well, last week i made me first fx futs trade trough ib booktrader'n'execution was lightnin' fastn'n'durin' a major news announcement. of course u can acces also da mini-stuff'n'even tho it is not as liquid as da standard contract da spread is often more or less da same...not sure how much commish on mini tho.
Comparison: EURO FX future: Contract 125,000 Euros. Margin $2,835 Initial , 2100 maintenance. Commision /RT: $6.00 (IB) Spread 1 - 2 pips Premium over Spot 30 to 45pips, Front month. Can lead or lag Spot market. RTH 8:20EST to 15:00 EST. (70% of liquidity) Globex 15:00-16:00, CLOSED 16:00-17:00, 17:00-16:00 Avg Daily Volume, 200,000 contracts ($30 billion notational) Expiration 4 times a year on 3rd Friday of DEC, MAR, JUN, SEPT Exchange traded EUR/USD Spot OTC 125,000 Euros Margin 50:1 (IB) approx $3125 if Spot Eur/USd @ 1.2500 Commission /RT :$6.00 (IB) if spot @1.2500 Spread .5 to 1.5 pip. 24 hours. (21 on IB, soon to be 23) Avg daily volume, Approx $300 - 600 billion For Euro. No expiration. OTC market. Anyway, likewise, there appears to be no valid reason why trading the Futures is better then trading the Spot OTC, unless of course one is using a very bad Forex dealer. BUt if one is using an ECN like CoesFX, IB, MB Trader, etc. to trade the Spot OTC, then the futures really has no material advantage over the spot. In fact the spot provides more total liquidity and uniform liquidity than the futures. And the Spot will have tighter or equivalent spreads. When you add a FOREX ECN into the equation, it then comes down to trading style, trading system, and subjective preference as to why one would choose the Futures over Forex Spot and vice versa. Otherwise, if one is using a maker maker/Dealer in Spot Forex, the futures would offer you a material advantage worth investigating further.
I trade forex with several brokers. I keep small amounts in each account-- my way of money management that restricts my tendency to risk large sums. Here is this weeks account with fxsol.
Making $10 here, $20 there won't appeal to most of you, but it limits risk for me. These are my trades from monday to thursday morning- they don't seem to have Friday calculated yet.
For the sake of honesty I have to point out that I showed my best account, my trades with the other brokers were considerably more patchy.
Get a demo access to Currenex via http://www.capitalforexpro.com/ and see for yourself. You'll get an idea how much FXCM makes on YOU on every trade that you make. Trading NFP with FXCM is nearly impossible as FXCM widens Currenex spreads to to 15-25 pips instead of direct currenex 3-7. Of course every other broker has drawbacks, but again one has to look hard to find such a greedy one as FXCM is. Years ago I myself traded with FXCM but that was due to lack of information on other brokers. If you remember straddling the news with guaranteed fills in 2003-2005, then I can tell you what FXCM did: seconds after the numbers were released and say the EUR/USD gapped up 70 pips FXCM had a 30 pip spike down that of course could not be found anywhere else just to trigger sell order, another thing sometimes when somebody would make dissent money(5-20k) they would just cancel your gains and say "there was a lag in our feed, so the quotes you were trading on have not existed). There are many more stories about that "honest" broker. At the end my question is, why to pay 3-5 pip spread to FXCM if everyone can trade all the majors at 0.5-1.5 spread. Why give away your money. Charity???
If you think there will be sufficient liquidity for it to be worthwhile switching from spotfx or current fx futures starting day 1 then yes. More realistically, it'll take some time for ppl to migrate in sufficient quantity to make it worthwhile.