WHY BROKERS MATTER
OUR BROKER OVERVIEW
There are literally hundreds of brokers in the market compatible with our trading plugin, but we recommend to place some effort in this decision as the selection of the right broker can not only have an influence in your trading results as well as more or less features in what relates to the protection of your invested capital.
From our point view, several aspects should be taken into account in the decision process to elect the best possible broker. Naturally that investor has it’s own priorities and thus different evaluation parameters. The result is normally a choice over a weighted basket of the features, advantages and disadvantages that each broker can offer.
Below you can find the main aspects we take into consideration when assessing a broker to host our accounts. The following list should be seen only as guide or aid in the selection process, and not as the assessment that each individual customer should do, taking into account its own specific situation:
Safety of deposited funds
Protection against the occurrence of negative balances.
Trading conditions (spreads, commissions, slippage, etc)
Execution (latency, speed of execution, requotes, etc.)
Transactional costs (how easy and costly is to move in and move out funds to/from broker)
Transparency and trustworthiness (are announced trading conditions really put in place)
Easyness of contact with broker (communication channels, orientation to customer)
Base currency of base account
You can find below a list of brokers we recommend you to to consider in your analysis. Please take notice that this is not any recommendation for you to enter in a contract with any of the below mentioned brokers. You are required to do your own research, you own due diligence and to verify the data that is relevant to you, including the data we inform below. The information shown at this table can be changed by the brokers without any previous notice, and therefore can be outdated.
NAVIGATING IN THE BROKER OCEAN
HOW DO WE GUIDE OUR OWN BROKER SELECTION
You can find below a set of criteria of some of the relevant aspects we consider when we assess which broker accounts can Harbour our funds and trading strategies. Please bear in mind this information is intended to provide you with some guidance and not any set of bullet proof rules. Trading in the instruments made available by Odysseia Captal’s technology are considerably risky. A part of this risk is connected with the brokerage world. Therefore you should perform your own assessment to elect the best broker for you, with the criteria that you find to be the most relevant for your own specific situation. Odysseia Capital cannot be held liable for any damage resulting from a less than optimal broker selection
DEPOSITED FUNDS SAFETY
When funding your account one must be aware that there are risks concerning the safety of the funds, as in any other financial institution that receives monies from customers.
One of the most effective tools to protect capital in this regard is work with brokers regulated by credible regulators such as the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) in the UK.
See our “About risks” page for more information about this topic.
TRADING CONDITIONS
Brokers are paid through spreads (price gap between buying and selling a financial instrument) and/or commissions. The dimension of spreads and commissions can have a significant impact in the final return of the strategy being traded.
Another influencing factor with is “slippage”, which happens when the order is filled at a price that is different than the requested price.
The accurate assessment how each Broker behaves regarding these topics is actually only possible through a real-money account at the broker. Therefore as a part of a free service we supply to our customers we run several “client” accounts at different brokers, which can be used as proxys of the real life trading conditions of each of the tested brokers. Find the tests below.
TRANSACTIONAL COSTS
To move money around (funding, withdrawal) be it through banks, through credit cards or through electronic wallets such as Netteler or Skrill carries normally costs that the broker can transfer to it’s customers. Some brokers can also apply fees of themselves in order to incentivize the customer to leave the funds at broker’s side and to have an external revenue stream. Other brokers take the other view and internalize all these transactional costs in order to provide a better customer service. For European customers belonging to the EU is also usually an advantage, when the broker provides an European bank for deposits and withdrawals.
All these costs take a bite in our total performance and should, if possible, be avoided and there are brokers who make this part of the process easier on you.
EASYNESS OF CONTACT
To be able to reach the broker easily is extremely important. The broker is your direct access to your funds and to anything that might be happening with your account that might need attention or corrective measures.
The most common communication methods with brokers are of course telephone and email, but we consider that a good, effective and available chat service operating 24/5 is very relevant addition to smooth your relation with the broker you select. We use chat sessions all the times with our brokers.
PROTECTION AGAINST NEGATIVE BALANCES
Certain drastic market situations can potentially result in losses bigger than the initially deposited funds.
Some brokers claim to offer protection against this kind of events, which in our view limit greatly one of the largest risks of trading with leveraged positions.
Customers are required to confirm any claim made by brokers in this regard and read the fine print in customer agreements.
EXECUTION
The speed with which the order arrives to the market and the time it takes to be accepted by the market can have influence in the performance of your account. Part of this influence can be due to aspects you can control yourself (such as in which geography do you place your computer or your VPS (Virtual Private Server) in relation to our trading servers and broker’s servers, but part is inherently dependent on the broker’s own infrastructure
Overall low speed execution/high latency times can also lead to requotes and orders being denied to be executed at your end.
The accurate assessment how each Broker behaves regarding these topics is actually only possible through a real-money account at the broker. Therefore as a part of a free service we supply to our customers we run several “client” accounts at different brokers, which can be used as proxys of the real life trading conditions of each of the tested brokers. Find the tests below.
