There are something called FX ECNs....maybe you should try to find out what they are. Dealer will not put you on manual execution on them and you won't get thrown out if you win too often. And to answer your question, yes I used to work for a premier investment bank, and I was on IRFX desk, though I used to trade FI and not FX for the bank. Other than that, there is no point in taking this discussion further, as obviously you are not well-informed and you are biased and un-willing to consider other possibilities. Thx
Forex is a zero-sum game so before you ask whether you can make a living from it ask how you can make others lose money to you. It can be done but it ain't easy. Not with a retail broker for sure. They will get you, one way or the other, they have many ways to drive you to liquidation, play with your nerves and mind and eventually force you to make irrational decisions. That is the name of the game.
NO. The only ones who'll tell you yes are newbies & dreamers (usually the ones who recently joined this forum). If it were possible, where are the long-time successful FX traders, then???
I've been testing various ideas for the last 18 months and fortuately, I saw the strength and weakness of various trade setups using technical analysis and diferent technical indicators. I"d rather not say what I started doing to see profits in my accounts but I'll give you a hint. There are some posters on the forexfactory dot com web site (interactive trading in the EUR/USD forum) who post very nice charts. A lot of these people will even tell you exactly where they got in. So you can verify later if they actually made a profit or not. I find some people on this web site are too skeptical, I doubt some are even real traders.
Sorry to say, but some of you haven't done enough research. If you can't capitalize on IB's FX spreads then you really haven't been doing your homework. No offense, but when you can get risk reward of up to 1:5 and a spread under 2 pips I personally think you haven't really been looking, but just making assumptions based on what others have said. And if you are discretionary, you are the others. If you are not totally automated by now you are a dying breed and will lose the rest sometime, no matter what market. Just my personal opinion. No offense.