I've been buying and selling forex for over eleven years, I first began buying and selling back in 1999 when there were only a couple of forex providers in Australia, as many of these providers were comparatively new and not accustomed to handling active traders like myself I was forced to look for a provider overseas. After much searching I was able to find a broker in Switzerland that was able to cater for high volume traders. It has only been in the last 6 months that I again began my hunt for a good local Australian forex broker and what I found was remarkable to say the least.
After a few days scouring the web I noticed that the forex landscape has changed dramatically, there's allot more alternatives than there was previously. Previously there we only really two key forex providers and both of them were market makers, it goes without saying the days of forex trading desks is over, the majority of providers now offer straight through processing many of the top tier companies even have an ECN forex product offering.
I downloaded a few trading platforms, when I say a few I mean my PC was covered with shortcuts to almost every single trading platform in existence. Several trading platforms offered by brokers were on-line, though online platforms might initially appear less complicated to utilise as no program needs to be downloaded they often lack the sophisticated charting features of downloadable platforms and as a professional trader I can tell you that superior charting is crucial.
After road testing all the online trading platforms that I had installed I found that the majority of them were not really created for professional investors. The spreads on most of the trading platforms widened dramatically over news periods, even though this is not uncommon as this is when the market is the most unstable, I actually did not expect the spread in EUR/USD to widen by thirty five pips. Some of the broker platforms had fixed spreads, however I actually noticed a worse problem with these guys, their price feed just froze and I couldn't place any trades or get out of my open positions, in fact twice the trading platforms just stopped.
Of every one of 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 broker makes it possible for multiple banks to quote prices flowing into their trading platform. ECN brokers regularly have very tight spreads and so much more transparent pricing than fixed spread brokers and market makers. When buying and selling with an ECN broker you will find that your spreads will not dramatically widen over news periods, the reason for this is that with so many banks participating in the price formation it is likely that there will always be buyers and sellers even in market volatility.
Not surprisingly as a professional trader my favored preference is definitely an ECN forex broker, out of the 2 that I found in Australia I discovered that only one of them consistently had tighter spreads than the other on all the main currency pairs. I'd say that it's because they almost certainly have more liquidity providers providing them with prices.
To cut a long story short I ended up deciding on IC Markets, it actually was not a tough choice as these guys were the only company that could offer me consistently tight spreads even throughout news announcements along with a stable trading platform. So far so good, I have been dealing with them for about 3 months now and have had no problems. As their spreads stay tight over the news I have had many more buying and selling possibilities than I'd have had with the other brokers. If you’re in the marketplace for a reliable forex company who's an ECN and can provide you with razor sharp spreads I can without doubt 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 provider of choice you should do your own homework and trial a few trading platforms before you make a choice. Marcus has also published many articles on trading the majority of which you are able to acquire on his forex trading webpage.
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