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The exchange rates converted above are based on end-of-day prices as of 5pm EST. For Real-Time Currency Exchange Rates, you should visit one of the following company websites: FX Solutions, Gain Capital, Oanda, FXCM, Saxo Bank, HSBC, or GFT Forex.

Perhaps one of the most commonly used websites to check both interest rates and up-to-the-minute currency exchange rates is Oanda. Although Oanda provides currency exchange rates for 164 different countries, their primary business is as a brokerage firm for Foreign Currency Trading, also known as Forex Trading for short. If you are traveling abroad, here are some things you should know...

Street Exchange Rate vs. Bank Exchange Rate

When traveling abroad, it's important to know that there is often a large gap between the currency exchange rate offered by the banks (or ATM machines) and the street rate. In many countries, especially third-world countries, you can often find street vendors (called Cambios in South America) who will offer you a much better exchange rate than a bank or ATM machine would offer you. The difference is often in the range of a 5-10 cent difference (or 5-10%). While this doesn't amount to much on a few hundred dollars, the difference can become quite substantial if you plan on exchanging a larger sum of money, or if you plan on being in that particular country for several weeks or months. In this case, it is quite beneficial to bring extra cash with you, which you can exchange at the street rate, assuming you have a safe place to keep your cash currency.

Commercial Exchange Rate

Another type of currency exchange rate is called the "Commercial Rate". The commercial rate is what banks use to calculate the currency exchange rate when doing wire transfers. This rate is usually just slightly better than the bank or ATM rate so if you will be converting a large sum of money, more than you are comfortable traveling with or more than is legally allowed without claiming in customs, then a bank wire transfer will offer you the second best currency exchange rate. 

Foreign Currency Trading As An Investment

If you're interested in Foreign Currency Exchange Trading for profit or as an investment, then this can easily be done through a multitude of forex trading brokers. The benefit of forex trading through a forex brokerage firm is that you can trade much more money than you actually have on deposit, up to 400 times more! This is done by opening a margin account with the forex broker. Margin is what they call your funds on deposit, which the broker holds as collateral for your trades. The broker then loans you up to 400 times your deposit to trade foreign currency, which is done 100% electronically from the comfort of your home over the internet or by placing a quick phone call to your forex broker. There are many forex brokers to choose from and you should choose one carefully, which we will go over in the paragraphs below. The best part is that you can practice currency trading without risking a dime of your own money through a Demo trading account, which looks and feels just like a real currency trading account, except you're trading play currency instead of real currency.

Before Opening a Forex Demo Account....

Before you open a Forex Demo account for currency exchange trading, you should first do some market research and decide which forex broker you would like to do your live currency trading through. Even though you won't be trading any real currency through a forex demo trading account, you don't want to spend the time and energy getting comfortable trading on a paticular broker's forex trading platform unless that's the forex broker you will be trading real currency through. For this reason, you must first decide which forex broker you would like to trade currency through and there are quite a few forex brokers to choose from, but hopefully the information on this page will narrow it down a bit. Later on we will go over some forex brokers you should avoid but for now, we will focus on what you should be looking for.

When choosing the best forex broker for you, many forex traders merely look at the dealer's spread fees, the price difference between the Bid and Ask price (or the Buy and Sell price). Since most forex brokers don't charge any trade commissions, most of their income is generated through the spread, which usually varies from 2-5 pips. This translates to approximately $2 to $5 per $10,000 in trade volume. However, while most novice forex traders will merely look at the spread fees that a particular forex broker will charge, they neglect the more important things like "is the Forex Broker regulated?", "What is the Forex Broker's financial strength?" "How many lawsuits has the broker been involved in?" and so on. Perhaps one of the least important things is the broker's actual fees, unless you have a trading style that makes many forex trades per day.

Whether you're shopping for a forex broker or just looking to open a free forex demo account, here are some very important things you should be looking for in your research. I have listed them below in the order of importance (based on my personal opinion and experience)...

1. Forex Broker's Financial Strength
2. Forex Broker's Lawsuits (most settle out of court to keep their CFTC/NFA record clean)
3. Is the Broker a registered member of the NFA and regulated by the CFTC?
4. Forex Broker's Ethics
5. Spreads, Fees, and Commissions
6. User-Friendliness of their Forex Trading Platform (or Forex Demo Account Software)
7. Forex Broker Financial Strength

While these are all important, the forex broker's financial strength is definitely the most important as the ultimate risk is the broker's failure as a company, which can result in a total loss of your funds. You see, forex brokerage firms are not banks. They are merely companies that hold other people's money combined into a single company bank account. While investors' funds are not co-mingled with the broker's own money and operating capital, it is mixed with every other traders' funds. Since forex brokers can be holding many millions in investor capital, and a single bank account is only FDIC insured up to $100,000, this means the remaining funds beyond $100,000 are not insured and are technically at the mercy of the broker holding the funds. While being CFTC/NFA regulated adds some protection and indirectly enforces proper business ethics, it does not guarantee that the broker will not go bankrupt. For this reason, I have put Financial Strength at the top of the list and this is also why FXCM (Forex Capital Markets) is my recommended forex broker of choice.

