There are numerous brokers that forex traders can pick from, there are those forex brokers that have been around for some time and new companies which are shaking up the market with razor sharp prices and lightning quick trading platforms designed for scalpers and active traders. In this review I made a decision to compare FXCM to one of the quickest growing brokers on this planet, IC Markets.
Both fx brokers are quite reputable and have excellent forex offerings. FXCM largely caters for new traders in the forex market and IC Markets caters more for scalpers and frequent day traders searching for low spreads and fast order execution.
In terms of scalping there are a few key things to examine, these are spreads, slippage and order speed. It's fairly simple to test these 3 aspects if your fx broker uses MetaTrader 4. Fortunately, both IC Markets and FXCM use MetaTrader 4 hence testing these key features is quite simple for just about any trader to perform from the comfort of their lounge room.
I made a decision to check these three elements myself to help me decide which broker was better for Scalping. Luckily, I already had trading accounts with both brokers so this made testing much easier.
Most of my scalping is on EUR/USD, IC Markets beats FXCM in spreads on this pair, their average spread is 0.1 pips and often sits at zero pips, my FXCM Pro account shows an average spread of 0.5 pips and never goes lower than 0.3 pips. From my testing across a number of forex broker accounts IC Markets has by far the best EUR/USD prices in the world, this really is a scalpers dream.
For tick scalpers slippage is an extremely essential element to consider as slippage can have a big effect on you overall account profitability. Slippage is less significant if you are a longer term trader and do not trade frequently for small price movements. So that you can monitor slippage I deployed the exact same EA with both brokers so the same deals were taken. Across the 85 trades taken it was fairly clear that IC Markets had significantly less slippage than FXCM, this of course makes them a better forex broker for scalping.
Order execution speed was the last aspect tested on both broker platforms, yet again this investigation was carried out using an EA. Deal latency was monitored across both broker accounts on the 85 deals taken, it was interesting to see that the latency on trades taken on the FXCM trading platform was somewhat higher than the latency at IC Markets. I would have expected that FXCM would beat IC Markets in the order latency test however this wasn't the case, I later observed that IC Markets Metatrader 4 server is in NY4 this is the reason their trade execution is so lightning fast.
Both fx brokers are quite reputable and have excellent forex offerings. FXCM largely caters for new traders in the forex market and IC Markets caters more for scalpers and frequent day traders searching for low spreads and fast order execution.
In terms of scalping there are a few key things to examine, these are spreads, slippage and order speed. It's fairly simple to test these 3 aspects if your fx broker uses MetaTrader 4. Fortunately, both IC Markets and FXCM use MetaTrader 4 hence testing these key features is quite simple for just about any trader to perform from the comfort of their lounge room.
I made a decision to check these three elements myself to help me decide which broker was better for Scalping. Luckily, I already had trading accounts with both brokers so this made testing much easier.
Most of my scalping is on EUR/USD, IC Markets beats FXCM in spreads on this pair, their average spread is 0.1 pips and often sits at zero pips, my FXCM Pro account shows an average spread of 0.5 pips and never goes lower than 0.3 pips. From my testing across a number of forex broker accounts IC Markets has by far the best EUR/USD prices in the world, this really is a scalpers dream.
For tick scalpers slippage is an extremely essential element to consider as slippage can have a big effect on you overall account profitability. Slippage is less significant if you are a longer term trader and do not trade frequently for small price movements. So that you can monitor slippage I deployed the exact same EA with both brokers so the same deals were taken. Across the 85 trades taken it was fairly clear that IC Markets had significantly less slippage than FXCM, this of course makes them a better forex broker for scalping.
Order execution speed was the last aspect tested on both broker platforms, yet again this investigation was carried out using an EA. Deal latency was monitored across both broker accounts on the 85 deals taken, it was interesting to see that the latency on trades taken on the FXCM trading platform was somewhat higher than the latency at IC Markets. I would have expected that FXCM would beat IC Markets in the order latency test however this wasn't the case, I later observed that IC Markets Metatrader 4 server is in NY4 this is the reason their trade execution is so lightning fast.
About the Author:
If you're in the marketplace for a forex provider that you can execute your scalping strategies with you should look no further than IC Markets True ECN account, according to my testing it genuinely does beat the FXCM Pro account in all areas tested. Of course you should conduct your own testing with both of these brokers prior to opening an account.
Latency or delay as known in computer networking, is the time interval for a process to present an outcome, the time delay between the cause and effect of a physical change within a system. In Forex Trading, latency indicates the time needed for the traders’ requests to get a response from the broker’s server. Latency is considerably important because it can have a huge impact on the price that traders pay in the markets, hence it is significant for latency to be at lowest when making a trade. Traders can identify the range of latency in accordance with the trade that they are executing.
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