am very comfortable with that. Depending on the market, there can be gap risks, bid/ask spreads in fast markets to deal with. They need to be considered. I also calculate the tail risks, extreme scenarios of the past 20 years. If a market is prone to gaps, lacks liquidity at times, that should be factored in and 1% is quite possibly still too high.
YEP! On a 1:1 Risk v reward ratio, it is death by a hundred cuts. Do you see the volatility we are in?
Where did I say 100 consecutive losses??? Yes 1 percent risk on a trade in day trading is rather large even on short term swing it is large. $10 is nothing. 10k on a million is significant. You can easily have 10 losses in a raw and loose 100k. See how perception changes once more Or less serious money are on the line.