FXCM (Forex Capital Markets) Financial Data

On Oct 4, 2007, FXCM released their updated financial data. The numbers reflect FXCM Group’s financial strength and status as of August 31, 2007. Highlights include:

* Over $120 Million in Capital* (Assets Minus Liabilities)
* Over $96 Million In Operating Cash (Excludes Client Funds)

This release marks the second time this year that the forex broker has publicly disclosed its financials. FXCM believes that financial transparency in the retail forex industry is more important than ever in light of the NFA’s new financial requirements. Furthermore, we challenge other forex firms to follow our example.

FXCM Balance Sheet (Unaudited) as of August 31, 2007
Customer Cash: $296,474,636
Operating Cash: $96,311,380
Other Assets: $19,666,212
Fixed Assets $9,821,211
Total Assets: $422,273,439
Customer Deposits: $296,474,636
Other Liabilities: $5,662,597
Total Liabilities: $302,137,233
FXCM Capital: $120,136,206
Total Liabilities and FXCM Capital: $422,273,439

Forex Capital Markets, LLC Far Exceeds The NFA’s New Capital Requirements

The National Futures Association (NFA) has officially announced that a new increased $ 5 million capital requirement for all Forex Dealer Members will go into effect on December 21, 2007. Although this new $5 million capital requirement has yet to take affect, NFA’s president and Chief Executive Officer has already testified before congress that capital level for Forex Dealer Members should be raised to $20 million.

Forex Capital Markets, LLC, an NFA member firm, is the US regulated entity of the FXCM Group. As of August 31, 2007 Forex Capital Markets, LLC had an adjusted net capital of $60,268,390.

According to Niv, “The financial resources for FXCM (Forex Capital Markets, LLC) far exceed both the recently announced increased $5 million capital requirement level as well as the $20 million capital level proposed by NFA’s president and CEO in his recent congressional testimony.”

FXCM Facts

Forex Capital Markets, LLC (FXCM) is one of the Largest Forex Dealer Members*`
More than 90,000 live accounts are traded on the FXCM trading platform
Over $200 billion in notional volume is traded each month on the FXCM trading platform
FXCM provides customer support with native speakers in more than a dozen languages in 6 offices around the world.

Registered with the CFTC as a Futures Commission Merchant, FXCM (Forex Capital Markets, LLC) has received numerous awards from the investment community, including Best Currency Broker from Shares, Best Retail Foreign Exchange Platform from FX Week and Best Foreign Exchange Specialist from Technical Analysis of Stocks & Commodities. In addition to currency trading, FXCM offers educational courses on forex trading, and provides research through DailyFX.com.

*In September 2006, FXCM held in excess of $215 million in customer funds out of a total of over $770 million held by Forex Dealer Members. While there are approximately 31 active Forex Dealer Members with liabilities to customers of approximately $795 million, FXCM holds approximately 1 out of every 3 dollars of customer funds held by Forex Dealer Members.
Source: *http://www.nfa.futures.org/news/newsProposedRule.asp?ArticleID=1704

Approximately $700 Million In Customer Funds Traded

FXCM Group includes firms regulated across the world, including the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, and Hong Kong. Additionally, FXCM offers its proprietary foreign exchange trading technology to banks and brokers. As of January 2008, there is in excess of $700 million in customer funds trading on platforms offered by FXCM.

Over 100,000 live accounts trade through FXCM's trading platforms from nearly 200 countries, with an average of 4,000,000 trades executed each month via its trading platforms; moreover, customer support is provided in over a dozen languages. Registered with the CFTC as a Futures Commission Merchant, FXCM has received numerous awards from the investment community, including Best Currency Broker from Shares, Best Retail Foreign Exchange Platform from FX Week and Best Foreign Exchange Specialist from Technical Analysis of Stocks & Commodities. In addition to currency trading, FXCM offers educational courses on forex trading, and provides research through DailyFX.com.

