Can we build a better broker?

[Pharaoh]

There are different levels of support. If they are your liquidity provider, then BT has to provide support t you. If they also provide direct client support by phone and live chat, they are going to find some way to pass that cost on.

If BT provides everything (liquidity, client support, etc) and you just have a website with your own brand name and do sales, wouldn't that make your company more of a White Label than a brokerage?

As long as you're meeting with them, ask and see if they can have a rep join this thread.

First, we have to see if we can get these basic issues dealt with before I get to my "broker feature wish list"

 

[seravitae]

hissst,

good on you just for thinking about the idea, i am behind you 100%.

there are a few posts here where people seem to be requesting features that effectively go above and beyond brokerage, so i'd like to remind them that we should be focused on the backend at the moment, not the front end. Worry about having a good broker, not a place to get EA's..

Your ideas seem to be on the same wavelength as my ideas of publishing user data about brokers via a pass-through filter / non-trading EA in MT4, so I'd like to add that idea to your request list. Also please continue to support MT4 - I was very annoyed when some brokers switched exclusively to MT5, which is horrible in my opinion. It also prevented/prevents non-US traders from using their legally permitted non-FIFO system.

I am not sure how flexible the MT4 package is in terms of customizability, but if you can modify it a fair bit, it may be very useful to have client data uploaded to your broker server to match with your data. This may assist you in helping people who claim they are getting connection issues/requotes/etc - if you can see their ping times, and they are high, you may be able to suggest a better connection or divert to another server (even automatically!)

I guess i am trying to say, it's great to have an honest broker, but we need to have honest clients as well (it may not be their fault though, they might not know what the problem is..)

For me, I am not so concerned with the more superficial options people may consider like "great spreads no requotes huge leverage" because everyone wants as many options as possible, and I am sure you will automatically offer as many options as you can possibly get.

Moreso, things I see as being critical to operation of a broker is tech support that can speak good english, and doesn't over-multitask their support crew. I have waited 15 minutes between the responses "hello" and "how may I help you" on certain brokers due to customer overload.

Also, transparency is a huge thing. If you collected user data from their end, you may be able to give users a performance indicator on their trading connection. If they fall out of a certain average, you could email them to discuss the connection issue and make sure everything is okay on their end. You may find problems on your end too, with the help of the client. Also, if you are experiencing technical issues, tell your users! Do not be afraid to say you are experiencing connection or back-end issues. Or issue server performance reports monthly, showing how many requotes occured, and the 'health' of the persons connection.

Also I would much rather prefer a broker email me and say "we are having problems / we are upgrading servers in 2 hours" so I know to be prepared, stop trades or slow down, rather than a broker playing poker-face and only informing users that complain as per 'damage control'.

The term "proactive" comes to mind. It sounds like you are already being proactive and I hope this continues through to your brokerage. Myself, if a broker calls me to see how I am doing, or to ask if my trading is going okay, if I am happy with the service, without trying to do a sales pitch, has a huge impact on how 'close' I feel to the broker - customers that feel important are likely to be customers with you for longer.

Consistency also comes to mind. Don't rush to release every feature to 'compete' with other brokers. Start simple, your 'leading edge' is that you are simple, and to the point - a no bull**** broker.

Think about a feature you are planning to add. Ask your clients what they think, after all they are the ones who will use it, not you! Assess the pro's and con's. If you implement it, get feedback. Don't be afraid to remove it if it doesn't work or it becomes a problem. It is more noble to admit a mistake and fix it, then it is to put a band-aid on the problem.

Seb

 

[f-man]

Hi all,

There are many good brokers out there but we have no good EA/system/managed accounts/signal service.

Thought, before building a good broker we should find out a good EA/system/managed accounts/signal service. We'll have a good profits if we have this.

Can FPA/Pharaoh/F-Man or any one help us?

Thanks inadvance.

David

Dear David,

You can send me an email to george@4xangels.com and I will be glad to discuss with you how we can help you with your needs.

 

[f-man]

Pharoah:

I have scheduled talks with BT on Monday, I will talk to them about this. As for tech support they handle it per their contract but I will find out the nitty gritty details.

Rahman:

Yes, that is why I am going about the brokerage in this fashion, I want to make use of Pharoah's and F-man's expertise. Thank you for wishing me luck, it will be nice having someone who knows what I am doing as one of my first clients

GOOD BROKERS:

I want to show you what I mean when I say there is a lack of good brokers, FinFX is widely known for being AWESOME or for their marketing... let me show you https://www.finfx.fi/index.php?lang=eng If you read the hype on the main page, you would think I wouldn't need to create my own brokerage. Now read this https://www.finfx.fi/index.php?page=trading-accounts&lang=eng

Notice they promote all the good features from each type of account, this in my opinion is false advertising but they are not lying -just failing to mention that these conditions are not met in the same account LOL!, I will not offer a hybrid and bet against you if you are small, you are in STP or not in my brokerage, period.

