Through my experience, my broker, hotforex got best online broker in Asia. So a lot of professional Asian trader have come to it for trading. And other well-known brokers also attract professional trader since their name were so famous as well as the quality in service.
Nope. Forex is not traded on exchanges anywhere (unless you count futures which is a smaller market anyway).
I dont think being a pro can be justified by what broker they use, I mean there are pro traders that make living with online forex trading but use unregulated brokers, but as a trader in general should always look for good broker, for starters to avoid any complications, and to have more time on focusing on learning and earning than issues with their brokers, look for a broker that would work for you, there are no two brokers that can be identical, all of them have their pros and cons, as for me i trade with hotforex, and it suits me and my way of trading, and withdrawal conditions are easy i mean with bank transfers and local regualtion. so im good
I like your ideas. Just keep staying with your brokers. I can see you are happy with your broker. That's a number one reason.
you might want to check reviews on brokers/firms.. http://www.investfeed.com/firms/details/type_all/list_alpha or http://investimonials.com/prop-firms/
As a general rule, professional traders would probably be members of an exchange or use DMA brokers to pass their orders directly into the exchange. If they were professional currency traders their broker would be an ECN.
I think professional traders must be using a broker that trade with a leading bank because order execution is most important thing and it should be placed direct in the market.