LMax is really good for fx, you can negotiate better commission than at IB too. But its not comparable to IB with their broad market coverage.
OP might start reading the 2013 Barrons' online brokers review (IB comes 1st btw) http://online.barrons.com/article/S...9290221878444.html#articleTabs_article=1http: //online.barrons.com/article/SB50001424052748704836204578349354099321848.html
man, you made a serious mistake in putting these two words together: Honest and broker. These days, my stop often got hit even before the market price reached my stop price. I asked the broker if my trade was executed on its server or on the public exchange. They said it was executed on the exchange. Then I asked them why the market never reached the price. Then they realized they were a little too early to front-run my stop orders. Front-running is rampant with brokers.
yeah, well, so far nobody seems to recommend any other broker. that is what i am interested in, a good alternative to IB. as to your comment, there is a lot sneaky s* that goes on in re fills, particularly stops. i dont like to use them. i have been 'stopped out' 1 point before the stop, stop price never traded or where the market blows through the price, and the fill comes 100 years later at the worst price and the broker just shrugs their shoulder. you talk about an arena where you cant trust anybody, this is it. the markets exist so people with $100MM accts can devour people with $50k accts, or whatever they got. as long as you are losing, whoever, whatever is on the other side is happy. but to win, something they dont expect, and dont like for sure, it is my view you have to figure out how to capitalize on the game. they are their to take your money. trading is like a direct way of donating money to make a big acct bigger. it seems to me, though, you should *never* let the opposition know what you are thinking. the less they know about who you are and what you are doing the better. its hard enough to pull money out of the market. but that cant happen without precise execution. so i like to hit the market at the exact moment when i am certain i will get a fill that i like, going in and going out. i try to avoid placing myself in a position where someone else determines the moment the decision is made to make the trade that is why i, as a rule, dont use stops i have a stop loss policy, but i manually execute, never let anybody else decide when that trade is to be made.
I don't see it as critical as the previous two posters. I mean, if you are not happy with a broker for some reason, you can always switch the broker to another one. There are plenty of brokers available. What's clear is that there is certainly a difference between bucketshops and STP / ECN Brokers. Personally, I use only STP/ECN Brokers and if I don't, I'm not surprised if some minor issues occur. A couple of years ago, I opened a bucket shop account at a broker I don't wanna mention. I started some agressive and risky martingale EA's and after two weeks I got 2'300$ Profit in the account. Then, suddenly, I could not close trades using the EA's in MT4. Manually I could close the Position, but not using the EA. Because of this, I lost about 6k. Was it their fault or mine? Clearly mine, because Bucket Shop accounts are only useful for losing money but not for winning.
IB cannot be matched overall if you need their broad range of services at lowest cost. There is nothing even close unless you want to pay more. Just sort out your issue with IB if you can. Just keep calling every couple of days and ask if there is some additional information you can send that will help. IB and other brokers have gotten into occasional audit trouble with regulators for allowing company accounts where undisclosed individuals are pooling capital and trading under a company name. They have had to agree to screen for that and a dozen other improper arrangements. We are not close enough to the facts to know what they are worried about. It could be many things - something completely different such as credit problems, money laundering concerns, a dozen different things. Funding source is investigated for every client in government data bases. There are accounts that they simply will not accept, and they will not be allowed to explain why in the circumstances. Some information they might have received might be erroneous but that's life. But you are not there yet since they have not refused the account. So I would just wait for now. Odds are it will be approved once they get whatever research or investigation they are doing completed. If it ends up being denied, then look for another broker. TradeStation is one I would consider.
yes, i can understand where when setting up this sort of trading scheme it would be dependent on technology for lightning fast execution with respect to automated entry and exit via stops. seems like the margin of error will be pretty tight, so slippage in this scenario will decide. in this context market orders probably wont work, as you discovered. ... i don't know what the real statistics are, but i hear 80% of everyone who trades loses eventually and 20% win. that means that 8 accounts literally give their money to 2 accounts. I wonder what the distribution of account sizes are out there. for example, what percentage of accts have $x of capital: 1% - >$1B 5% - >$500MM < $1B 8% - >100MM < $500MM 12% - > $1MM < $100MM 18% - > $500k < $1MM 25% - > $250k < $500k 31% - < $250k i have no idea, just throwing out some numbers. but in the above we see that accounts over $1MM account for 26% of the pie. my idea is that capital flows from the bottom to the top, so the higher up the ladder you are the better. if that is true, it seems that the behaviors and psychology of those at the top are probably very different than those at the bottom. this then raises the question if it is possible for those at the bottom to emulate the behaviors and psychology at the top, and if so, what are they? Or is it impossible for most at the bottom (and perhaps the ones that move up the ladder are life's random exceptions?) to emulate because the level of capital connected to the account owner produces the psychology and behavior naturally, no faking required, etc? just having capital isnt the only answer to the default increased likelihood of success. but it is my view someone with good skills and capital (at least above $1MM) has a far greater likelihood of success than someone with the exact same skill set with $10,000. so if my thesis is right, that the 20/80 rule is true, and that the 20 is dominated almost entirely with accts ~>$50MM, and that the capital standing of the 20 leads to a completely different approach to the markets than the 80, i think it would be a good idea to find out what that is, and somehow, i dont know how, but to emulate that psychology, and deploy trading capital in some sort of a similar fashion. i think one area that comes to mind is large accts have tremendous leverage, in that to get a healthy $$ return they only need to utilize (place at risk) in % terms of their account a small amount of capital. iow, they are what i would call 'under leveraged' and 'over capitalized' then the question is, what is the minimum capital threshold to emulate under leveraging and over capitalization to place one in the position (and adoptive mindset) of those further up the ladder? i believe that the 'secret' to winning by default, given the trader with at least 1/2 a brain is running the show, is under leveraging and over capitalization. once the min threshold amount is determined the trader will probably have to ratchet down $$ profit expectations, but its better to be profitable than to be filing a BK 2 - 5 yrs later. there will always be a Larry Williams success story, but that is a rare exception. if you can place yourself in the category where the rule says you will succeed and not the exception, for me anyway, that is a better place to be, albiet the returns might not be so glamorous