Have you noticed the huge flashing advertisements here, for GFT? Probably the best charting in the business, dealbook.Imo. Sure, they will put you on manual if you try and short term trade, but they all do that at the end of the day.
I think I signed up for their demo but haven't used it yet. I have to wait to check my spam blocker which takes a day for me to get the blocked senders I have to add. So far though of the services I've tried I haven't found exactly what I'm looking for. I see some tradable patterns so it would like be nice to get started but at this rate it might take me some time to decide.
Since you are new to the forex game and are asking advice, I just want to add a lttle substance to the mix. There are 2 types of forex brokers, the ECN, where your order is passed thru to their participating liquidity providers and your trade is matched with a client from either the same firm or a different firm, or the dealing desk model (just about everyone on that fxstreets demo link you provided) in which your trades are offset by the brokerage firm and they charge you a spread (a vig) for doing so. Been discussed here ad nauseum so take a quick read so that you understand which type of broker you would be dealing with and whether or not you would be comfortable with that business model: http://www.elitetrader.com/vb/showthread.php?s=&postid=1606360#post1606360 Hope this helps. Cheers
Google dealbook360. GFT is the broker and they have a pretty nifty charting package. Everything from 1 sec. on up.
Yeah it sure does help. Every post in this thread so far has been helpful. I'm still confused but have more ideas. Thanks!
I'm using SaxoTrader2 right now in demo mode. At first I thought that was descent. They have ok charts and indicators that can be customized. I was impressed that they had a wide variety of commodities which I would like to get into when I learn more about them. In demo mode I'm having trouble placing an order and it says the cost of the trade for 1 contract is over 1k for usd/jpy cross. I don't remember 1 trade costing that much last time I traded Forex. So I set all the required fields and place order stays "greyed out" (in other words it's not funtional) no matter what. I don't think I missing anything and the demo says I have 100k in funny money. Well I don't know what the deal is but if can't experiment I'm not going to sign up with real money so I think I'll try a few more. Too bad. So far it's the best one that I've tried in demo.
Can you explain what you are saying here in more detail..this is the aspect of Forex that I still need to learn about before I go full tilt. Thanks in advance!
Im sure more qualified than i could give the corrcet answer. Many will give different answers, but it was explained to me thus, by a rep from such a (possibly the same) company. Because they are the actual (normally called a bucketshop) counterparty to your trade, ie, your order is offset by them in the market (if its necessary to) rather than going directly into the market, it takes time to organise these "offsets", consequently, if someone wants to try and scalp, or take very short term trades, they dont like it!!! Not at all. Especially if you are winning. What happens, is their business model becomes uncompetitive, loses money in a manner in which they cant offset or arbitrage their risk effectively, due to the time frame/size. So the dealing desk guy's get a boot in the backside, and your orders are placed "on manual" effectively meaning you will be filled whenever, where-ever, they are no longer concerned your uber scalping strategy becomes theoretically unprofitable. Something else the rep mentioned, was that customers who tried to scalp or trade news events, invariably lost money, in the long run-AND accounted for a disproportionate number of complaints, so its no surprise they just dont mess with that customer base. Its usually stated clearly in their product disclosure stuff , although i admit i was surprised to find they consider anything with a hold of less than an hour "scalping". Im not as cynical as many others about these mobs, because the fact is there is no such thing as a "mini" amount, or even a small amount trade in the interbank market, all these products offered by "bucketshops" HAVE to be synthetic, made up of a larger orderbook/basket of the market maker to offset serious risk, let alone the squilions of nickels and dime trades, and paying people to listen to whinging customers who got popped for a few pips on a news announcement or something. Im yet to see any bucketshop/market maker operation that truly sucked large on longer time frames, and they do state explicitly, dont scalp, dont trade news-period. Horses for courses.