Brokers to Check Out
TD&H,
I, like you, are very weary about most of the brokers out and about. What I have done about checking some of them out and I am interested in potentially opening an account with them, I have done the following:
1. I have emailed them and asked them directly if they currently use, have ever used, and/or are ever intending to use any form of MT4 Plugin or any other form of account manipulation. Based on their answers (and yes, I understand that no broker is going to admit this if they do these kinds of things), I will try to give them the benefit of the doubt. For future reference, I have their answers on record and will feel free to share their 'story' on as many sites as I possibly can.
2. I have googled these same brokers to determine if there is any form of bad press or problems identified by someone/some trader or traders. Chances are that if a broker has been involved in some form of 'shanagans', it has been reported to someone, some place before.
3. Because of brokers potentially using some form of MT4 platform disconnections to prevent a trader's positive trade from reaching its profit trade and ending up stopping out, I now use software products from a company called 4xTrader (
MetaTrader Expert Advisors and forex MT4 Indicators ‹Forex Trading Tools), which are designed to root out potentially scamming brokers. I believe that their products are good ones and you may want to check out their site. I only found out about them myself a couple of months ago. By the way, one of their products called 4xWatch tracks broker disconnects and I have used this information to contact 3 different brokerages to let them know that they are having some issues with their MT4 platform connections. In all cases, though they really did not acknowledge these issues directly back to me, their connections have gotten much better lately. This is also, by the way, done on their demo account servers, and I realize that 'live' servers will be somewhat different. Still, these brokers know that I am keeping an eye on them.
4. I also have started using a connection software from Mt4i.com called the BrokerWatchEA (Mt4i_Auto-restart). It also tracks broker disconnects and is able to restart their MT4 platform, if needed, if it goes down. This product is, by the way, free of charge and works very well based on my experience.
Good luck, TD&H, and I hope that some of what I have mentioned is of help.
