Just the other day I saw a new forex provider on the scene called FXTG. There seem to be new forex brokers popping up each day and this is the most recent one that I have spotted. I thought that I would open a live account to give them a go and write a review comparing them to my existing fx broker IC Markets.
Of course not all fx brokers are the same. I understood this from the start ahead of starting an account with FXTG. There are some subtle features that make each and every forex provider pretty different. On the list of key differences is whether the fx broker is an ECN or market marker. Fortunately FXTG is an ECN broker exactly like my current fx broker IC Markets.
I went ahead and opened an account with FXTG and naturally I chose an ECN trading account because at least this way I would be able to match apples to apples when comparing FXTG to IC Markets. The trading account opening procedure was relatively straightforward however I was a bit disappointed by their sales and client support, what really annoyed me was that they were incredibly pushy and tried to get me to deposit with more money than what I actually wanted to. One good thing was that my trading account only took only two days to open which is pretty reasonable.
I hooked up my spread monitor on the FXTG platform and ran it next to my IC Markets trading account. At first I was genuinely excited about FXTG and expected that they would give IC Markets a real run for their money however after running the spread monitor for three days on both live accounts I discovered that IC Markets was displaying dramatically tighter spreads than FXTG, this was especially disappointing as I had gone to the trouble of opening an account.
The FXTG prices actually didn’t excite me but I thought not to write them off immediately, I decided to test their execution. The main reason for me testing their execution was because occasionally ECN fx brokers quote slightly wider prices to avoid slippage. I figured that the best time to test slippage was over a news announcement this might also confirm whether the price feed has liquidity behind it. Non-farm payroll is naturally the perfect news announcement to test slippage on. I chose the most liquid foreign exchange pair pair EUR/USD to perform the test, my deal size was 12 standard lots on both platforms. Much to my disappointment the slippage utilising FXTG trading platform was terrible. IC Markets on the other hand didn’t slip me at all.
I’m confident that if you’re new to fx trading a slightly wider spread and slippage will probably not matter all that much, it’s only when you start forex trading actively with size and scalping the market when the you realise how much money you’re leaving on the table. In my opinion I have chosen to stick to IC Markets because I know that their Metatrader platform is dependable and they are well priced. I still have my FXTG trading account opened but I do not really utilize it a great deal.
Even as a normal Joe, you can easily learn and trade in the IC Markets just by going online. Click here to learn more on FXTG