Would your rather pay the pip spread or a fee

Yeah, after 25k, you can trade whatever size you want up to a per order maximum. It's somewhere around 4 to 5 million depending on the pair.

You could trade 25,000 euros or 3,945,238 Euros.

As far as scaling out of a trade, there's lots of ways you can do that with IB. They have the most order types available. Plus conditional orders. And you can always scale out manually. The system keeps track of what you have remaining at all time.

Though Oanda's scale out is much simpler. But so are their order type offerings. Some of which are too simple for my needs. IB's simulated order types have not failed me yet and allow me to "fire and forget."

 

I would prefer spread, exactly because it's more transparent, i.e. only one fee and proportionally calculated.

 

For me it's not the question of being transparent or not.
(I don't have to calc the Commisions ;-), I just pay it )

For me its just a question of the TOTAL COSTS for a trade.

Imagine you trading a scalping strategy,
where AvgTrade ~ 1.5-2 times the spread.

e.g. I trade EURCHF with AvgTrade of 4 pips BEFORE Commisions
outside european business hours.

Spread @ IB = 2 pips + 0.5 Pips for commission = 2.5 pips total
Spread @ OandA 3 pips.

So each trade at IB I made 1.5 pips.
So each trade at Oanda I made 1 pips.

If you trade 5 lots (of €100.000) about 200 times a month,
I really don't care how 'complex' the commisiion calculation
at IB is, if your Profit after Commisions is 50% higher!

So at IB I made 5x200x1.5 pips = 1.500 pips/ month
@ Oanda I would make only 5x200x1pip = 1.000 pips/month.

That apart from the problem, that due to slow Oanda API
the strategy don't work at all there.


Joerg

 

Joerg if you are interested in EUR/CHF or moreso GBP products you really should look at Hotspot since they charge $3 per
100K UNITS not USD like IB. Makes a big difference when trading EUR and GBP (of course works against you when trading
AUD)

 

Thanks,

at IB I pay $2.50 for €100.000 (~ $125.000 ), so this is pretty close.

I took a look at other platforms, also HotSpotFX, but I did
not have found a solution for what I have currently implemented
and works really superb.

Running my strategy at TradeStation with IBs Datafeed (using MetaServerRT) plus an Autotrading Solution called HyperOrder.

The 2 Pips spreads on EURCHF at IB is so far the best I have seen during the European night session (5 pm - 8pm CET).
Currenex, HotSpotFX, COesFX are at the same level, but not better.

The higer liquidy at Currenex/HotSpot will become an issue, if my
current return rate of doubling account every second month will continue ;-).

Thanks
Joerg

 

Joerg:

Right now (10:50am CET), Oanda EUR/CHF spread is 2 pips. Does it become 3 pips after 5pm CET?

 

I differs a little bit from day to day, but when you take a look between 5pm and 8pm it will increase to 3 pips, stays there untill 8-10 am.

Only during European business hours its at 2 pips.

You can see it under
http://fxtrade.oanda.com/spreads/recent_spreads.shtml#eur_chf

Joerg

 

Thanks for the explanation and the link, Joerg.

Happy scalping!

 

Thanks for the info Joerg. 2 pips is quite good in the time you are looking at. I normally don't trade after London close.