Spike OUCH!!!

[Glenn]

"Iam referring to retail fx brokers."
OK.
I have only ever used IB for trading forex, with no problems.
I am not familiar with what you describe as retail fx brokers, or how they operate.
The pertinent question is whether they are making their own market or providing a direct data feed from an exchange.
Glenn

 

[Perrington]

Ive read from other people that know more than me, that some retail fx brokers are market makers themselves. So I would exercise caution if i were to use a retail fx broker, and merely pass that on here. Some of the forex threads here discuss the relationship between the client and the retail fx broker. I aint got them bookmarked or would post em.

 

[Glenn]

One thing you have to watch out for with proper brokers is spikes in the price feed to charts.
The spikes do not appear in the quoted trading prices or affect stops, but they do affect the chart if you are using TA.
Mytrack is prone to this, caused by printing delayed trades. I correct the chart data using IB's feed.
Glenn

 

[mokwit]

IB is affectively an ECN - you are hitting UBS or BEAR prices, whereas a 'Market maker' quotes whatever price he wants - as do UBS and BEAR but they are kept in line by the likelihood of everybody in the interbank market taking advantage and they are therefore not going to alter their quote just to stop you out. There is probably no technological or ethical reason why they can't quote IB a different rate but that's not quite the same as quoting every client a different rate depending on his position............

There are spikes and stop runs in the Interbank - I suspect a lot of spikes are often not caused by one big player trying to manipulate but by a lumpy client order coming in and the head honch asking for quotes from all on the floor, and the rest of the market gets wind of this and pulls bids/offers accordingly.

I was never on a Bank desk so by all means correct me if I am wrong.

 

[Perrington]

I would wager dean's head is now spinning better learn fast than slow I say.

 

[Old_Bob]

I would wager dean's head is now spinning better learn fast than slow I say.

Mine also is spinning :cheesy:

 

[JumpOff]

Dean,
Do you have this resource bookmarked?
http://biz.yahoo.com/c/e.html

It's a calendar of economic release date and times. - Even rates some of them by importance. I use it to get on the sidelines before the ritual collective insanity takes place.
JO

 

[Perrington]

Been a useful thread this, I started in the tone of offering advice, not expecting anything in return. Thanks mokwit and GJ for returning the compliment.

 

[ctt]

When you get for example a shocking payrolls number, the banks will pull most of their offers in eur/usd, cable etc while simultanaeously trying to pay the offers that other banks may have left in the system (they may have valid reasons for leaving orders in the machine). Obviously this will cause the price to shoot up, as there will be a temporary large imbalance in the supply / demand equation (usually exacerbated by stop loss orders that they will by this time be struggling to cover).

Thanks for spelling this out. It's what one would deduce intuitively, but I was always curious why other players would be selling in a big spike.. I guess I have been focusing too much on the psychology of people in my position, retail traders, when doing so doesn't make much sense. =)

I have to say that I've gained a lot from reading on the T2W forums in the past few days. I've been reading about forex for a few weeks now and have been following a few different forums, but I definitely gain a unique perspective from posts I read here that I haven't seen on other forums.

 

[Perrington]

..

 

[Perrington]

..