The matched program is not for everyone. If you are not a day trader looking for more intra day buying power than you probably should not come to us for Matched Funding. I am sorry SOME of you think it is a sham but the bottom line is if you need more capital to trade we are the only company that offers this service at this time. There are other benefits such as the research, market meeting, trade critiquing and other resources we provide to our prop and matched traders that find our services invalubale. guess we have to expect a FEW bashers out of the 23k users of this great medium
Technically there is no difference. Practically, big leverage is killer for new and experience trader.
There is a major differnece. If you open a 5k matched account and you are down a few grand, if you only had a 5k account you would only have 3k in buying power. with a matched account if you are down 2k you still have 7k of buying power. No need to switch to a mini. no need for margin calls. also if you open a matched account and show us what you can do we will offer you a prop account after a few months of seeing your trades and profitability.
Who on earth cares how many funds you have under management ?? As I said earlier, although you don't seem all too great in the comprehension department, getting funds under management in an industry where most fail says absolutely nothing about the quality of a broker, particularly not when they have to resort to such low life tactics like paying referrals to people like you to drum up business, which seems to work very well indeed. The only thing that counts - FOR A TRADER, NOT A KICKBACK RECEIVER -, lol, isn't size of funds under management, but trustworthiness and transparency, size of spreads and quality AND reliability of fills of the broker. Sadly in all these areas FXCM/REFCOFX is not only very much lacking, but indeed a bad, bad joke: Trustworthiness: http://www.forex-markets.com/NewswireFXCM.htm http://www.google.com/search?q=fxcm+investigation I most definitely don't want to have any dealings with a broker charged with a MAJOR fraud investigation by the CFTC!!! Size of spreads, well good God, anyone who wants to daytrade FX with enormous spreads like FXCM have really needs a brain operation. If you want to daytrade FX you have exactly 2 choices: Oanda, or IB and currency futures. That's it. As for FXCM/REFCOFX's orders and fills: http://elitetrader.com/vb/showthread.php?s=&postid=492194#post492194 Go to the same elitetrader link above for details of FXCM/REFCOFX's despicable kickback program. THAT is all this guy is interested in. No one who is serious about daytrading AND has an IQ north of 50 could ever contemplate daytrading with a firm that has huge spreads, cancels orders, and where you have a hard time getting filled when markets get just a little bit more volatile. What also totally stinks about FXCM/REFCOFX is that they have been charged in a major fraud investigation by the CFTC. Anyway, if this guy weren't just after the kickback scheme of FXCM/REFCOFX, but actually interested in daytrading FX he'd be working with either Oanda, where you get totally flexible position sizing as big or as small as you want with no extra costs, or Interactive Brokers and currency futures, where in both cases you have small spreads and great fills, and no cancelled orders or a hard time entering positions when markets get a bit more volatile or similar big time BS like at FXCM/REFCOFX. Problem is: Oanda or IB wouldn't pay him kickbacks.
Oops. Look who else trades through FXCM, in addition to this here that prompted a major fraud investigation against FXCM by the CFTC, those kickbacks sure seem to pull funds in: http://www.sfbg.com/38/16/cover_poor.html just a short excerpt from the link above: "Forex Capital Markets can get in trouble with us if they accept business from entities who are misleading customers," explains Cyndi Cain of the National Futures Association Companies like Forex Capital Markets, according to Cain, "are required to supervise the activities" of companies who solicit business on their behalf. We obtained one of Forex Capital Markets' standard client contracts, a legally binding document. It contradicts just about everything Daughenbaugh and 4X Made Easy say. FTC records show Forex Capital Markets has had problems in the past. In July 2003, Shi Fang Du of Fort Lee, N.J., filed a formal complaint against the company, alleging Forex Capital Markets ripped her off for more than $11,000. According to Du's complaint, "a trading agent for Forex Capital Markets ... made lots of untrue/misleading statements concerning the profitability of currency trading and making multiple phone calls." LOL
TigerO To be fair it looks like most of the bigger FCMs have a "case" history. Its probably a "Goodfellas" thing in that industry - they are not respected until they lose their cherry! Besides which if that was the one with the Chinese woman, if memory serves (cant be bothered to look it up again) if you read the CFTC complaint it finalises by saying that it was a relative who she let trade her account that caused the losses.
Well, I trade at Oanda and as far as I'm aware there is nothing there, they don't even have a sales force making slimey claims, indeed, if there were something like the above cases with FXCM/REFCOFX I'd be gone straight away, stuff like that where FXCM is charged with a major fraud investigation by the CFTC are absolutely no joking matter to be lightly shrugged off, or the fact that FXCM aplogetists who receive kickbacks are constantly lying on boards about the spreads and executions available at Oanda vs the horror spreads and fills in volatile markets at FXCM, see the RefcoFX thread.
TO I trade with Oanda too and am very happy. But lets be realistic they are too new and too small to have any kind of adverse history yet!