I've been trading forex for over 11 years, I originally began buying and selling back in 1999 when there were just a couple of forex brokers in Australia, as most of these brokers were relatively new and not accustomed to dealing with active traders like myself I was forced to look for a broker overseas. After a great deal of searching I was able to locate a broker in Switzerland that was able to cater for high volume traders. It’s only been in the last six months that I again began my hunt for a good local Australian forex broker and what I found was mind blowing to say the least.
After a couple of days scouring online I noticed that the forex landscape has changed dramatically, there's allot more choice than there was previously. Previously there we only really two key forex brokers and both of them were market makers, of course the days of forex dealing desks is over, nearly all companies now offer straight through processing some of the top tier providers even have an ECN forex offering.
I downloaded a few trading platforms, when I say a few I mean my monitor was covered with shortcuts to nearly every single platform available. A number of platforms offered by brokers were on-line, although web based platforms may at first appear convenient to utilise as no program needs to be downloaded they often lack the innovative charting features of downloadable platforms and as a professional trader I can tell you that superior charting is vital.
After road testing all of the online trading platforms that I had installed I discovered that almost all of them were probably not made for professional investors. The spreads on most of the trading platforms widened dramatically over news periods, although this isn't uncommon as this is often when the market is the most unstable, I actually didn't expect the spread in EUR/USD to blow out by 35 pips. A small number of the broker platforms had fixed spreads, however I actually observed a worse problem with these guys, their prices just froze and I could not put on any orders or get out of my open positions, in fact on two occasions the platforms simply crashed.
Out of all the forex trading platforms that I trialled 2 were actually ECN’s or electronic communication networks. An ECN is essentially a mini marketplace where the forex company makes it possible for multiple banks to quote prices flowing into their trading platform. ECN brokers frequently have tremendously tight spreads and so much more transparent pricing than fixed spread brokers and market makers. When trading with an ECN provider you will also find that your spreads won’t dramatically blow out over news periods, the main reason for this is that with a lot of banks participating in the price creation it is probable that there will always be buyers and sellers even during market instability.
It goes without saying as an expert trader my favored selection is definitely an ECN forex broker, out of the two that I found in Australia I discovered that only one of them consistently had tighter spreads than the other on every one of the key forex pairs. I would say that it is because they probably have more liquidity providers providing them with prices.
To cut a long story short I ended up selecting IC Markets, it really wasn’t a hard choice as IC Markets were the only broker that could give me consistently tight spreads even during news announcements as well as a stable trading platform. So far so good, I have been dealing with them for about 3 months now and have had no troubles. As their spreads remain tight over the news I have had allot more trading possibilities than I would have had with the other companies. If you’re in the market for a dependable forex provider who is an ECN and can provide you with razor sharp spreads I can unquestionably say that form my experience IC Markets is the best out there.
Author Resource:-
Marcus Murphie is a professional forex trader with many years experience. Allthough IC Markets is Marcus's forex broker of choice you ought to do your own homework and try out a few trading platforms before you make a selection. Marcus has also posted many articles on trading many of which you can find on his forex trading webpage.
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