Excellent post, LA. I've been too lazy to answer Illiquid's question (though it's not only his question - it's come from a number of posters here) for a long while. You've done it perfectly. And #2 is a biggie for me since I also run an entire strategy behind that.
Illiquid, see this recent post under the "Trading" forum of ET, which gives one reason for choosing a fx retailer over CME/Globex: I lost my initial grubstake my grandmother left me. so I decided to deal drugs and I got busted, I am posting this from jail (min security) where I can trade my small forex account on oanda.
That's because it's down for maintenance. It said so yesterday on their web page and apologised for the inconvenience.
After trading with 6.5 standard lots on the AUD Employment Change, Oanda started disconnecting me like crazy. I am 100% sure they do this on purpose. Was able to get 3 lots in for the UK Interest Rate hike even though they wouldn't allow me a stable connection for the next 30(!) minutes. And I've got the video to prove it too: http://www.mediamax.com/slnke/Hosted/20070111_UK_Interest_Rate.avi Before the recording, I was disconnected three times. Miraculously after I closed my position, I could reconnect/disconnect at will. I swear, there has to be some stupid teenager sitting at the dealing desk sending DOS to knock off my secure Java connection. But yeah, I don't know what's up with that... I hold my positions for at least 5 minutes to give them time to hedge my positions on interbank and I take their spreads in the nads. I'm probably stuck on their radar right now like a fat pimple, considering how most people trade with what... a mini... *sigh* Anyone know of another broker who will allow reliable entry on or 1-2 minutes after the initial spike? How are the ECNs these days? Well, good luck, folks.
your best bet like in any tradable market is to have a "backup" broker .... of course not everyone has two or more monitors either
Wow, quick replies. hahaha guess I'm not the only one doing nothing at the moment. Globex... yikes. With the lack of liquidity and leverage, I may have to kiss my full-time trading career goodbye. Unless there are some advantages I am not aware of? In all honesty, I know about nothing other than spot forex and some basic economics. But yeah, my backup is actually to trade after the initial news spike, but I really haven't used that many brokers before so I don't know which will give me reliable entries doing so. Oanda used to be pretty good to me, and I tried FX Sol, which I didn't like because of spreads. MB Trading, I've only used a demo, so I don't know. Where else could I go with $50k?
No way, really?? How are executions and such during or 1-2 minutes after a news event? *prays to self* ...please don't let this be false hope... please don't let this be false hope... [edit] Looking at CME Globex... I have no idea what I am looking at... Maybe there is a babypips.com for this?