I'm habitually looking for a better deal. When I started trading futures they were the only game in town unless you wanted to try currency options on the Philadelphia Exchange. My brokers didn't seem to realize those even existed or at least couldn't find the symbols to give me a quote, so I gave up on them along with the rest of the world. Futures can make position sizing tough without committing a lot of funds or using options to build non-integer delta, so I like to keep an open mind. I don't mind dealing with the casinos as long as I know their advantage and how high I can bet should there be a lot of 10s in the deck. Thanks for the spread pictures. Tim
No problem, I post what I see and let the reader decide. Futures I could never get a handle on so gave up before I started pretty much! Casinos aren't all bad, it's the reckless gamblers who give them a bad name, the same could be said for the majority of retail forex bucketshops and their clients.
Do quotes in OandA's demo account differ from a non-demo account? I would trust them less if that were true. Could you provide some examples of non-news spreads that you think are representative of OandA's service? If there is another source of this information, aside from their forums, I'd appreciate a link. Even a general statement would suffice, for example, "I get filled at the most/least favorable of the next three quotes after I submit my order" or "The slippage nets to +/- 1 pip over 100 trades in non-news environments on USD/JPY ." Tim
Posts like the one below pretty much sum it up (from this thread http://www2.oanda.com/cgi-bin/msgboard/ultimatebb.cgi?ubb=get_topic;f=17;t=003813) As is usual with legitimate concerns like this, they get met with a barrage of abuse and unrelated comments from the Oanda groupies.
Yes, there were a few posts like that on OandA's forum. The trouble is, there is a survivor bias in that the people still trading with a broker aren't representative of all the people that started, just the ones that haven't left yet. So unless somebody has a grudge to work out, they aren't likely to stick around and badmouth the service after they stopped using it. The current users have their egos tied up in defending their broker. If traders as a group tend to lose money, they're inclined to blame themselves instead of accepting public ridicule for blaming the market. In a sense, these shops sell the idea that "The market is the dealer and the market can't be wrong", even if only in a subtle way. One of the market wizard books mentioned a trader that wrote down the spread when he called in the order. He had several traders in each futures pit and eliminated those that executed poor fills over time. I heard a similar story about a very successful businessman. He started with a car dealership where each month he'd fire the worst salesman. He's now into grocery stores, radio stations and advertising, among other things. I'm going to track my slippage and fill speed. We'll see which broker keeps the business over the long term. Tim