Reading between the lines
Yes, well... I never had to talk to my broker's customer service department. NOT ONCE.
OMG! How in the world is this possible, you ask? Simple: never had a single issue. period. If my broker's IT department can pull it off, the question is: Why can't your IT department, or the plethora of subpar brokers with underperforming IT backends (either by design or sheer incompetence, i don't know)?
FXCM is very lucky that their US customers are captive customers due to the asinine regulations in the alleged land-of-the-free. That is to say, the choices available to the american retail trader are ever decreasing as in the past years many brokers closed shop and moved to other countries as US clients are not allowed to do business with European brokers either de facto or de jure (to stay up-to-date with what's going on in this less than transparent industry, read this site:
Forex Magnates - Home of the Forex Elite).
Therefore, were the US retail market truly open to competition, you might be singing another tune when it comes to those 190K tradable accounts.
Anyways, don't take this personally. I understand it's your job to project a positive image as much as possible. There is however a difference between truth and image. And it is true your posts are always designed to cast a glowing light on your employer.
But one has to ask: has FXCM given up the shady practices of its murk past? Is it now squeaky clean?
I certainly hope so, but one has to remember that if such practices were going on in the early years of the company, it usually doesn't happen by chance, but at best it is always accompanied either by tacit, or at worst, explicit condoning from the very top of the company. Today, the company's leadership has not changed and we keep hearing the same stories, albeit less frequently and not as bad as it used to be.
So what are we to believe? That top management had a change of heart and felt so sorry for those poor hapless retail traders they decided not to take advantage of the clients' ignorance? To help you draw your own conclusions, here's an excerpt from wikipedia (FXCM - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia) re the company (there is more--do your due diligence):
"Initial public offering, law suits, fines and expansion[edit]
In December 2010, FXCM went public and began trading on the NYSE, becoming the first forex broker in the US to IPO. The initial public offering price was 14.00 per share.[5][6] The following year, in February and March 2011, a number of class actions lawsuits were filed against FXCM, alleging fraud and racketeering from deceptive and unfair trade practices, and misleading shareholders during the 2010 IPO.[7][8][9][10]
In August 2011, the NFA fined FXCM $2M for slippage malpractices. FXCM reached settlements with the NFA and the CFTC of $2M and $6M respectively, for practices relating to failure to pass along positive slippage to customers on certain order types prior to August 2010. In conjunction with these settlements, FXCM provided clients with restitution for the total amount of positive slippage, approximately $8M.[11]
In October 2011, FXCM completed its acquisition of Japanese FX broker Foreland Forex Co., Ltd. for approximately $17M, net of cash and liquid assets acquired.[12]
On October 25, 2011, three debtors, Certified, Inc., Global Bullion Trading Group, Inc., and WJS Funding, Inc., filed an adversary complaint in the United States Bankruptcy Court for the Southern District of Florida against Forex Capital Markets LLC, ODL Securities, Inc., and ODL Securities, Ltd. (“Defendants”). The complaint asserts claims under the Federal Bankruptcy Code to recover allegedly preferential and fraudulent transfers to the Defendants, under the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act (“RICO”), 18 U.S.C §1961 et seq., as well as the common law. The complaint seeks an unspecified amount of compensatory and punitive damages, interests, and costs.[13]""
As for the newbies reading this, please don't kid yourselves: you might open a tiny $100 account and not see nothing much untowards, and why would you since the amounts traded are so puny to be irrelevant. It's when you start trading size that you should get more worried about a broker's lack of IT (ie backend execution engine) excellence. At best, you'll get a subpar execution experience; at worst, you'll be downright scammed by built-in software mechanisms designed specifically to shave off a few more pips here and there.
Bottom line, if all you have is a customer rep's word for it, that is no more proof than me saying it is true or false. Do your own research.
So, how do you find out for sure? Simple: the broker needs to be absolutely transparent. And this means external audits by more than 1 independent 3rd party and even better, frank and open disclosure of the underlying technology on the backend. And even better: the ability to actually talk and ask questions to their IT team. So far, FXCM fails miserably in this regard.
I only know of 1 broker who meets all the criteria above, and they aren't in the US but in the UK.
For those of you who are serious about this, time to get a 2nd passport legally:
https://www.tdvpassports.com/
Good luck to all who are struggling.
