Triantus Shango
Sergeant Major
- Messages
- 1,371
all true, rambo35. nonetheless, i will chime in for when i was just starting out i would have loved to have received some broker advice instead of going the road to the hell.
for SPOT FX, my recommendations and why (in no particular order of preference):
- RJ OBrien (UK):
you get to trade on a professional platform, Integral FX Inside, which let's you choose between RFQs (request for quotes) or ESPs (executable price streams), filter DOM data according to different pricing strategies, you also get a price ladder, deep liquidity, godspeed execution, runs on top of the FIX protocol, and has professional customer service.
a word of warning though: the GUI is the most pathetic, ugly POS i've ever seen unfortunately. it's so bad you wish you were color blind. but cosmetics is not why we trade, so... (still a shame though that for a company like Integral they can't do a better job than that when designing the UI).
you provide your own charting app. if it talks FIX, you jack in directly but then you have to maintain a minimum monthly volume or some extra fees will apply. if not, then any datafeed provider out there will do. no MT4 hook up and thank god for that. oh, i almost forgot: Integral also provides free historical price as reference data you can download so you can use it to check the accuracy of what the price stream should have been when in doubt.
also somewhat of a drawback, LPs can exercise 'last look' privilege, if they so choose (but i guess that only matters when you are huge).
starting capital required: USD 50K. accounts are not seggregated. but then again, RJ OBrien is one of the founding members of the CME and has been in business for a 100 years. meaning: it's got more reputation than your FXCM, GAIN, and FxPro put together.
- LMAX exchange:
caters to institutionals, and does not actively market to the retail crowd even though they accept retail traders if you qualify.
it's the only exchange for SPOT FX in the world, as far as i know, and also allows you to trade CFDs, and SPOT Gold. spreads are better than Dukascopy and the order management platform by far less confusing and easier to use. (i don't mean to be overly critical of Dukascopy here, but as a newbie you would do well trying to understand the execution oddities and subtleties of the Dukascopy platform because if you don't, you will be in a world of pain real fast.)
all LPs (liquidity providers) who have been accepted as eligible market participants on the exchange are required to stream firm limit orders, which means that the LPs, contrary to what happens on other venues, do not have the right to reject your trade even post matching, that is, after the matching has been done by the trade matching engine, meaning they do not have 'last look,' which also means that on those venues where the LPs have 'last look' your trades will be more susceptible to negative slippage. 'last look' allows a LP to control which trade they want to accept or reject.
your stop orders do not appear on the book.
some institutional LPs active on the exchange have been reported to be the likes of Goldman Sachs, JP Morgan, or was it Morgan Stanley... i always confuse the two and other large players.... Goldman Sachs also used to be an investor in the LMAX exchange.
daily turnover is somewhere around USD 7B+... not an exact number... but anyone can check with Reuters as LMAX is required to publish this info with them.
Gold prices quoted on the exchange are sourced from 7 global key players in the bullion SPOT market.
quality of execution is very consistent, stellar, and godspeed as well.
but what really does it for me is that you would be hard-pressed to find another venue that is as transparent as those guys. to wit: you can find out from Reuters how much business goes through the exchange daily; the CEO is interviewed regularly and you can listen to these interviews which are all posted on the site--the only reason i mention it, is that you will learn some interesting things if you pay attention.
but more importantly, their IT team has open sourced some of the software they custom built and other IT pros in the industry have written about it and confirmed the excellence and totally new and original approach to algorithm design for the purpose of pushing compute performance even further (for those who know a little about IT and Java, they are also switching over to the Azul Systems Zing JVM, which is totally state of the art). bottom line, i don't know of any other broker that will tell you what is running under the hood and how it is put together. now that's what i call transparency.
as a fallback in case of emergency, they provide access to a basic charting java app. no MT4 hook up and thank god for that. Multichart can hook into their stream via FIX. Sierra Charts as well. i just downloaded Sierra Charts and it is awesome. from a user experience point of view, i think it is one of the better charting packages out there. just try it out and you will see what a joke MT4 or NinjaTrader is. even Multichart doesn't hold a candle to it, although tradingview.com by the same company is totally awesome. so awesome in fact, i would even go as far as to say that it towers over the competition in terms of ease of use and user experience IF and ONLY IF you want just something to display and manipulate charts intuitively and quickly and do not care about running EAs, backtesting and all that. unfortunaly, the feed does not seem to be 100% reliable in terms of availability--don't misunderstand me: i am saying that sometimes, RARELY, but sometimes, it is just not available. RARELY. so far, it is good enough for all trading purposes. but as a fall back, i would also have Sierra Charts handy. Sierra is also a much more response UI than tradingview.com since it is native and does not suffer from all the limitations inherent in a Javascript web app.
ok i am tired and starting to ramble. probably forgot stuff. ah yes,
the initial minimum deposit: USD 10K.
