Welcome to NexusFi: the best trading community on the planet, with over 150,000 members Sign Up Now for Free
Genuine reviews from real traders, not fake reviews from stealth vendors
Quality education from leading professional traders
We are a friendly, helpful, and positive community
We do not tolerate rude behavior, trolling, or vendors advertising in posts
We are here to help, just let us know what you need
You'll need to register in order to view the content of the threads and start contributing to our community. It's free for basic access, or support us by becoming an Elite Member -- see if you qualify for a discount below.
-- Big Mike, Site Administrator
(If you already have an account, login at the top of the page)
Below are the actual details-- sorry if already posted. It sounds like their counter parties, the other liquidity providers, may also have been impacted. It sounds like the conflict of interest became a problem when their HFT trader started "hanging" trades. But, it doesn't sound like that was on purpose. It sounds like the problem was due to how they were marketing. My analysis may be wrong but it sounds like if they had admitted the relationship then they may not have got in trouble. However, I'm not sure whether or not other liquidity providers knew they may not have been on a fair playing field either.
Right, this is extremely dirty and I hope the other liquidity providers are not precluded from bringing forward a civil suit.
The other thing that's really dirty about this settlement is that the said affiliate of FXCM had made profits well in excess of the $7 million settlement by the 3rd year of its operation. (Its revenues were above the $100 million mark.)
Another injustice from all of this is that CFTC incorrectly labels this firm as a "HFT trader". There's nothing in the spirit of "HFT" when you are slower than your competition and given a structural advantage over every other liquidity provider in the pool. If they're 'hanging trades', it probably means that they were slowing down the other liquidity providers who are using their speed to provide FXCM's clients with better pricing. Both FXCM's clients and these HFT firms were being taken advantage of.
Ive started the process of closing my accounts. Trading station is very good, executions are lightning quick, support team were always efficient, so overall a good experience but this news worries me.
Ninja also has PhillipCapital as a Future's broker on its website. The Australian arm actually allows FX trading: Forex Trading » PhillipCapital Australia
Would that be an option for US users of Ninja, or non-US clients?
a couple of notes on brokers for Forex and Ninja Trader.
Interactive brokers, is no longer taking retail clients.. You need millions to trade their or to trade unleveraged.
FXCM, we know the news and their going to Gain Capital.
Gain Capital, This is who will be taking FXCM retail accounts. They look to be an expensive broker with a lot of negative reviews. They have been fined a few times over the years. Here are the reviews at forexpeacearm.com https://www.forexpeacearmy.com/forex-reviews/66/forex-com-reviews
MB trading got on bought out by Trade King, I don't believe they support the Ninja Trader platform.
So if you have Ninja Trader and want to trade Forex. Your kind of screwed..
It seems IB and OANDA usually have highest percentage of profitable retail customers. The reason behind this percentage could be complex, but I certainly do not want to use a broker where the odds seems to be against me the most. Plus FXCM almost collapsed during the CHF incident.
Since IB's ultra-low leverage is painful for retail customers (and someone just said they do not take small retail accounts anymore?), I picked OANDA.
So I am using MultiCharts.NET with OANDA for technical analysis and manual trade. OANDA also supports MT4 for free but I don't like their verbose C++ grammar; so for execution I actually used the Zorro platform for its light weight and simplicity in coding: Take Money From The Rich And Give It To The Poor (the free version is good to play with but you need the paid version to execute with OANDA)
So far I am happy with this setup and feeling lucky that I didn't get affected by the FXCM fiasco.
FXCM still hasn't contacted its customers yet with any explanation. I have an FXCM account using NinaTrader. Ninjatrader has a Forex brokerage. I wonder if we can jut transfer to their broker, if we are already using NinjaTrader or was NinjaTrader actually an agent for FXCM?