TRANSPARENCY AND TRUSTWORTHINESS
Again here, the accurate assessment how each trustworthy a Broker is, is actually only possible through a real-money account at the broker.
Therefore as a part of a free service we supply to our customers we run several “client” accounts at different brokers, which can be used as proxys of the real life trading conditions of each of the tested brokers. Find the tests below, which can help you in your decision process.
ACCOUNT BASE CURRENCY
To be able to choose the currency of your deposited funds at the broker account is an advantage because you might wish to avoid currency risk on top of other risks connected with this type of investing.
If your funds are deposited funds are converted to another currency than the one from the one around which you organize your financial life, between the moment of depositing in the broker and the moment of withdrawal you will be exposed to risk of depreciation of your account currency facing the your home currency.
Some brokers offer accounts in a single currency (normally USD) and if that currency is not the currency around which you organize your life, these brokers should be avoided.
A BROKER SELECTION
WHY DO WE THINK YOU SHOULD PAY ATTENTION TO THESE BROKERS
According to the information we have collected for ourselves, we concluded that most of the brokers presented in the table below rate well against the criteria we exposed above.
Moreover we have opened our own clients’ accounts at these brokers. This means that you can check how are our strategies performing in each of the brokers and how they would behave in your case, since the setup of anyone of these brokers is exactly equal as you would have.
The information herein presented is not to be considered as any kind of recommendation to go for any of the brokers. It serves the only purpose to provide you with more information already structured in dimensions we find important when selecting a broker, not only performance wise, but also risk and safety of funds wise.
Each client should do your his/her own investigation and selection and is welcome to select any broker he/she wishes, as long as it’s offering a MT4 platform.
Odysseia Capital is not affiliated with any of the brokers shown below, so broker choice by each customer carries no economical interest to us.
[table id=1 /]Important notes:
The information presented in the above table results from or own research and thus can contain inaccuracies or outdated data. The information above serves the only purpose to provide our customers with some kick starting information. We strongly recommend all our customers to perform their own due diligence and assessment when selecting the best broker to harbor their funds and trading activities. The information of the above table was last updated in June 2016.
We recommend to take further notice of the specific Notes a), b) and c) below, by clicking the icon
The bank wire process is often the most efficient one in terms of funding (depositing and withdrawing funds) and wire fees can be eventually avoided in each of the funding. Some more specific notes:
- We experienced that whenever both banks (customer’s and broker’s banks) are within the EU, no fees are charged by the banking institutions to process funds transfers. So if for instance, the bank of a customer is located in Germany and the broker’s bank is located in the UK there should be no fees charged by the banks for depositing or withdrawing funds to and from the broker. If in such cases fees appear, they are likely to be charged by the broker. The brokers, who above exhibit “bank wire”, should charge no fees in bank transfers, except in the case indicated below.
- When making a bank wire in Forextime there is no fee on deposits but there can be a fee on withdrawals.
- When making a deposit to Global Prime from an European (EU) bank, fees can occur. When making a withdrawal no transfer fees are usually applied.
- This is a very important point as detailed in the risks section of this website, because it basically influences the degree of real risk you might be exposed in case of a sudden and extreme market movement that can leave your account with a negative balance before is stopped by the brokers’ risk control measures. Basically all brokers should have effective risk control measures in place that avoid that any of their customers enters in a situation of negative balance. However some brokers go further and assure their customers that in case of an event of negative balance, their negative balance will be reset or zeroed, meaning that the broker will not go after the customer asking for the customer to cover the amount left negative at the account.
- Some brokers will not have an explicit/contactual policy for this kind of protection, but they might inform you that your account can be reset in case of a negative balance event, meaning that you can obtain this confirmation from them.
- Our advice regarding this point is to contact the broker of your choice by email, chat or any other written form and get confirmation from them regarding their policy on “negative balance protection”, regardless of the information we obtained from each customer. In case that information is obtained in a chat session, make sure you email the content of the conversation to yourself (most chat applications allow you to forward emails as soon as the chat session is finished). From our perspective, from the brokers list above ForexPro and Hotforex offers the most explicit protection. Global Prime offers the least. As in any other case, you should do your own due diligence and investigation when selecting your broker.
You can find below real money “Client” accounts we set up in each of the above brokers.
WE ARE YOU
WE ARE CLIENTS OF OURSELVES
We are proud to be the only provider in the trading signals market to offer transparency over a broad range of real accounts setup just like any other customer account can have in each of the brokers presented above.
All the accounts presented blow are setup just like any Client account would be.
All the accounts are REAL MONEY accounts, just like yours. No DEMO accounts that behave always neatly and tidy.
This information carries the huge advantage to potential and existing customers to fare how their accounts will/should behave in case our plug-in would be installed in their brokerage accounts.
Please be aware that the performance depends not only from the broker, but also from the environment and location where the broker MT4 platform is installed. We use Virtual Private Servers located in New York and London and make this information transparent next to each broker account.
BROKER BEHAVIOR FOR STRATEGY ARION
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