lol if dhpar is done fucking up this thread with his awesome math skills... Oanda is cheaper all-in and offers better swaps if you're not trading a lot of synthetics. Also 50x on crosses where IB is at 25x.
My single big disappointment with Oanda was the lack of a free API. Frankly it's completely unfathomable to me why they chose to stand alone as the only broker that charges a fee for API use. It's what ultimately drove me away.
Yeah, no way to test the platform w/o doing 120 lots or shelling out $600. Penny-wise, pound-foolish IMO, as they would make a ton off of automated clients.
I know that. But why didn't they make the API free for the demo accounts at least? But no, the API is the API and it's $600/month for live trading or demo. Stum's occasional answers to questions about charging for the API were universally vague and uninformative.
I agree to make it completely free for FXTrade accounts. But for FXGAME? No way IB would do it too. API is free for IB paper trading accounts but still to have a paper trading account you need to have a real trading account with money filled, don't you? That's a difference to FXGame where you don't need to have a live account to use it. So I doubt IB would do the same.
I know factually that Stumm is worried about the server-load from the small algo-traders if offering a free API. The answer is to scale it up to handle the load. They would make a killing off algo, so the $600 API is really dumb.
Yeah make it free for $10,000 accounts or something like that. So you keep out the trading kids who are just playing with $10 of mommy's pocket.