I feel like with all the cheating and drama going on with spot fx we should at the very least have a dedicated section on the right for guidance on futures contracts.
The shady Cypriot brokers and ones on other random islands are lying and selling a dream so let's take a look at the reality of spot fx...
Currency markets are the most liquid and active markets of any sector. However, there is also a great deal of misinformation, slick advertising, and even outright deception regarding this $2 Trillion Dollar a Day marketplace. For starters, a large percentage of that $2 Trillion is traded through what is referred to as the interbank market. The interbank market is the top-level foreign exchange market where banks exchange different currencies. This trading between banks is not accessible to retail traders and is estimated to account for the vast majority of the Trillion Dollar liquidity factor that attracts so many retail traders in the first place.
Here are a few of the reasons to trade futures:
-Level playing field for all participants
-Deep liquidity on major currency contracts
-Safety and security of central clearing
If your Forex brokerage firm uses a dealing desk, your buy and sell orders never actually reach the true Forex market. In other words, you do not have access to the inter-bank market. Instead you are buying and selling at prices set, and potentially manipulated by the dealing desk. This is known as conflict of interest.
The Chicago Mercantile Exchange guarantees each transaction. Futures contracts are legally binding! This means that if you go long a currency futures contract and your speculation was correct, you will walk away from the trade with your profit even if the person that took the other side of the trade fails to pay. This is what we call counterparty risk.
Take a moment, have a break and take a look at all the horror stories on forex factory, for instance.
Whether you are a large institution or an individual trader, everyone is on equal footing when it comes to pricing currency futures. EVERYBODY gets the same price regardless of who you are (individual or mega bank). Best price wins, it is as simple as that — something that is not always the case in the fragmented OTC FX market. The spreads are also very tight if you trade liquid future contracts.
Spot fx brokers also control their price feeds. They can widen the spreads as they see fit and they can really screw you over if they want to. Believe me when I say that most fx brokers don't want you to win! Even the ones that claim to have liquidity providers... Those are nothing but price feeds. Quotes. Nothing more....
And Forex firms offering a "fixed" 3-5 point spread may not be charging traders commission outright, or even in a form that shows up on an account statement, but there are significant costs built into the synthetic market that they provide to you.
No middle man, no market maker. Yes, Forex is an electronic market, but your order still ends up on a "dealing desk" where a human handles your order. Or an algorithm... Basically, a Market Maker. He could make you or break you. With E-mini Futures you have a level playing field. You trade on a centralised and CFTC regulated exchange. Whether you're Goldman Sachs or Joe from Idaho, you get equal treatment!
If you're worried about Liquidity - 1.5-3m contracts trade hands everyday on the S&P 500 E-mini Futures Contract. If you want in or out of a position, there is almost always someone waiting and willing to take the other side of your trade (24/5) just 1 tick away. This simply isn't true for all Forex Pairs.
Low Cost of Doing Business - Commissions on a self directed SP500 E-mini Trade (ES) should be no more than $3.00 per side or $6.00 per round turn. While many Forex Brokers tout "Zero Commission", we all know there's no free lunch. Forex Brokers don't need to charge a commission because they make money off of the bid/ask spread "they create" and then take the other side of your trade. Run the numbers... for every $100 in profits or loss, you will spend a larger % in "cost of doing business" in the Forex Market than you will in the S&P E-mini Market. Don't take my word for it... go take some real trades and you'll quickly see the truth.
Zero Interest - If you you trade the ES intraday, expect to put up $500 per contract as a "bond" for lack of a better term. That's it. No hidden cost. Forex however, has a "cost of carry" associated which means interest may be charged or paid on positions taken.
Fiduciary Responsibility - Even regulated US Forex firms are not required to segregate customer funds. If a regulated firm goes under, you do not have the protection of the CFTC and the NFA as you do in the Futures Markets.
Turn ON The Volume Please - In Forex, since there is no centralised exchange, it is impossible to get a true read on volume. Not so with the S&P 500 "ES" E-mini. Simply turn on the volume indicator and you have exact numbers for Volume Analysis. GS and CITI have huge research departments with hundreds of employees, but they know nothing about volume that you don't know via a free indicator on your direct access trading platform. Just one more example of the level playing field we constantly speak of.
Centralised Clearing - All trades are cleared via the CME - Chicago Mercantile Exchange. All trades, including time and sales, are public information and posted in real time.
Edit: By the way, if you're worried about discrepancies, currency futures charts look almost exactly the same as their spot fx siblings! So you can easily apply your current strategy to this market, too!
A great example would be "M6E" vs "EUUSD"
SO GUYS, LET'S ACCEPT REALITY AND LET'S DO SOMETHING ABOUT IT. DO YOU AGREE?
Source: cfrn.net

