Forex trading is my preferred pastime, it's one of several things that I do when I get home from work. It can however get a bit daunting from time to time because there's so much information on-line about forex providers much of which I am not certain whether I believe or not. Two months ago I got tired of reading all the online trash so I thought that I'd write an unbiased review comparing three of my forex brokers IC Markets, Pepperstone and FXDD side by side.
Writing evaluations is always challenging as every forex broker has their very own pros and cons, this is why it is important to evaluate brokers against a set of standards which you feel are most important to your forex trading. When you choose the criteria to apply in your forex broker evaluation you might want to first look at what type of forex trader you are and ask yourself the question, am I a scalper, investor, strategy forex trader or ea trader?. Once you have worked out what's crucial to you, you will be in a position to conduct a good appraisal of the fx brokers on your shortlist.
For me it was simple, I don't have time to sit down in front of my PC day and night that is why I just use ea's for my fx trading, about the only thing that I do is tweak my ea settings. Due to my forex trading style the most important elements that I consider when deciding on a fx broker are spreads, trade latency, and service. So in order to determine whether IC Markets, Pepperstone of FXDD are the better broker for me I assessed all of them according to these criteria. So here are my discoveries.
All three fx brokers are excellent forex brokers for different styles of forex trading, however if you're an expert adviser trader like me obviously you will go for the broker that has the smallest spreads. It was fairly evident to me from the start who would claim victory in this group. After downloading their MT4 platform it is not hard to see that the spreads IC Markets quote are unbelievable. When you place all 3 broker platforms side by side it becomes even more apparent, IC Markets spreads across all of the majors are no less than 30% better than the spreads displayed by FXDD and Pepperstone. IC Markets takes out this category without a doubt.
As I only use expert advisers really the only real precise way for me to observe trade speeds was to analyse the readings on my expert adviser. After analysing the deals take on each of the 3 forex brokers it was extremely apparent that FXDD and Pepperstone had deal execution speeds which were substantially slower than the speeds demonstrated on IC Markets true ECN platform. The typical deal speed for FXDD and Pepperstone was about 400 milli seconds compared to 150 milli seconds at IC Markets. The expert adviser that I had running on IC Markets True ECN trading platform also took many more trades and was the most profitable broker of all three over the testing period. A clear victory for IC Markets.
Call me old school but for me I value service also, after all what would occur if your fx brokers trading server collapsed, how would you get your deals on? It is for this very reason I have incorporated service as part of my complete evaluation of these three forex providers. To asses these forex brokers I made a decision to phone each of them and to close a small number of of my positions over the phone. Much to my shock all of the three forex brokers were rather good at taking telephone trades. As this test didn't unveil any obvious winner I decided to make a sales inquiry. This was an interesting experiment and showed that only two of these fx brokers actually had an excellent sales team, this was both FXDD and IC Markets. The Pepperstone sales team were simply nonexistent. I'd consider FXDD and IC Markets like winners in this category.
So if you're searching for a good fx broker to run that newly obtained expert adviser with, you can't go wrong with any of these fx brokers, however if you want the ultimate performance out of your expert adviser I would highly recommend that you take a more in-depth look at IC Markets Metatrader 4 True ECN platform. They provide a demo Metatrader 4 platform on their site for you to test drive.
Writing evaluations is always challenging as every forex broker has their very own pros and cons, this is why it is important to evaluate brokers against a set of standards which you feel are most important to your forex trading. When you choose the criteria to apply in your forex broker evaluation you might want to first look at what type of forex trader you are and ask yourself the question, am I a scalper, investor, strategy forex trader or ea trader?. Once you have worked out what's crucial to you, you will be in a position to conduct a good appraisal of the fx brokers on your shortlist.
For me it was simple, I don't have time to sit down in front of my PC day and night that is why I just use ea's for my fx trading, about the only thing that I do is tweak my ea settings. Due to my forex trading style the most important elements that I consider when deciding on a fx broker are spreads, trade latency, and service. So in order to determine whether IC Markets, Pepperstone of FXDD are the better broker for me I assessed all of them according to these criteria. So here are my discoveries.
All three fx brokers are excellent forex brokers for different styles of forex trading, however if you're an expert adviser trader like me obviously you will go for the broker that has the smallest spreads. It was fairly evident to me from the start who would claim victory in this group. After downloading their MT4 platform it is not hard to see that the spreads IC Markets quote are unbelievable. When you place all 3 broker platforms side by side it becomes even more apparent, IC Markets spreads across all of the majors are no less than 30% better than the spreads displayed by FXDD and Pepperstone. IC Markets takes out this category without a doubt.
As I only use expert advisers really the only real precise way for me to observe trade speeds was to analyse the readings on my expert adviser. After analysing the deals take on each of the 3 forex brokers it was extremely apparent that FXDD and Pepperstone had deal execution speeds which were substantially slower than the speeds demonstrated on IC Markets true ECN platform. The typical deal speed for FXDD and Pepperstone was about 400 milli seconds compared to 150 milli seconds at IC Markets. The expert adviser that I had running on IC Markets True ECN trading platform also took many more trades and was the most profitable broker of all three over the testing period. A clear victory for IC Markets.
Call me old school but for me I value service also, after all what would occur if your fx brokers trading server collapsed, how would you get your deals on? It is for this very reason I have incorporated service as part of my complete evaluation of these three forex providers. To asses these forex brokers I made a decision to phone each of them and to close a small number of of my positions over the phone. Much to my shock all of the three forex brokers were rather good at taking telephone trades. As this test didn't unveil any obvious winner I decided to make a sales inquiry. This was an interesting experiment and showed that only two of these fx brokers actually had an excellent sales team, this was both FXDD and IC Markets. The Pepperstone sales team were simply nonexistent. I'd consider FXDD and IC Markets like winners in this category.
So if you're searching for a good fx broker to run that newly obtained expert adviser with, you can't go wrong with any of these fx brokers, however if you want the ultimate performance out of your expert adviser I would highly recommend that you take a more in-depth look at IC Markets Metatrader 4 True ECN platform. They provide a demo Metatrader 4 platform on their site for you to test drive.
About the Author:
Deciding between IC Markets, Pepperstone Or FXDD for forex. To know more about forex market and and a True ECN broker, read more on our website.
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