November 2009 Question of the Month

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This one comes up every now and then. For some reason, 3 people asked it this month...

Is there a reliable source for price feeds and spread that's not connected to a broker?

Usually, I or one of my people would tell the person to cross-check 3 or 4 ECN brokerages. The problem is that some brokers claim to be ECN and aren't. Others are ECN, but can still manipulate spreads. Even good ECN brokers will be connected to different liquidity providers. This means that their prices and spreads won't match exactly.

Since there's no central exchange, a perfect price feed doesn't exist. What's the closest to perfect that anyone's found?

.
 
That's easy

That's an easy question. Do I earn any points for it? 8- )

Alpari.org out of Russia - hands down the most accurate.

They show as Alpari NZ - recently aquired perhaps.

Definitely different that Alpari UK or US.

Many examples have come through where signals which proved
correct with Alpari.org's feed did not even read out the same with
other's feeds.

The resulting market movement ultimately was the way we proved it.


Cheers,
Cyclon

PS. I am not associated with nor am an IB with any broker.
 
Since there's no central exchange, a perfect price feed doesn't exist. What's the closest to perfect that anyone's found?.
Obviously everyone's mileage will vary because there is no central exchange like you mentioned, but you may want to check out something that I've recently come across FXIntel. Ofcourse there is always the availability to open up a couple of LIVE accounts with places like Dukascopy, MB Trading or Currenx. Most of these web sites provide for free their own price feeds in the form of demo accounts.
 
Any price you like!

Well, since forex is traded OTC (over the counter), there is no central authoritative price source.

As such there's little point in having any alternative source of quotes from your broker. When you trade with the broker, you have no choice but to use their prices. So you might as well get used to it!

Yes, it's possible that your broker can manipulate the price from their liquidity provider before passing it on to you. Actually, I would say that it's the norm. In fact, they have little option, as there will always be some delays in the network, and busy servers. On top of that they often have to underwrite some trades by placing orders into the ECN market. This takes time.

This is not all bad. You can even take advantage of the delay if you are quick, and see the price moving on a faster feed. Although it will risk alienating your broker, and then they might then play games with you to even the score.


Personally, I prefer to glean tick data from the brokers platform (I wrote a programme to do that), which is more useful for back testing due to the presence of both bid and offer prices. Most historical data from brokers has only the bid price, and so clients wrongly assume the spread is fixed.

This is just my own finding. I would REALLY love for somebody to be able to teach me otherwise. ;-)

Flea.
 
As such there's little point in having any alternative source of quotes from your broker. When you trade with the broker, you have no choice but to use their prices. So you might as well get used to it!

Yeah, except for 2 things.

An outside source can help you determine if they are cheating.

Some brokers LOVE to cancel profitable trades due to "price feed errors". It would be nice to have some pre-agreed upon source for price feed to determine if there really was an error or if it's just direct theft of your money.
 
Haha

Yes, absolutely. You're completely right.

I personally ditch a broker as soon as they try on any seriously bad stuff; so I was working under the misapprehension that other people would have done the same! Pretty stupid of me considering that the FPA is busy busting broker scams.

I now understand the original question. :)
 
Yeah, except for 2 things.

An outside source can help you determine if they are cheating.

Some brokers LOVE to cancel profitable trades due to "price feed errors". It would be nice to have some pre-agreed upon source for price feed to determine if there really was an error or if it's just direct theft of your money.

I think the simplest way to deal with this issue is to compare brokers feeds if that is what you mean.Although there is no central exchange for brokers but usually the difference should not be much,except for the spreads which also can be factored when placing trades.If a trader takes enough time to study and compare his broker with others,there should be consistency of price feeds during normal periods.For instance,liteforex price feeds for EUR/USD and GBP/USD is usually -2 or -3pips compared to Alpari US/UK and some others.Therefore,customers of liteforex should factor this difference in placing orders and for me,that is not fraud because the difference is consistent and could actually work in your favour because the gap is filled once in a while.
 
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