Originally Posted by
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Just FYI, I don't believe these commissions are round-trip. . .they are every side. This is unquestionably a fact for MB Trading and I'm not so confident about IB, but I think they are not round trip too.
Additionally, it's actually based on the LOT size in USD. . .you are billed $5.00 for each $100,000 USD you trade (either side ).
Therefore for example, if you enter a long position for $10,000 USD/JPY, you'll be billed $0.50 and then when you depart that position, you'll be billed an additional $0.50 to get a total of $1.00 R/T...
On the flip side, should you buy 100,000 EUR/USD (@ 1.2000)you will actually be spending $120,000 USD for a long position, and therefore be billed $6.00 commissions for your position and then when you depart (let us say at 1.3000 for simplicity), you'll be charged $6.50 for your commissions available having obtained another $10,000 set up.
The commissions for IB will be exactly the same, in fact. . .they charge 0.2 basis points which is the equal to $2.50 for each $50,000 US traded.
I haven't seen how HotSpotFX functions...I don't even understand exactly what their spreads are.
Incidentally, there's still a spread at IB and MBT, but of course, it is possible to trade inside the distribute should need be. . .but there will always be a bid/ask price.
I have an account with MBT Right Now.
I'm not really keen on any of these platforms, BUT, I do notice less trading/technical problems with MBT even during peak times. I have had a quote server running for 2 months, and I have had only 1 unexpected outage and it lasted only 2 minutes or so. Furthermore, they have a nicely supported API so that makes automated trading and alerting much more dependable. Unfortunately, and this is BIG flaw, I had to create all the elements needed to actually trade their platform as, let us face it, it just sucks. In addition to that, there is no historical data. There are 3rd party platforms built for MBT, for example forex capacities, but I always found 1 or 2 things wrong (I enjoyed the charting, but not the trading platform, or even vice versa, or even the platform used a lot of memory, or else I found it overly expensive, etc).
In any event, they should be working on historic quotes in addition to integrating with MetaTrader. . .so let us hope for the best.