So, I made the mistake of opening and funding an account first, then doing my research second. From everything I've read about forex.com, a solid 80% of the reviews say it's a scam. They claim everything from having their transaction rates changed after the fact, to having winning positions liquidated when nowhere near a margin call. For every ten people complaining, there's usually one that says they all just don't know how to trade and are crying about losing money. I figured that sounded reasonable so I carried on with business as usual. I have yet to experience anything as drastic as the claims in the reviews, but I have noticed a few things I was wondering if anyone else has had an issue with. Most importantly, the charts are horrific. I can have the same time period chart open, for the same pair, at the same size, four separate times and have four different current candles. I can also draw a line through, say, the high side tails of five different candles, and while the tails are all the exact same height, all touching the line, if I roll the pointer over each candle, the values of the highs can be different by as much as 2-3 pips. It's damn near impossible to trade like that because I have to go through each candle and manually confirm whether these candles really did hit the prices they're touching, then mentally adjust the chart to what it should look like based on the real values. Something I noticed today, and what made me decide to make this post (and I've heard this complained about multiple times on multiple review sites), is that when my order is executed, my entry position instantly becomes support (for a short) or resistance (for a long), right to the exact pip, where no support or resistance can otherwise be found at that value. This is even more apparent because forex.com places a line on the chart at your entry price. It's fun to watch as, candle after candle, price rebounds off my entry for no explainable reason. It's even more fun, nearly comical, to watch as price moves as planned the second I call it quits on the position. I'd imagine it wouldn't be very fun if I was trading with a significant amount of money. Is this the market shaking people out, me taking bad trades, or is this chart/quote manipulation?
The only retail buckets I'd trust are Oanda, MBTrading (aka EFX), CMS, GFT, Gain and perhaps FXCM. Forex.com is the retail-end for Gain, which takes only 100K+ accounts. Learn to profitably trade a demo before putting on real money. This could take several years. The market oscillates and reverses in ways totally foreign to the newb. Hence the seemingly 'broker out to get u' feeling.
They're all bucket/ECN hybrids. They all match opposing customer orders than hold or layoff net exposure interbank. No prime dealer or bank deals in sub 100K increments. At least to my knowledge.
Careful, here. A market that transacts more than the combined total of all three major North American markets in a single day, is no scam. The scam comes from people who prey upon the ignorance of the uninformed and the uneducated in this business. Those who never learn to trade properly, never have a chance at ever being profitable on a long term basis. Short term profitability, will not make a successful business in this industry, regardless of what anyone tells you to the contrary. Opening an account "first," was your "first" mistake. Learn from that mistake and grow wiser in the future for having made it. Study the market data. Everything you need to know to become a highly successful trader, is locked-up inside that data. Learn to develop your OWN technical analysis and then learn how to apply it to the market. Develop a REASON for being here, if you don't have one already. Just getting your feet wet in this business, is not going to lead to long range profitability or long term success. Survivors in this business are a unique group of people with a high degree of intelligence, mental and emotional discipline. The most important thing for you to know as a newbie trader, is the importance of Risk Management. If anyone tells you otherwise, they are lying to you, or they simply don't have a clue what this business is all about. Your first assignment in getting up to speed in this world, is to learn how to measure, quantify, account for, recognize, identify, pinpoint and minimize risk. Do that and everything else will fall into place, as it should. Fail to accomplish that task (and it is a daunting task no doubt) and you will virtually guarantee yourself long range failure and bankruptcy in this business. A Jedi Trader accounts for the risk in the trade, long before he/she ever enters the market. Take the emotion out of the game, is my advice to you. This is NOT a trip to Vegas. This is a very serious business where Trillions change hands every..... single..... day. The question is, what fraction of those Trillions will you capture between the time you enter and exit the market. This business can be fun, but it is STILL a business, no doubt.
GFT and EFX for example are different animals. You can't just bunch them together like that and call them all buckets. True though that interbank orders start at 100k. EFX however does group smaller mini lots together into one lot.
If you don't know how to trade and want to get your "feet wet" then you start at a bucket shop. BUT... most new traders will loose money because they keep their profits at a minimum.. but at the same time let their losses run.. this is what the retail("bucket") profit from. By matching the buy/sell orders in-house from their accounts so they don't do it through the clearing house. And usually they will not send out to the clearing house if it's not a standard size. This is the same way most retail dealers MAKE money from you. Their books show a lot of smaller sized trades, so they keep those trades in-house and trade high-volume at the opposite of what most of their clients have.. at a discounted price (due to volume discounts).. and THAT transaction gets posted on the ticker which causes a global price shift. If your trading anything less than a standard, I highly doubt they are getting routed to the interbank market directly.. it most likely goes to the dealing desk of the firm or a 3rd party firm the broker does business with to unload the risk. it is not necessarily "a scam," it's just business as usual.
I understand what many are saying about first knowing the market. I do have a practice account with them as well to experiment with new strategies and money management. I've never traded with a complex strategy. I use simple support and resistance with no indicators. My win ratio is actually very high, but as already mentioned, my issue is with money management and cutting winners short and letting losers run. And I tend to sabotage myself with stupid impulse trades that don't even remotely fit my strategy. Perhaps I'll start a journal so people can critisize my trading and point out flaws. I had simply heard so much bad about them, that I'm paranoid when I see anything getting screwy. I did have 25 pip swing on the AUD/USD I put on last night which filled at my ordered amount, and my stop was not hunted. I suppose I'll try to be less paranoid and keep more of the blame on my own actions. For the guy that did say they were a scam, please elaborate. Contact me via pm if you don't want to go into detail publically.