EFXGroup are a joke

[TheRumpledOne]

I had a live account with EFX a few years ago and closed it after a week, they were truly hopeless.

I have a number of live accounts at the moment. I don't know your exact requiremnts Wasp but I like London Capital. Via them I use a number of different ECNs.

I have had an EFX account for years. I have visited their offices in Scottsdale, AZ numerous times. EFX is anything but a joke!

EFX is a great company of people who are dedicated to providing the best possible service.

 

[JP1966]

Fair enough , but that wasnt my experience. It was an appalling system where prices would freeze as soon as the market got volatile.

 

[TheRumpledOne]

I have had that happen to me, too. But that's just part of trading. I have had my cable drop, my computer lock up, my power go out all at the worse possible times. If you give EFX another look, I am sure you'll be amazed at what they have to offer now.

 

[EFXChris]

Hello Everyone-

Andy asked me to have a look at some of the comments that appeared on this thread and comment. So, let me reply to some of you directly.

@wasp – We have thoroughly researched your account and trading over the New Year’s break. There is no question that you were trading during the hours that we were closed for the Holiday (as were most brokers). Several e-mails were sent in December outlining our Christmas and New Year’s Holiday hours. In response to your comments that the platform was working at that time…just because you can log in and potentially see quotes does not mean that the platform was up.

Let me explain it to you in this manner. We pipe multiple feeds from several banks and liquidity providers to you. Some of the large banks left their quote servers running through the Holiday because they operate on a strict Sunday to Friday basis. Quote servers, routing servers, and account servers are very different things. When we turn off the platform mid-week, we turn off the routing servers, which take your orders and send them to the appropriate counter-party for execution. That effectively renders the platform “off.” Any quotes that you saw were out of our control as an ECN, and the fact that you were able to log into your account does not mean that the platform was running (the order routing servers are the measure of this).

Our platform is open from Sunday afternoon until Friday afternoon here in the US. We run a 5-minute server maintenance period each night, and we have been keeping that to 5 minutes. Other than that, the platform has not been down in months outside of Thanksgiving, Christmas, and New Year’s Day holidays. You claim that you have been trading with us for six months. It seems strange to me that you would decide to move your account based on the fact that you were unable to trade during a Holiday.

@fxscalper2 – We don’t consider ourselves expensive at all versus the other options in the market. We could perhaps drop half of our liquidity by negating certain banks that charge us more to execute and then lower your commissions, but then we’d get complaints that we don’t have as much liquidity in our system as people want, and then we’d just be like another non-deal desk platform charging $3. Our focus is on active traders looking for no requoting, lots of order-type flexibility, and lots of liquidity. We also offer commission breaks for volume traders, and we seem to get a lot of institutional traders, so I don’t think we currently view ourselves as expensive. Having said that, as with any financial industry, I’m sure you’ll see commissions drop over time.

@jtrader – Actually, it doesn’t seem that you have talked to us extensively. Our system does not have the ability to go to dealer confirmation with requotes. No client, not one, has EVER seen a requote window on our platform. It just doesn’t work that way, and never will.

@jp1966 – A few years ago, we were white labeling FX Solutions platform, so for all I know, that was when you were trading with us. Our actual ECN platform came on-line around August 2005 and has been stable since sometime in 2006. I can’t remember the last time that I saw a “price freeze.”

Chris Mercer
Vice-President of Technology and Institutional Sales
EFX Group

 

[rols]

Hello Everyone-

Andy asked me to have a look at some of the comments that appeared on this thread and comment. So, let me reply to some of you directly.

@wasp – We have thoroughly researched your account and trading over the New Year’s break. There is no question that you were trading during the hours that we were closed for the Holiday (as were most brokers). Several e-mails were sent in December outlining our Christmas and New Year’s Holiday hours. In response to your comments that the platform was working at that time…just because you can log in and potentially see quotes does not mean that the platform was up.

Let me explain it to you in this manner. We pipe multiple feeds from several banks and liquidity providers to you. Some of the large banks left their quote servers running through the Holiday because they operate on a strict Sunday to Friday basis. Quote servers, routing servers, and account servers are very different things. When we turn off the platform mid-week, we turn off the routing servers, which take your orders and send them to the appropriate counter-party for execution. That effectively renders the platform “off.” Any quotes that you saw were out of our control as an ECN, and the fact that you were able to log into your account does not mean that the platform was running (the order routing servers are the measure of this).

Our platform is open from Sunday afternoon until Friday afternoon here in the US. We run a 5-minute server maintenance period each night, and we have been keeping that to 5 minutes. Other than that, the platform has not been down in months outside of Thanksgiving, Christmas, and New Year’s Day holidays. You claim that you have been trading with us for six months. It seems strange to me that you would decide to move your account based on the fact that you were unable to trade during a Holiday.

@fxscalper2 – We don’t consider ourselves expensive at all versus the other options in the market. We could perhaps drop half of our liquidity by negating certain banks that charge us more to execute and then lower your commissions, but then we’d get complaints that we don’t have as much liquidity in our system as people want, and then we’d just be like another non-deal desk platform charging $3. Our focus is on active traders looking for no requoting, lots of order-type flexibility, and lots of liquidity. We also offer commission breaks for volume traders, and we seem to get a lot of institutional traders, so I don’t think we currently view ourselves as expensive. Having said that, as with any financial industry, I’m sure you’ll see commissions drop over time.