Trade Like the Banks

I’ve been paying more attention to combining the technicals with the fundamentals and near-term sentiment and it’s actually worked out quite well. I’m was finding that I wasn’t getting as many opportunities simply by using sentiment and fundamentals alone and the entries weren’t as exact as I’d like.I still apply the same trade methods as I did before but I’ve also combined thosewith trend trading and entering on pull-backs. I’m quite pleased with theway that that’s been working. I use, obviously, the fundamentals and thenear-term sentiment as a filter and it’s been working brilliantly.In the video below there’s a trade that is not a pullback trade per se. I’ll offer more videos on that later. This is just a trade that I made recently on the 10th that was during the bank rate decision by the Bank of England. So, if we take a look back at forex factory we can see that just last week on the 10th theofficial bank rate statement came out. However, I was waiting more for the bank statement afterwards.I didn’t think they would change anything as far as Bank rates and they obviously didn’t. The statement afterwards appeared to be more dovish.As a result of the more dovish statement, I shorted the pound and longed the Canadian dollar. At the time the Canadian dollar had been fairly strong due to the influence of peaking oil prices. I also held the trade longer than usual. I’m getting more in the habit of doing that. I’m using some of the volume indicators and stochastics to give me an idea along with support/resistance of when to exit. You can see in the video that I got out near a round number. I usually now hold the trades longer, especially if it’s something like a bank rate statement, because they tend to have a longer-term effect. I held this trade for at least three hours ending with a fair amount of pips.I’ll report more in detail as far as what I’ve been doing with the technicals later but I highly encourage taking a second look at maybe old technical approaches that you may have thrown away . If you start gaining a foothold on the fundamentals the old systems may work great in combination.
andiamolireforex dot com/trade-like-the-banks

Trade Like the Banks

I’ve been paying more attention to combining the technicals with the fundamentals and near-term sentiment and it’s actually worked out quite well. I’m was finding that I wasn’t getting as many opportunities simply by using sentiment and fundamentals alone and the entries weren’t as exact as I’d like.
I still apply the same trade methods as I did before but I’ve also combined thosewith trend trading and entering on pull-backs. I’m quite pleased with theway that that’s been working. I use, obviously, the fundamentals and thenear-term sentiment as a filter and it’s been working brilliantly.
In the video below there’s a trade that is not a pullback trade per se. I’ll offer more videos on that later. This is just a trade that I made recently on the 10th that was during the bank rate decision by the Bank of England. So, if we take a look back at forex factory we can see that just last week on the 10th theofficial bank rate statement came out. However, I was waiting more for the bank statement afterwards.I didn’t think they would change anything as far as Bank rates and they obviously didn’t. The statement afterwards appeared to be more dovish.
As a result of the more dovish statement, I shorted the pound and longed the Canadian dollar. At the time the Canadian dollar had been fairly strong due to the influence of peaking oil prices. I also held the trade longer than usual. I’m getting more in the habit of doing that. I’m using some of the volume indicators and stochastics to give me an idea along with support/resistance of when to exit. You can see in the video that I got out near a round number. I usually now hold the trades longer, especially if it’s something like a bank rate statement, because they tend to have a longer-term effect. I held this trade for at least three hours ending with a fair amount of pips.
I’ll report more in detail as far as what I’ve been doing with the technicals later but I highly encourage taking a second look at maybe old technical approaches that you may have thrown away . If you start gaining a foothold on the fundamentals the old systems may work great in combination.
andiamolireforex dot com/trade-like-the-banks