As you realize, you will learn a lot about the trader's needs in this thread. Read all the comments carefully.

Although it is an excellent idea in the eyes of the traders, I would advise you not to "attack" any other brokers namely and especially by bringing up their website content.

Maybe the Moderator can start a thread somewhere "Broker VS Broker" and let the brokers representatives fight. You can even ask for fees for the content of that Forum

 

[f-man]

There are different levels of support. If they are your liquidity provider, then BT has to provide support t you. If they also provide direct client support by phone and live chat, they are going to find some way to pass that cost on.

If BT provides everything (liquidity, client support, etc) and you just have a website with your own brand name and do sales, wouldn't that make your company more of a White Label than a brokerage?

As long as you're meeting with them, ask and see if they can have a rep join this thread.

First, we have to see if we can get these basic issues dealt with before I get to my "broker feature wish list"

I find Praraohs (not Pharoah by the way hissst) idea to have a rep of BT in this forum very good. Talk to them about it.

 

[Damon]

I missed my meeting with my BT rep (Ian)

Hey guys,

I am handling an issue that came up on one of properties about 2 hours away from me, I had to drive out there so I missed the meeting today and have to reschedule, I left him a message and asked if he wouldn't mind joining the discussion... I will let you know his answer.

Seb:

We are on the same wavelength! I think your ideas are fantastic.

Pharoah:

It is not a white label solution, it is a proper brokerage as a registered forex company my own staff and rules. BT has a service they offer which allows brokerages to start up easier, they will host the servers and technical staff comes with that, they allow me to scale up my operations, they provide legal, bank, offshore company introductions. But it is my business, I service the clients and create the services. In white label you are just an extension of another company and have no say, I will not be part of BT, I like the service they provide to start a new brokerage and I like their liquidity bridge, I don't need to use their bridge though.

F-man:

Prahoah not pharoah? he spells it pharoah, what do you mean? You are right i should not have used as actual broker as an example, it will not happen again, I could have made my point with quotes and left the actual broker anonymous, if I need to use an example again I will do it that way.

 

[Pharaoh]

Let's not worry about how to spell my name. Just be glad I don't go by Tutankhamun.

I like the idea of some sort of monitoring software. Even for manual traders, something that will record the direction and amount of slippage on each trade would be useful. If BT or any other liquidity provider starts showing too much slippage against clients, that's an issue that needs to be spotted quickly.

Please let us know when you get the meeting with BT rescheduled and see if they can appoint someone to join the discussion. I'm anxious to hear how support will be provided to clients.

 

[seravitae]

Perhaps another idea to keep users informed - in situations where there may be certain teirs, all of which could be responsible - to inform the user in MT4 message automatically what teir caused it.

For instance, requotes could potentially occur due to my connection, broker->me, or their LP->broker. maybe more teirs. If the user finds out consistently via an automatic message not just that a requote or other issue occured, but perhaps a reason why, or what was responsible, it might be easier to investigate solutions (if required).

also here is a crazy/radical idea, I don't fully support it, ethically, but it is interesting to think about.. I am just putting it out there... ideas are free.. take it with a grain of salt... many complaints appear to be from people who are quite inexperienced, be it in Forex generally or with that broker. If one can ensure a consistent similarity in feeds between a Demo and Real style account - why not actually force new customers to trade demo first, for say 2 months, successfully, in order to "unlock" their real account on the website? You must trade with a positive growth of 1% or some threshold before you can trade live. Protects the customers from inexperience and protects your reputation.

If people get familiar with forex, the platform and the broker before they start loosing real money, they may understand by that time, that requotes happen, price feeds screw up from time to time, and it is not necessarily the broker's fault all the time... they also dont get angry at you when they lose their money because you forced them into a position to trade positively first.

On Demo, you might be able to simulate requotes and other issues in the real market using an algorithm (you should openly admit this to the customers, to simulate real market conditions better). You could provide them with a dodgy/normal demo feed and the live feed on different read only symbol sets - that way a user can graph both the live and demo feeds on the same chart, proving the feeds are very similar/identical.. remove doubt from the customer that demo is 'fantasy' compared to real account..

