Hi, I've been looking to get into trading fx, tried a demo account for about a month with one of the large brokers and did quite well, would like to try a live account with a small stake to start. I'm still a relative newb to forex but I do know that I would feel a lot more comfortable being with a no dealing desk broker, I've read too many accusations on boards that I don't want to have to second guess anything regarding my trades. Currently I'm looking at MBT and Oanda. Two problems though, MBT doesn't appear to be available to Canadians as Canada is not listed in their account opening process.......can anyone confirm? And the other is that I have not been able to determine if Oanda takes the other side of client trades or not, searched their site and couldn't find a clear answer, forum posts have not been clear either, any input is appreciated.
Canadian residents cannot trade spot fx with mbt http://www.mbtrading.com/forexAccountTypes.aspx click on restricted country hypertext. Oanda will attempt to match orders in house and will aggregate trades. there is a lot of information on the net regarding oanda and their trade mechanisms.
Canadian here... Yeah, as the other poster said, MBT doesn't take Canadian clients. Oanda is great for their spreads but they tend to get wide during non-active times. They say it's because liquidity drys up in the market, but a few different ECNs I trade with have great liquidity during these times. Plus, it's a tad annoying when they widen their spreads to 10 pips on the majors during news releases... I understand why they do this, and how it fits in their system, so I don't blame them... I just find it annoying. As a bonus (and you don't have to be an Oanda user to view it) there's Oanda's fxLabs: http://fxtrade.oanda.com/analysis/labs/ Very interesting data there... specifically the 'top 100 traders' section where they look at the trading stats of the top traders on their client list. All that aside, some people find their leverage a bit limiting, and the widened spreads during news and non-active sessions outright blows for news trades or scalpers... So I usually point out a great Australian broker that accepts Canadian clients called Pepperstone Their spreads on their Razor account are from Integral's ECN grid so there's a commission charge but the total cost in pips is lower than Oanda during high liquidity times and blow Oanda out of the water during news and low liquidity times... http://pepperstone.com/trading-accounts/accounts-razor.php
A number of brokers call themselves Non-Dealing Desk. The problem is, one can't see the actual path of orders. Brokers can easily lie about it and most likely they do. On the other hand, even true Non-Dealing Desk just forwards your orders to a bigger broker, and this bigger one may be nothing but a big bucketshop. So I think the only thing that matters is quality of order execution, spreads and some regulation to prevent fraud. Whether it is DD or NDD doesn't matter at all.
..."most likely do" Be skeptical, it's healthy as a trader, but don't blindly spread fear. You're right though on your last point, it matters little in the end since spot is often a made market at some level of trading with your orders.. if not the broker, then on the LP's end, even if that's across an ECN. NDD just means the broker doesn't have the chance to mess with your orders if they are 'evil'. However, an evil broker will mess around with you if they call themselves NDD/MM/STP/anything... so being one type of order processor or another doesn't make or absolve you from 'evilness'. This is why I only recommend brokers I've personally done (or currently do) business with. They have to prove what their marketing department claims first before I make any judgements.
you can open a futures account with http://www.ampfutures.com/ with as little as $500 the 6E Euro FX contract requires $500 to daytrade where one pip = $12.50 and the roundturn commission is $5.74 . trades are executed in the CME Globex exchange and AMP - and other brokers - provide the NinjaTrader charting/order entry program with the CQG feed for free. demo of the platform is offered the warning is that with a 500:1 leverage, trading a futures contract offers larger profit potentials for a small capital, But, also larger losses ime Oanda's FX Trade platform always provided me with instant fills - click and I was filled, the charts are crap but they do offer MT4. major complaints: they used to and maybe still do disconnect the data feed during news releases besides widening the spread, and, they do not have a Trading Desk, meaning one has to go thru the regular phone answering system before reaching a live person; I want an instant contact if my system goes down and I want to close a trade Oanda is insured up to $1,000,000 per client account against fraud, bankruptcy etc
http://www.100forexbrokers.com/stp-ecn-brokers http://www.100forexbrokers.com/dma-direct-market-access
yes, thats how it is. If you know how to trade, it doesnt matter, which one dealing system you trade.
He's a total virgin to FX in general and some of you guys are telling him to open a futures acct? .... IDIOTS