Am I missing something? TradeStation trades forex through Gain Capital Markets. Gain Capital Markets is a dealing desk, not an ECN. And they charge a commission for forex trades. What are the reasons why a trader would trade forex with TradeStation (Gain)? Why not pay the same commission and go to a dealing desk such as IB or HotSpotFX? Are the spreads super tight at TradeStation? All of the other FX brokers show the live spreads on their website. TradStation/Gain does not? Does any one have any input? Thank you, gotta_trade
None, unless a trader really relied upon the TS platform. Exactly. Nope. You can sign up for a demo on gaincapital.com. TS spreads will be the same except for 0.3 added to EUR/USD, and 0.5 pip added to every other pair. Yes that's correct, Tradestation charges a commission AND pads the spread (and Gain's spreads are already a bit wider than ECN). Highway robbery by any other name..
Hi Forex Traders, I recently opened an account with Tradestation and have only been trading the demo. I have noticed on multiple instances that when I enact a Market buy order, it is not filled where the tick is (trading on a 1-tick chart). When I close out the position, the order is filled where I expected it. This happens whether going long or selling short. Either way, it seems trades begin automatically in the red because of where the demo trade was executed at. Can someone who uses the TS platform for forex comment on whether they have encountered such order slippage or whether this might be merely anomolies with the demo? I like the robust platform, but would like to hear some consensus on this. Thanks!
Unless your chart is setup to display both the bid and ask (as two different lines), what you're seeing by default on your chart is just the bid price, and when you're buying, you're buying at the ask price. You're immediately in the red b/c you paid the spread, that's normal.
thanks for the consensus. Yes, I took a quick look at Gain's new platform...even Lightspeed forex has a similar platform and uses Gain as the counterparty. It would be nice to try to bid inside the spread and see multiple bids and offers from other market makers, which cannot really seem to be done in Tradestation forex. As it is, may I ask, in general, is it realistic to trade on a per-tick chart (as opposed to 1 minute, 5 min, etc.). i wanted to see as precisely as possible where the pair is trading at and was surprised by starting off negative.