Why FX Open ECN Can\"t Compete With IC Markets ECN

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I have been searching for an ECN forex provider which has very tight spreads for a while now, recently I read about a broker called FX Open in a forex trading forum which I\’m a part of. I made a decision to compare this fx broker with another ECN forex broker that I trade with, IC Markets.

Naturally this appraisal is really subjective as it is based on orders executed according to my forex trading style, which is scalping. Typically the key issue with many ECN brokers is slippage and execution times, so I thought that I\’d focus this assessment on these two key aspects as they\’re pretty important to high frequency and frequent fx traders like me.

I started both my IC Markets and FX Open trading accounts with $1000 to ensure that I could give both brokers a real run for their money. I pinged both servers from my CNS and VPS and discovered that the speed was 1 m/s for IC Markets and 32 m/s for FX Open, even though I realize this is a huge difference I decided to continue with the assessment.

During this assessment I decided not to compare prices even though IC Markets spreads are much better that FX Open\’s spreads I made a decision not to guage them alongside one another because spreads are just half of the equation, slippage is in fact more essential.

I decided to pick out only one currency, EUR/USD largely because conducting assessments on the most popular pair is much better as this is exactly the pair that most people trade anyway. I decided that the very best moment to compare slippage would be during the middle of the London session where there is a heap of liquidity and a good number of LPs ought to be pricing actively.

I put an order for one standard lot in EUR/USD on both accounts at the exact same time. I should also note this was around 30 minutes just ahead of non-farm payroll. I chose this time to test the liquidity of both forex brokers ECN offerings around news periods.

I placed market orders on both trading platforms at the same time and monitored the slippage on both platforms. What I found unusual was that the deal that I put on FX Open\’s platform took about 100 ms longer to execute than the deal on IC Markets trading platform.

Now to the slippage, I was totally surprised to see that there was no slippage on IC Markets platform. On the FX Open platform there was slippage of two pips, although this is quite small I was very surprised that there was slippage on the FX Open platform given there wasn\’t any on IC Markets trading platform.

In conclusion I would have to say that both forex brokers are fantastic, but if you\’re planning to be a forex scalper and need an edge in the marketplace, I can say for sure that from my testing IC Markets beats FX Open on dealing latency along with slippage. Although I didn\’t compare broker spreads in this review it\’s also worth mentioning that IC Markets has significantly better spreads than FX Open across the majors. When you add the slippage which may take place with FX Open they turn out to be substantially more expensive to trade with than IC Markets.

Many people feel that day trading in FX Open has more advantages than IC Markets. Learn about the differences between IC Markets & FX Open click here for FX Open.

Why FX Open ECN Can\"t Compete With IC Markets ECN