FXCM Discussion

But if they are ECN now, why would they have interest in their clients' stops? Would it matter to them if you make money or no?

I don't believe they are an ecn. Far as I can tell, they trade against
their retail customers. Ie...Allow the big boys to make their cut first.
If all want to trade with them,... have it at it. I doubt you will be profitable....its too easy for them to run your stops.
It doesnt matter to them if you make money...they can make more off you and will do so. And to that company, that is what its about --- not their clients. I stopped losing money in forex when I quit trading with them.

Well, I've been with them for over 2 years now, and haven't had any problems so far, except the news times. But my account cannot be called a big one in no means, so may be they just don't pay any attention to what I do

Everthing except news times? Thats the best time to make money. that is 5 minutes after. Anyway, I saw a 35 pip spike one day between them and metatrader ...I could not believe my eyes. I know alot of folks dumped them because they called me twice doing a customer service survey. I said what "are you nuts?" Hey, if you trust them. go for it . Any trader worth his salt on this site will avoid that company like the plague. When I get a hundred people like you posting , I will think about them. Right now, if someone lites a match and burns their company to the ground... I say good riddenance.

I am actually thinking about switching away from them because of all the negative talks. But so far nothing bad happened to my account thnx God. Will see how things go. And regarding news: there's a lot of headgaming involved during news, and being an economist by education, I need to see what the announcement was before entering, otherwise I'm not comfortable. But all the good news services that deliver the releases before the spikes happen are too expensive for my pocket at the moment.

fxcm news is decent. They have a big company and attrach a lot of business. They just dont respect the smaller traders. Its my money to trade not theirs. No reason to spike folks out other than greed. If they want to pay their ceo-- earn it...Don't come after my account with some dam casino computer.

I've seen price discrepencies from time to time but if you think about it you could have tried to execute on the bogus price and made a quick 35 pips once price got back to reality.

Are you referring to their dailyfx website where they have news? Because they don't have the newsbox built into their platform anymore. And that newsbox wasn't that good anyways, it was always late by at least 3 minutes, sometimes much longer.


ps. my bad, i just checked the dailyfx section for clients, you still get thompson news but it's not built into the platform anymore.

Recent events would remind us retail traders that we should consider two factors in judging a broker for "reliability".

Often, we equate reliability with execution of orders, good fills, no slippage, no stop hunting, no delay executions. etc.. These are major concerns of the "retail traders". This area, FXCM fails miserably.

However, we should also consider the "financial stability" of the broker in question. I, no doubt, believe that FXCM is financially stable.

I would keep my options open. I would not consider FXCM if they are not financially stable, but the bad side tips the other way as well.

I've seen on CFTC report that they are well capitalized, I haven't ever trade with them, their platform reminds me Refco

I'm curios about their MT4 release...

I recently signed up with FXCM so far they have been good.

However when I signed up with them when i read over the contract it said that dealing desk still exists and it is up to them.

I emailed them asking about it and this is what i got.

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1) All accounts of Trader will be set to either the “No Dealing Desk” (“NDD”) execution or “Dealing Desk” (“DD”) execution in FXCM's sole and absolute discretion.
2) FXCM exclusively reserves the right to transfer accounts from one option to the other at any time with or without notice to Trader.

I was informed that our compliance department decided to leave this information in the trading agreement given the fact that we service a variety of different clients including both institutional and individuals. As such, the inclusion is designed to offer the firm flexibility in the event that changes were required of a client's trading account.

As we stand now, we do not offer dealing desk services to retail clients as we have phased out dealing desk execution and do not intend to offer such execution to clients so the probability of a client account being transitioned to such execution is extremely low.


In terms of the company's business model, we do not make a market by trading against clients so we have no intention to move backwars by offering an out-dated execution option to clients.

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What this basically says is dealing desk still exists and you can be on it at their discretion which doesn't sound very reassuring.

For now i got no problems but if i start seeing funny numbers i am leaving in a hurry.

I honestly think you're reading too much into that email. They are heavily audited every year by the NFA - they wouldn't be allowed to tell you you are on No Dealing Desk but in fact have you on Dealing Desk. They would get fined and I have a feeling since their rep is not very good online they would hardly want a fine added to it.

I'm not going to enter an opinion about reliability here, but a word of caution.

Over a year ago I had two live accounts with FXCM and Forex.com. I ran both accounts down below required margin to trade, so I decided to regroup-re-train. Forex.com began withdrawing $25 every so often as an inactivity charge. OK fine. I'm being charged to do nothing, so...big deal right? They have more overhead cost than I do. FXCM made no charges against my account until Dec. 31st and decided to take $49.50 for inactivity. Just when I was deciding where to deposit funds for live trading again, they were kind enough to make that decision for me.

Yes, they are reliable and that's not an opinion. That's sarcasm. Once you deposit money with them, don't stop trading.

As i said for now i got no complaints,

That part in the email is directly taken from the contract. Rules 1 and 2.

So NO, I am not reading too much into the email.

That stuff is part of the contract and it should not be there considering they claim there is no dealing desk.

Why the hell would you have DEALING DESK part of the contract when you are advertising NO DEALING DESK.

That DEALING DESK clause should not even be mentioned in the contract.

Last time I checked out FXCM they still did not charge a commission on their No Dealing Desk option. This means that the commission is built into the spread. If the commission is being added into the spread, than they have the ability to manipulate that price and add the commission, meaning they have the ability to change the price to better themselves. The NDD option they offer might not have a traditional "dealing desk" behind it, but I would bet the same software that adds the spread on always adds the spread to the side that most benefits FXCM. I would also bet they can still manipulate that price in one direction or the other as they see benefit.

As far as FXCM with MT4. See my post back in Dec. From this thread.

FXCM trader and loser for 3 1/2 years ( on and off ), but coming along and getting there slowly, no issues with FXCM to be honest, I don't see any stop hunting moves that aren't in the market and on the InterbankFX chart platform EVER so I think thats a load of tosh, the Big Boys hit your stops not the broker.

The way I read there Deal Desk or not is, if your a loser they'll take your losses, once you start making they'll transfer you to the other account and take the spread, both seem to be identical in operation so doesn't really matter to anyone anyways.

The question is ( cause I'm close and is the dream ), has anyway started to withdraw say £2000 UK per month every month ?? if so any issues ?? do they let you keep trading ?? if so no worries!!


News time is where the money is made and also lost, not trading news times is my main trading improvement

In other words, "we reserve the right to rip you off when it suits our needs". Oh pleeeeease! Even when they claim to be NDD now, they still do shadow-boxing with our money. Wolf in sheep's clothing...

The day I transferred to a real NDD account, I started making money, with or without trading news. The spread is large enough to kill you off slowly but screwing up the quotes and orders, your probability of success is from 5% to nil. Companies like these give forex a bad name.

I prefer the old method, there was a delay from my Meta Chart and FXCM due to the guaranteed prices to, for a few weeks during news times when 50pip 1second moves where the norm I could get in and out at the best price pretty much in complete safety

Sadly, they caught on and my trades kept getting rejected

FXCM still can't keep there hands out the cookie jar, they are still messing with qoutes, with over 90k customer's why don't they offer a true ecn and just charge commision, but no they can't do that, that will take away ways to screw the traders, i think they are a joke, altho the biggest but the worst.