Comments on: Scalping brokers

By: Colin McGinley

Colin McGinley — Mon, 20 Jun 2011 20:09:38 +0000

Last time I looked at the MBT desktop pro charts they were still rudimentary and didn’t give me everything I needed. I still had to use NinjaTrader charting if I wanted to trade through MBT. It’s been a while (6+ months) so they certainly might be better now.

I’m perfectly happy using Oanda’s charting for my scalping at the moment. I like them for their relative simplicity and the fact that I can alter stop loss and profit levels by just dragging and dropping lines, very similar to how CMS charting is.

By: davidc

davidc — Mon, 20 Jun 2011 19:17:47 +0000

what charting do you have nowadays, still with MBT? their new desktop pro looks promising. I’ve been looking around since CMS got rid of all retail accounts. too bad, their VT charts were great.

By: Jaymanicus

Jaymanicus — Mon, 29 Sep 2008 02:49:21 +0000

Just a quick note — MB Trading is not a true ECN. If you won’t take my word for it, call Lebang and ask him. They are “almost” a true ECN, but not quite, owing to the way they aggregate orders and then pass them through in blocks. It’s easy to see it the other way ’round, but unless one is trading with more than $50K in their account and standard round lots in their trades, it’s very rare to find a true ECN. (I don’t believe IB’s clearing agent is a true ECN, either.)

By: Colin McGinley

Colin McGinley — Fri, 19 Sep 2008 19:37:41 +0000

I just want to point out one correction I made to the description of ADM Derivatives’s Viking Trader. The platform does include charting, with all the basic indicators and drawing tools that you find in most charting packages these days. I was unable to realistically use their charts due to the fact that the minimum time frame you can set is one minute.

By: Colin McGinley

Colin McGinley — Fri, 19 Sep 2008 19:35:47 +0000

If we exclude the rather dramatic financial events this week that have caused larger than normal spreads across the board, it is my understanding that the regular ECN spread on EUR/JPY is in the range of 1.5-2.0.

If you use MB Trading then the commission adds around another 1.6 pips on top of that. If you use a cheaper ECN broker then commission is more likely to be 0.8 pips.

Spread plus commission is therefore between 2.3 and 2.8 pips.

If you had to pick a fixed spread broker to scalp with then I think Oanda is the only real choice (even taking into account the elastic nature of Oanda’s fixed spread, where it widens around news events and during periods of very low volume).

Oanda have full control over their price feed which, although they probably claim never to do so, allows them to nudge prices up or down at their discretion. With an ECN you are getting full pass through pricing. Price spikes do happen with Oanda. Caveat emptor.