Since inception, FXCM has added over 500 employees in all areas of operation, including customer support, research, technology, and trading. FXCM has been named to the Inc. 500 list of America's Fastest Growing Private Companies in 2004, 2005, and 2006.

Because the Forex market is an over-the-counter market with no centralized exchange, not everyone receives access to the same prices or quality of execution. The world's largest banks tend to provide better prices and execution to institutions with the largest trade volume and the most solid financials. An average of over $350,000,000,000 ($350 billion) in notional volume per month is traded via FXCM's trading platform, and FXCM is one of the most well-capitalized Forex Dealer Members. FXCM is one of the oldest and largest capitalized retail online Forex brokers. As a result, FXCM has built strong execution relationships with many of the worlds largest international banks. FXCM receives and is able to pass on the benefits of size, better prices, and better execution to our clients.

Forex Broker's Lawsuits...

One of the first things any investor should do before trading futures is conduct a background check on the firms and individuals offering these products. Using NFA's Background Affiliation Status Information Center (BASIC), investors can quickly and easily check the registration status and disciplinary history of every firm and individual conducting futures business with the retail public. To perform a background check on the forex firm you are considering opening an account with, first you will need to obtain the broker's NFA ID#, which can usually be obtained from the broker's homepage. Once you have their NFA ID#, go to the NFA's website, and enter the broker's NFA ID#. This will generate a historical disciplinary report of that particular broker. Unfortunately, it does not show cases that were settled out of court.
Is the Forex Broker CFTC/NFA Regulated?

Many novice forex traders don't realize this but Forex Brokerage Firms, who conduct forex trading on the spot cash market, are not required by law to be regulated. While this may change sometime in the next few years, currently (July 2008) forex brokers on the spot forex market are not required to be regulated. Forex brokers that are currently CFTC/NFA regulated have become regulated voluntarily. Most forex brokers have chosen to become regulated just to stay competitive in the market. Forex brokers who are regulated offer more peace of mind than those brokers who aren't regulated. As a result, they tend to raise much more capital from the thousands of savvy traders & investors who know not to trust an unregulated broker.

Who is the CFTC?

The CFTC (Commodity Futures Trading Commission) was created in 1974 as an independent agency with the mandate to regulate commodity futures and option markets in the United States. The agency's mandate has been renewed and expanded several times since then, most recently by the Commodity Futures Modernization Act of 2000.

Today, the CFTC assures the economic utility of the futures markets by encouraging their competitiveness and efficiency, protecting market participants against fraud, manipulation, and abusive trading practices, and by ensuring the financial integrity of the clearing process. Through effective oversight, the CFTC enables the futures markets to serve the important function of providing a means for price discovery and offsetting price risk.

The CFTC's mission is to protect market users and the public from fraud, manipulation, and abusive practices related to the sale of commodity and financial futures and options, and to foster open, competitive, and financially sound futures and option markets.

Who is the NFA?

The NFA (National Futures Association) is the premier independent provider of efficient and innovative regulatory programs that safeguard the integrity of the derivatives markets.

Forex Broker Trading Ethics

A forex broker's trading ethics can often be difficult to determine without actually trading with them yourself. Perhaps the best way to get a clue about a broker's ethics, without risking any real money with them, is to simply check their NFA record (see above). The less accurate way is to see what other forex traders are saying about them. This can be done by reading posts in the multitude of forex forums. However, anything you read in forex forums should be taken with a grain of salt since some brokers have tens of thousands of clients and with a client base like that, there's bound to be a handful of unhappy, bitter clients somewhere who've lost money and are looking for someone to blame. Another thing to consider is that you only hear from the disgruntled clients while the 99.9% of happy and content clients say little or nothing at all. If you look long enough, you'll find bad things written about every forex broker under the sun and the larger the broker, usually the more bad things you'll hear simply because they have a lot more clients than the others. If you want m personal opinion based on 8 years of personal forex trading experience with a multitude of brokers, here's the breakdown in the order of my favorite to least favorite...

