Traders' Roundtable

<<moderators note: I added clarification to the subject of this thread to help those browsing the forums to know its general content>>

Dear All,

Although this piece may well need to be moved to a different location I do think it has validity to people at the testing / simulation phase..

I am struggling badly with brokers / fills .. I am finding in markets such as coffee and crude oil I am leaking about 200 - 300 usd everytime i trade on ''each '' contract.. in and out.
Yesterday I took 40 points slippage .. 400 usd on one crude oil .. but heres the hard bit ...
My broker who is man financial and quite possibly the worlds biggest broker told me that after enquiring with the floor brokers there answer was if you dont like it F$%^&K OFF !! its a professionals market and theyre not interested in anything under 10 lots .. similarly in coffee, gold , oj , cocoa it seems like you are held ransom because as somebody who trades maybe 500 lots per month they just dont want the business..

I think this is relevant to this prt of the forum for those who are testing and trying to look at slippage accurately and specific markets to trade .. somebody yesterday was talking about trading mini- euro's ad mini crude .. my advice is it would be cheaper to send a cheque to your broker now and cut out the trading if you touch those mini's .. similarly mini wheat , coffee , beans and corn are all totally untradable on anything other than a quiet day.
I desperately need advice on a good broker .. it seems the choice is refco or mann and they both have the same attitude .. please also bear in mind I am based in the uk , but any advice on brokers would be warmly recieved
Thanks
P.S I hope ive not boobed by putting this piece under testing / simulation

Thanks
Chris

The fact is that the smaller accounts get screwed at the larger brokerages.

Fills get better with size up to a point after which they get worse again.

What you need is leverage. I suggest using a smaller IB that might have the clout to get you better fills for your smaller account rather than using a large broker where you are too small to get individual attention.

- Forum Mgmnt

Chris,

My account is at Xpresstrade, which I assume is one of the smaller IB's that c.f. mentioned. I was prepared for the worst as far as fills go, but I have been happy so far (started July ’03), even with buy-stop and market orders. I’ve traded the NYBOT contracts and used to trade some of the minis (floor and electronic), and have never been screwed on any of them. My worst experience was with Robusta coffee, but that was a one-time deal.

I have no affiliation with them other than my account is there.

Steve

I am using Lind Waldock, and have found the fills to be very good. However at $30RT a bit expensive. Coffee fills have been good trading
1-3 contracts , the occasional bad fill but in fast market conditions.(The worst fill I received was off by .5 point- $187.50 Overall
fine.

Thank you kindly for the responses

Just some help back to you guys

I have been using deal4free.com for my fx / interest rate and stock index trades .. if your in the u.k its tax free as its spreadbetting and you can trade decent size with pretty much no slippage and no commissions .. I know now that you can open up an account from the usa

I used 10 % slippage factor for my backtesting and am keeping an accurate record in real trading obviously .. so far so good because its only really the nybot trades that are always 20 - 100 % slippage .. chicago is pretty much 0 - 10 % and I find I can gurantee 0% on fx trades .. in fact with my own experience im trying to get -50 to 0 % on fx trades and it s working okay ..
How much longer do we have to wait for these awful new york market makers to be replaced by screens ?? and when they are they only have themselves to blame ??

Chris