Theres also PropFX from fxcm. 10k minimum balance, 50k minimum trade, no commission, no volume requirements. They claim they make their money from volume discounts. I know this smells a bit fishy and isnt the real thing, but if it absolutly HAS to be currenex, this would probably be the easiest thing to get into. Dont know if there is any merit to do tho.
TradeViper, Electric and Herring - You all appear to be correct just talking about different Currenex access levels. Standard Currenex is 25K minimum. Flat commission, starting at 30/million, with no pip markup as the spreads on the standard are sometimes choice (bid/offer same no spread) on some pairs such as EUR/USD etc. Expanded Currenex (They will aggregrate additional liquidity than what you are seeing on the standard. Their appears to be different levels of the expanded version) Expanded starts at 500K and is tiered along the way depending on your trading size and needs. But unless you are a very large private trader this would only be applicable toward a large fund. Also, I would guess that this is the same for the customized acess to their liquidity feeds. http://www.aarontrade.com/html/forex_trading_-_account_minimu.html The way they explained a hybrid spread on their other platform (standard forex account platform). Not fixed but not dynamic either. Hence "hybrid" as its a combination of both. The spreads are fixed but when the market does get volatile it will do dynamic and spreads will change. But they appear to be fixed for the most part. They seemed to be very clear on the explaination of this. Was their something else that I'm missing that you are talking about? Please let me know.
Currenex with $ 50 000 minimum account size thru ATC (introducing broker). www.atcbrokers.com/forexpro_platforms_currenex.htm www.atcbrokers.com/index_forexpro.htm
I found currenex at www.invest2forex.com ( ib of FFLQ) also i found extended currenex at www.dukascopy.com the last one is the best choice it seems.
I have also been looking into "stepping up". I have spoken to just about everbody that Currenex lists on their site as white labels. The standard reply to minimum account sizes is $100,000 with some saying $1,000,000. Some brokers will negotiate the $25,000 minimum account size but it will not be choice. As the Irishmen said, there are prefered level spreads determined by the liquidity providers available on you account. The major liquidity providers do not want to handle sub million size positions and many of the best want 5M plus position size transactions. The next thing to consider is commisions. The samller account, lower volume guys will be paying more in commisions. It is still peanuts compared to what we pay in retail forex. $6 per round turn on a standard lot sound wonderful to anyone that has been paying 3 to 5 pip spreads on the pound or $18 per round turn on an "almost ECN". But, the fact is, if you do negotiate one of these small account exceptions you will be "the redheaded stepchild" of your broker. You will also be giving up the luxury of advanced orders that many retail accounts have. This may or may not be important to you depending on how you trade. Yet another consideration is leverage. The minimum margin for almost everyone I spoke to is 3%. I have not decided if I will make the jump yet. I have also been demoing a currency futures platform for accessing Globex/CME. It has all of the advantages of that the big boys get on currenex and is perfect for the intraday trader who trades standard forex lots. I am demoeing a futures platform right now for trading globex/CME. Intraday requires about $850 margin required for 1 pound contract. The futures contract equates to about $12.50 per pip. Overnight Margin is about 2x the intra day. Still very impressive leverage. About 150:1 intra day and 75:1 overnight. As much levergae as I could ever ask for. The Spread on the pound is mostly 1 pip, sometimes 2 and sometimes 0 but mostly 1. Commision is about $8 per round turn. Obviously this is much much cheaper than trading retail Forex. This platform has all of the advanced orders that I like too. The only thing holding me back is that all of my tech and experienced is in spot so it will take some adjustment. Also e-signal wants another $60 a month to provide globex data. No biggie but I feel like I already pay them too much- LOL. Anyhoo, I have not decided to rather to fund it and give it a whirl yet, but the cost savings and transparency is a strong argument for it.