and yet, they are not the only ones or types of firms that eat their young, or take advantage of their ability to aggregate and see the collective longs / shorts of their customers and trade based on that knowledge. remember when you studied for your series licenses? remember the class instructor? remember that front running and trading on aggregate customer position knowledge is illegal only in equities trading, not futures.... ohhh, and there lies the reality.....
This is nothing new. My first entry into trading was via forex. It did not take too long to figure this out. Retail forex brokers are bucket shops. That being said, it does not mean you can not make money trading via them. Do not trade nfp and the like, do not use tight real stops (use mental if need). Have 2 accounts via different owners to compare the feeds preferably on 2 different ISPs (this is an extra step when trading large positions) since you might get different quotes from the same broker on different accounts. Also have another independent feed. Now, if you do not need large size, CME currency futures are a much better choice. Regards, redduke