@jtrader – Actually, it doesn’t seem that you have talked to us extensively. Our system does not have the ability to go to dealer confirmation with requotes. No client, not one, has EVER seen a requote window on our platform. It just doesn’t work that way, and never will.

@jp1966 – A few years ago, we were white labeling FX Solutions platform, so for all I know, that was when you were trading with us. Our actual ECN platform came on-line around August 2005 and has been stable since sometime in 2006. I can’t remember the last time that I saw a “price freeze.”

Chris Mercer
Vice-President of Technology and Institutional Sales
EFX Group

Doesn't sound like a joke to me. It's all to the good there seems to be a new era of Perestroika between Brokers and clients.

Out of interest, while we've got you online, perhaps you might tell us what advantages
EFX may have over other direct access brokers such as IB?

 

[JTrader]

@jtrader – Actually, it doesn’t seem that you have talked to us extensively. Our system does not have the ability to go to dealer confirmation with requotes. No client, not one, has EVER seen a requote window on our platform. It just doesn’t work that way, and never will.

I wasn't talking about EFX group, as you'd have realised if you'd been paying proper attention.
Also my real name is not JTrader, so you wouldn't know if i'd spoken to you or not.

Quote:
Originally Posted by wasp View Post
Anyone else use Alpari? I'm not finding much in the way of complaints in reviews online but some more good opinions would be nice!

JTrader - I have the MT4 demo, and have spoken to them extensively. Like SB's, around releases they say they can switch off auto-execution and go to dealer confirmation with requotes . So, all in all, i don't think they are likely to be better than an SB like CMC.
Oanda SOUND the best fx spot broker IMO, and their financing charges (overnight) work out a bit more competitive than alpari's, as oanda charge everyone by the second, not just roll-over clients.

Cheers.

 

[JP1966]

I have had that happen to me, too. But that's just part of trading. QUOTE]

That is where we can beg to differ. I do everything I can do have a set up that helps me and I don't regard freezing prices as part of trading. Prices gapping - yes, freezing platforms, no.

@jp1966 – A few years ago, we were white labeling FX Solutions platform, so for all I know, that was when you were trading with us. Our actual ECN platform came on-line around August 2005 and has been stable since sometime in 2006. I can’t remember the last time that I saw a “price freeze.”

It wasnt your white label solution. I have just chekced my e mails from late 2005 and I was assured the system had been properly tested and did not suffer from a freezing platform etc. Lo and behold when I openeed a live account it froze all the time. Hence I shut my account. You now say it hasnt frozen since 2006. Well I am afraid I was assured it would not when I opened my account and so if I was being misled then I dont thin k that says much for your insitution or ethics.

 

[EFXChris]

Doesn't sound like a joke to me. It's all to the good there seems to be a new era of Perestroika between Brokers and clients.

Out of interest, while we've got you online, perhaps you might tell us what advantages
EFX may have over other direct access brokers such as IB?

Liquidity and order types are the big ones.

 

[EFXChris]

I have had that happen to me, too. But that's just part of trading. QUOTE]

That is where we can beg to differ. I do everything I can do have a set up that helps me and I don't regard freezing prices as part of trading. Prices gapping - yes, freezing platforms, no.





It wasnt your white label solution. I have just chekced my e mails from late 2005 and I was assured the system had been properly tested and did not suffer from a freezing platform etc. Lo and behold when I openeed a live account it froze all the time. Hence I shut my account. You now say it hasnt frozen since 2006. Well I am afraid I was assured it would not when I opened my account and so if I was being misled then I dont thin k that says much for your insitution or ethics.

That's a great answer. However, technology is technology, and we found an intermittent server issue back then that caused certain people whose connections routed through a server to sometimes freeze. That has long ago been corrected. You move forward and correct things. There is a reason that you don't hear about us freezing anymore on the boards.

 

[a_gnome]

Hi wasp,
Going back to the question of which alternative broker one might wish to use, with regards to OandA I would like to suggest that you may wish to read a review that I wrote on them a while back entitled "OK but still a bucket shop". It can be found at: OandA FX Trade and you then need to scroll down to the long review with my name at the bottom.

As an executive summary: they're generally OK, their spreads are horrendous around news releases and are kept wide for too long after the release, and most importantly they will put you on "manual fill" if you start making too much money from them. This last point should especially be of note as IIUC you do actually do this for a living.

I would suggest either Interactive Brokers who have a pretty good little ECN from what I understand or a Currenex broker such as London Capital. I am assuming that the CME futures markets aren't going to cover the comparatively exotic spreads that you trade.

 

[wasp]

Hi wasp,
Going back to the question of which alternative broker one might wish to use, with regards to OandA I would like to suggest that you may wish to read a review that I wrote on them a while back entitled "OK but still a bucket shop". It can be found at: OandA FX Trade and you then need to scroll down to the long review with my name at the bottom.

As an executive summary: they're generally OK, their spreads are horrendous around news releases and are kept wide for too long after the release, and most importantly they will put you on "manual fill" if you start making too much money from them. This last point should especially be of note as IIUC you do actually do this for a living.

I would suggest either Interactive Brokers who have a pretty good little ECN from what I understand or a Currenex broker such as London Capital. I am assuming that the CME futures markets aren't going to cover the comparatively exotic spreads that you trade.

Hi a_gnome,

Just copying this over to the 'T2W FX broker thread' to keep it all in one place and build up the data there. Made up my mind about EFX for many a reason so trying to build a more unbiased overall concensus on retail brokers with a 'clean' thread.