I now trade with Dukascopy. It's a good broker. I used to have account with HotSpot, but now they only accept institutional clients and only high net worth clients, over $1 mil. They transferred my account to FXCM. I withdrew afterwards and changed to Dukascopy. Dukascopy is great, but I think the minimum to open standard account is $50k. I am still with Oanda. They are okay. No problem with execution. They increase their spread when there's major news. So I guess it really depends on how you trade, be good in your money management and have enough discipline then you will do well, whether trade futures or spot forex.
More transparent, sure, but not necessarily the best way to go. Bucketshops have their benefits, it depends on how one trades and what one needs.
is GFT Forex also a bucket shop? i read above posts that with 25K you can access raw spreads so it's like a different account type. is such account available in all bucket shops?
The only problem I have encountered as far as trading spot goes is that my broker, FXCM, restricts you from placing entry orders or moving your stop loss to within 5 pips of the current market. There are certain strategies that I use successfully on futures (and used successfully on spot when I briefly traded with Oanda) that I just cannot make work at FXCM. My solution was not to trade it with FXCM.