[Also, to play devils advocate.. If you even simulated 'stop hunting' and other nasty tricks in demo, the user can recieve a bonus in demo account for identifying key issues. In this hypothetical model, you may actually provide people with a demo feed that is of simulated 'poor broker' conditions, and you are TRAINING your own good customers to find problems in your feed and report them! You are training them to sniff out crap brokers! This way when they get to live account they know how to report any issues - and if they try another broker and start to see stop hunting, etc, you've already trained your good customers to know how to spot a bad feed/bad broker.. they will go "wow I am glad <your broker name> showed me what a bad feed looks like, now I can avoid 80-90% of the brokers out there that have bad feeds" and your customers will keep coming back to you due to quality of your feed.]

It may mean you get less customers (some may complain about having to wait 2 months) - but which do you prefer - lots of losing customers or a smaller amount of winning customers? Customers would most prefer that a broker that doesnt focus on customer count and provides lots of support, i think.

I think I would be happy to have a broker review my demo trading (in the unfortunate case) and say "sir, after 2 months you have lost 80% of your funds, we strongly recommend you keep demo trading - we will reset your account balance, try again - here are some links to books/sites/forums to see strategies to trade successfully).

As STP/ECN you would make money only off spreads, so it makes sense to only have winning customers as they will consistently have money to trade with. Also if you only have good traders using your platform, then you only have good traders telling other good traders to use your platform, so you are attracting only the right people... not problem customers that learned about forex 24 hours ago and are now a self proclaimed professional 'wall street screamer'.. And only having good traders means you will be highly popular - you are prestigeous, and you look after your customers trading 'health', not just the customer account issues..

How about, forget all that rubbish advertising on site 'lowest spreads lowest this highest that blah blah' - one figure, to rule them all. "87% of our live trading customers accounts are in positive profit". <-- that is going to make a huge impact, much bigger than tight spreads and bells and whistles.. we are here to make a profit, right??


sorry my brain is all over the keyboard, it's how I think.. i am sure you can mine some gold out of my words somewhere though


edit: just saying again, I know the idea maybe crazy.. but "if you always do the same thing, you can only expect the same result" - building a better broker means doing something different, you want to make the best broker? we need to even take a step back philosophically at "what is brokering" and "what is trading", recreate a new model of thinking, from scratch.. big companies like google had to think differently or they never would have become what they are... this broker has the capability of becoming the 'google of forex'.. everyone needs to get in and say all their suggestions, no matter how crazy/different.

 

[Pharaoh]

There's good crazy and bad crazy. That's good crazy.

Almost every broker requires people to sign off that they understand the concept and the risks, but none of them make the traders show any real evidence. A one month demo requirement (actively traded!) would at least make sure they know what buttons to press.

A very short "intro to forex trading" slideshow that users MUST go through before funding an account would also be worth considering.

A demo server that simulates a real trading environment better - interesting concept. It would need to monitor the liquidity and volatility of the real market and then introduce a reasonable amount of spread widening, slippage, and requotes. I've never heard of any broker doing this, but I have heard of plenty that claim that "our demo is JUST like live" (even though it never is).

I think a "special" demo server might not be immediately practical. It's a great idea, but creating such a thing would require some custom programming (or purchase of a copy of that evil backend software plugin that's designed to for differential slippage). From what I've heard, that plugin can even be set to give different accounts different levels of problems - it would make a great training environment - sort of like practicing on a very difficult obstacle course before doing a foot race through the woods.

On the other hand, requiring some trading experience or education before funding would be pretty simple. For those who are experienced and don't want to be bothered, just ask them to upload a month or two's trading statements.

 

[seravitae]

Glad to know I'm not loosing my sanity then

I agree about the implementation difficulties (and even the benefits) of a modified feed, and I certainly wouldn't suggest use of the "we wont mention" plugin (even then, from my investigations, it doesnt seem to be all that flexible)

I do not know how the backend works as I'm merely a trader, so I am not sure if the feed can be easily accessed or if the bridge is 'tight'. It would be interesting though if someone did have the broker 'server package' and could implement their own custom feed, ie, just create some bogus symbol. I'd even have a crack at it if I had the server software to connect to MT4 in a localhost manner - i assume thought BT or whatever provider has this under tight lock and key, and contracts though..

Here is anoth crazy thought.. I do not know if it is legal, or would be allowed/popular... probably not.. but, aggregated cross-broker feeds.. alongside supplying your own feed, you could symbolise the feed from other brokers.. one account, but can see other broker's feeds.. cross check to confirm no foul play.. if you had 5 brokers on the 'Open Feed' system, and one of them spiked, the other 4 were the same.. you get the picture Might be hard to get it started because i imagine brokers wouldnt want to talk to each other, but it would be almost a form of open regulation.. honest brokers may wish to use it to show their customers they aren't playing tricks relative to other brokers