What to look for in an ECN broker right now
ECN vs dealing desk: understanding what you're trading through
The majority of forex brokers fall into two broad camps: dealing desk or ECN. This isn't just terminology. A dealing desk broker becomes your counterparty. A true ECN setup routes your order directly to the interbank market — your orders match with actual buy here and sell interest.
For most retail traders, the difference shows up in how your trades get filled: how tight and stable your spreads are, fill speed, and requotes. ECN brokers tends to give you tighter spreads but charge a commission per lot. Market makers mark up the spread instead. Both models work — it hinges on how you trade.
If your strategy depends on tight entries and fast fills, ECN is almost always the better fit. Getting true market spreads more than offsets the commission cost on most pairs.
Why execution speed is more than a marketing number
Every broker's website mentions execution speed. Claims of under 40ms fills make for nice headlines, but what does it actually mean when you're actually placing trades? More than you'd think.
A trader who placing two or three swing trades a week, shaving off a few milliseconds is irrelevant. For high-frequency strategies trading quick entries and exits, slow fills means money left on the table. A broker averaging 35-40 milliseconds with no requotes provides noticeably better entries compared to platforms with 150-200ms fills.
Some brokers have invested proprietary execution technology to address this. One example is Titan FX's Zero Point technology which sends orders straight to LPs without dealing desk intervention — their published average is under 37 milliseconds. There's a thorough analysis in this review of Titan FX.
Raw spread accounts vs standard: doing the maths
Here's something nearly every trader asks when picking their trading account: is it better to have the raw spread with commission or markup spreads with no fee per lot? It depends on how much you trade.
Here's a real comparison. A spread-only account might show EUR/USD at 1.0-1.5 pips. A raw spread account gives you the same pair at 0.0-0.3 pips but adds around $3.50-4.00 per lot traded both ways. On the spread-only option, the cost is baked into the markup. Once you're trading moderate volume, the raw spread account saves you money mathematically.
Many ECN brokers offer both as options so you can see the difference for yourself. The key is to calculate based on your actual trading volume rather than going off the broker's examples — broker examples tend to favour the higher-margin product.
500:1 leverage: the argument traders keep having
The leverage conversation polarises the trading community more than almost anything else. Tier-1 regulators like ASIC and FCA limit leverage to 30:1 or 50:1 depending on the asset class. Platforms in places like Vanuatu or the Bahamas continue to offer 500:1 or higher.
The standard argument against is simple: retail traders can't handle it. This is legitimate — the data shows, the majority of retail accounts lose money. But the argument misses something important: professional retail traders don't use 500:1 on every trade. They use having access to high leverage to reduce the capital tied up in any single trade — freeing up margin for other opportunities.
Yes, 500:1 can blow an account. No argument there. The leverage itself isn't the issue — how you size your positions is. If your strategy benefits from reduced margin commitment, access to 500:1 means less money locked up as margin — which is the whole point for anyone who knows what they're doing.
VFSC, FSA, and tier-3 regulation: the trade-off explained
Regulation in forex falls into different levels. Tier-1 is regulators like the FCA and ASIC. You get 30:1 leverage limits, mandate investor compensation schemes, and limit the trading conditions available to retail accounts. Tier-3 you've got jurisdictions like Vanuatu and Mauritius and similar offshore regulators. Fewer requirements, but which translates to more flexibility in what they can offer.
What you're exchanging straightforward: tier-3 regulation offers more aggressive trading conditions, less compliance hurdles, and typically cheaper trading costs. But, you sacrifice some regulatory protection if something goes wrong. There's no compensation scheme like the FCA's FSCS.
If you're comfortable with the risk and choose better conditions, regulated offshore brokers work well. The key is checking the broker's track record rather than simply trusting a licence badge on a website. An offshore broker with a decade of operating history under VFSC oversight is often a safer bet in practice than a freshly regulated broker that got its licence last year.
What scalpers should look for in a broker
If you scalp is the style where broker choice makes or breaks your results. When you're trading small ranges and staying in trades open for very short periods. With those margins, even small variations in fill quality become the difference between a winning and losing month.
Non-negotiables for scalpers is short: true ECN spreads from 0.0 pips, execution consistently below 50ms, zero requotes, and no restrictions on scalping strategies. Some brokers claim to allow scalping but add latency to orders if you trade too frequently. Check the fine print before funding your account.
Platforms built for scalping tend to say so loudly. They'll publish average fill times on the website, and they'll typically include virtual private servers for automated strategies. When a platform avoids discussing their execution speed anywhere on their marketing, that tells you something.
Copy trading and social platforms: what works and what doesn't
The idea of copying other traders has grown over the past few years. The appeal is obvious: pick traders who are making money, copy their trades automatically, benefit from their skill. In practice is less straightforward than the platform promos imply.
What most people miss is execution delay. When the lead trader opens a position, your mirrored order goes through milliseconds to seconds later — when prices are moving quickly, that lag might change a good fill into a worse entry. The smaller the strategy's edge, the more the lag hurts.
Despite this, a few implementations deliver value for traders who don't have time to trade actively. The key is finding platforms that show audited trading results over at least a year, rather than simulated results. Looking at drawdown and consistency matter more than the total return number.
Some brokers have built in-house social platforms integrated with their main offering. Integration helps lower latency issues compared to external copy trading providers that sit on top of the broker's platform. Look at whether the social trading is native before expecting the results can be replicated in your experience.