and accounts are seggregated.
hope this helps.
all the best.
for SPOT FX, my recommendations and why (in no particular order of preference):
- RJ OBrien (UK):
you get to trade on a professional platform, Integral FX Inside, which let's you choose between RFQs (request for quotes) or ESPs (executable price streams), filter DOM data according to different pricing strategies, you also get a price ladder, deep liquidity, godspeed execution, runs on top of the FIX protocol, and has professional customer service.
a word of warning though: the GUI is the most pathetic, ugly POS i've ever seen unfortunately. it's so bad you wish you were color blind. but cosmetics is not why we trade, so... (still a shame though that for a company like Integral they can't do a better job than that when designing the UI).
you provide your own charting app. if it talks FIX, you jack in directly but then you have to maintain a minimum monthly volume or some extra fees will apply. if not, then any datafeed provider out there will do. no MT4 hook up and thank god for that. oh, i almost forgot: Integral also provides free historical price as reference data you can download so you can use it to check the accuracy of what the price stream should have been when in doubt.
also somewhat of a drawback, LPs can exercise 'last look' privilege, if they so choose (but i guess that only matters when you are huge).
starting capital required: USD 50K. accounts are not seggregated. but then again, RJ OBrien is one of the founding members of the CME and has been in business for a 100 years. meaning: it's got more reputation than your FXCM, GAIN, and FxPro put together.
- LMAX exchange:
caters to institutionals, and does not actively market to the retail crowd even though they accept retail traders if you qualify.
it's the only exchange for SPOT FX in the world, as far as i know, and also allows you to trade CFDs, and SPOT Gold. spreads are better than Dukascopy and the order management platform by far less confusing and easier to use. (i don't mean to be overly critical of Dukascopy here, but as a newbie you would do well trying to understand the execution oddities and subtleties of the Dukascopy platform because if you don't, you will be in a world of pain real fast.)
all LPs (liquidity providers) who have been accepted as eligible market participants on the exchange are required to stream firm limit orders, which means that the LPs, contrary to what happens on other venues, do not have the right to reject your trade even post matching, that is, after the matching has been done by the trade matching engine, meaning they do not have 'last look,' which also means that on those venues where the LPs have 'last look' your trades will be more susceptible to negative slippage. 'last look' allows a LP to control which trade they want to accept or reject.
your stop orders do not appear on the book.
some institutional LPs active on the exchange have been reported to be the likes of Goldman Sachs, JP Morgan, or was it Morgan Stanley... i always confuse the two and other large players.... Goldman Sachs also used to be an investor in the LMAX exchange.
daily turnover is somewhere around USD 7B+... not an exact number... but anyone can check with Reuters as LMAX is required to publish this info with them.
Gold prices quoted on the exchange are sourced from 7 global key players in the bullion SPOT market.
quality of execution is very consistent, stellar, and godspeed as well.
but what really does it for me is that you would be hard-pressed to find another venue that is as transparent as those guys. to wit: you can find out from Reuters how much business goes through the exchange daily; the CEO is interviewed regularly and you can listen to these interviews which are all posted on the site--the only reason i mention it, is that you will learn some interesting things if you pay attention.
but more importantly, their IT team has open sourced some of the software they custom built and other IT pros in the industry have written about it and confirmed the excellence and totally new and original approach to algorithm design for the purpose of pushing compute performance even further (for those who know a little about IT and Java, they are also switching over to the Azul Systems Zing JVM, which is totally state of the art). bottom line, i don't know of any other broker that will tell you what is running under the hood and how it is put together. now that's what i call transparency.
as a fallback in case of emergency, they provide access to a basic charting java app. no MT4 hook up and thank god for that. Multichart can hook into their stream via FIX. Sierra Charts as well. i just downloaded Sierra Charts and it is awesome. from a user experience point of view, i think it is one of the better charting packages out there. just try it out and you will see what a joke MT4 or NinjaTrader is. even Multichart doesn't hold a candle to it, although tradingview.com by the same company is totally awesome. so awesome in fact, i would even go as far as to say that it towers over the competition in terms of ease of use and user experience IF and ONLY IF you want just something to display and manipulate charts intuitively and quickly and do not care about running EAs, backtesting and all that. unfortunaly, the feed does not seem to be 100% reliable in terms of availability--don't misunderstand me: i am saying that sometimes, RARELY, but sometimes, it is just not available. RARELY. so far, it is good enough for all trading purposes. but as a fall back, i would also have Sierra Charts handy. Sierra is also a much more response UI than tradingview.com since it is native and does not suffer from all the limitations inherent in a Javascript web app.
ok i am tired and starting to ramble. probably forgot stuff. ah yes,
the initial minimum deposit: USD 10K.
and accounts are seggregated.
hope this helps.
all the best.
