Best Way to Trade FX

Discussions about trading the Forex markets.
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Chris67
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Best Way to Trade FX

Post by Chris67 »

For anyone who wants to know about trading FX .. I maybe able to help. As well as 10 years trading in the interbank currency markets I spent a period of time running a spreadbetting trading desk in London.
For people who want to trade small fx with no slippage , no commissions and no service costs .. plus tax free winnings then spreadbetting is amust.
I would also say that one particular spreadbet firm ( not the one i worked for so no plugs here) offers a service better than any bank ive seen or any so called reputable brokerage house

www.deal4free.com

Quite possibly the most amazing service Ive ever had from a broker .. trade on 100/1 margin in Fx and take positions as small as 1 usd per point so you can design your own size futures contract as it were...

If anyone is sceptical of these services please ask me more as Im sure i can be a valuable resource to the forum on this issues having seen it from the inside and will be happy to cull any scepticism since these firms are set up fantastically for what I believe most people on this forum would be trying to achieve.

Regards
kpj746
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Post by kpj746 »

DFF operate here in Australia and have run into substantial problems with our regulators, most notably our trade practices authority.

Their name is misleading since they are not really free, at leat not here in Oz. They have also soured their relationship with most of their client base with their ad hoc changes. For example they used to deal in our top 200 stocks and then one night simply announced they were no longer dealing in half of these stocks and you had a day to close your positions or they would be closed for you at whatever they deemed the market to be.

I have also found that their spread does not reflect the spread of the underlying and in many cases can be 5 times the spread of the underlying.

Perhaps the situation is different in the UK which is their home base, but I worry about delaing with an organisation that only makes money when you use money and which also has the ability to change the playing field at a moments notice
Kiwi
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Post by Kiwi »

So you wouldnt deal with any broker then kpj. They all fit that description - although some times it takes a while to notice.

I don't used deal4free. I use finspreads out of the UK for my spreadbetting. One of the things I didnt like about deal4free in Aus is that they dont support spreadbetting but use cfds with interest charges daily. Those interest charges mean that if you hold for longer than about 4 days you want to use a real spreadbetting outfit (at least based on what I do).

Finspreads also only make money if you do something (user pays) and have a spread that exceeds that underlying by a number of times. So it is important for the user to decide if they should use a spreadbetter or a discount broker. I do both for different strategies.

John
PeterK
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Post by PeterK »

Their name is misleading since they are not really free, at least not here in Oz. They have also soured their relationship with most of their client base with their ad hoc changes.
True.

Deal4free will no longer be commission free in Australia from 12-Jan. At least we got a months notice on that one. It's just unfortunate (polite version of my first reaction) that this totally stuffs up a short term system that took me many months to develop, and have been trading for just 5 months. I am currently attempting to quickly re-tune it for medium term trading to lessen the impact of commissions.

Other changes that CMC implemented at short notice have also caused me problems, e.g a monthly exchange fee for ASX trading. They also, at short notice, stopped the ability for entering orders for ASX CFD's outside ASX trading hours. I only trade US CFD's now as they don't (currently) have these restrictions and costs.

Regarding the spreads. On the ASX CFD's, I have always found CMC's spreads to accurately reflect the underlying, when taking into account the volume that you're attempting to trade. For example, if your trade size is larger than the volumes at the bid/ask on the underlying, then CMC will similarly widen the bid/ask to encompass the required volume just as if you were trading the underlying.

On the US markets, spreads tend to be more stable as there is always ample liquidity.

I guess every broker and trading platform has their idiosyncrasies, and we have to learn to trade within them or go elsewhere. Although CMC has a habit of stuffing me around regularly, I still find reasonable ways to trade with them.

For example, now that I need to trade longer term, it's possible that the interest charges will affect my results, hence I may be better moving this strategy to something like Finspreads.

On the other hand, I am also teaching myself currency trading so that I can diversify a bit, and remove some costs and slippage from my trading (either with CMC or elsewhere).


Peter K
tosh
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Post by tosh »

any updates on how deal4"not so"free are going in australia ? have they got their act together ? are there any other FX trading options without having to go overseas ? how has the cost of carry charge affected people's trading profitability ?
thanks,
tosh. :?
josbarr
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Post by josbarr »

Rising ADX above 30

Buy/sell bounces along the 20 period exponential moving average.
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