FXCM (Forex Capital Markets):

I've been trading with FXCM since the year 2000. I have traded my own account, as well as managed accounts for many others. I can honestly say I've never had a single complaint trading with FXCM. My company has a great relationship with FXCM and their work ethics are top notch. Over the past 8 years of trading with them, I've only experienced a handful of trade discrepencies, which were promptly corrected and in a professional manner. They even went as far as correcting a trade discrepency on a demo account, which I was using to test a new trading system. In addition to being CFTC/NFA regulated and the most financially strong non-bank forex dealer in the USA, you can fully automate your trading with FXCM through an automated trading platform offered by ProSignal.net. This Autotrader platform receives trade signals from over 300 different forex trading strategies from multiple forex traders from around the world. You simply select the trading system you want to trade and the trades will automatically be executed on your FXCM brokerage account 24 hours per day. There are no signup fees or monthly subscription fees. You only pay $1 per 10k lot round-turn trade. Therefore, you only pay for the trades you take while subscribing to each signal provider individually would cost thousands of dollars per month whether you traded their forex signals or not. And if that wasn't great enough, some of the strategies in their platform are making thousands of pips per month! All strategy trade performance is recorded by a third party firm and displayed right in the platform, including the open and close date, time, price, and currency pair of every historical trade. You can view the equity curve for each trading strategy individually or the equity curve of your entire portfolio of trading systems combined. If you're serious about forex trading, then this is a must see and highly recommended for those who enjoy freedom more than staring at a computer screen all day waiting for the courage to jump into the next trade. ProSignal's AutoTrader software will do all of the trading for you 24 hrs per day but only through the forex broker FXCM, which suits me just fine.

In July 2008, FXCM is introduced FXCM Micro, which is a division of FXCM that allows traders to trade micro lots as little as $1,000 volume per trade. This is 1/10th of their 10k mini lots, which is the smallest contract size used at most forex brokers. With the introduction of their micro lot platform, traders can open a live account with as little as $25 and trade up to 400 times their account balance. In addition, the spread fees on their new micro platform is approximately 30-40% lower than that of their mini account platform, which will put them in direct competition with Oanda, which leads me to my next broker of choice...

Oanda:

Oanda is another favorite forex broker of mine. They are not as financially strong as FXCM but they are CFTC/NFA regulated, have a great reputation, a very user-friendly trading platform, some of the smallest spread fees in the industry (equal to FXCM's micro platform), and they're the only broker to have no minimum trade volume requirement. Actually, the minimum trade volume is $1 (one dollar) and if you can't afford that, then you shouldn't be trading forex or even own a computer in the first place. Unfortunately, Oanda does not offer any automated trading capabilities without investing a ton of programming time and money into connecting your software with their API.

IFX Markets:

I traded an account through IFX for several years and I personally have no complaints with them except that they charge a commission on each trade in addition to their spread fees. IFX is a CFTC/NFA regulated brokerage firm and they seem to have great business ethics. While they may not be as financially strong as FXCM and Oanda, I have no complaints here except for the commissions. Unfortunately, like Oanda, IFX offers no automated trading solutions.

Gain Capital aka Forex.com:

Gain Capital is a regulated forex broker that I hope goes out of business some day. I traded a forex account with Gain Capital for about 2 years. During this time, my company was also referring investors to them for their managed account program. After raising a few hundred thousand dollars for their managed account program (and receiving about $2,000 monthly commissions for it) they got greedy and decided they didn't want to pay us anymore, despite having a written and signed IB contract. It was a direct and deliberate breach of contract, which my company could have sued them for but we just didn't have the time, energy, or desire to file a lawsuit so we let it go, closed our accounts with them, and never looked back. Perhaps my way of getting back at them is to simply tell others that their CEO and management are a bunch of backstabbing unethical pricks! Which leads me to my next and least favorite forex broker...

GFT (Global Forex Trading) and GFF (Global Futures & Forex):

Both of these forex trading companies are owned by the same asshole, Gary Tilkin. I could fill an entire encyclopedia with the hell this guy dragged us through. I have so much to say I don't even know where to start so I'll condense it as much as possible. Long story short... several years ago, we hired a forex trader (who is now in prison) to trade $400,000 for us. The trader insisted that we have our forex account with GFT because of his "good" relationship with GFT. Since GFT is a regulated forex broker, we saw no harm in trading with them so we went ahead and deposited our money with them. After 2 days, we still hadn't received our account password so we called GFT to get it. They said they sent it to our trader and that we need to get it from him. Our trader was suddenly impossible to get a hold of so we continued pressing GFT to give us our password so we could monitor the trading. We got the run around for another 2 days. After threatening to call the NFA, GFT finally gave us our account password. When we logged into our account, we were shocked to find that we had already lost 50% of our account, about $200,000 USD in a mere 4 days of trading. This explains why they didn't want to give us our password. Our trader explained that he was trading our account through a third party broker named Refco and that there was $200,000 in profits at that broker which needed to be allocated to our account. This made no sense to us since our account was at GFT and GFT only. How could our money be traded at another broker??? After several heated arguments with Gary Tilkin about all of this, and telling him that we were recording the phone call, he said "See you in court" and hung up on us. So, we immediately filed a lawsuit. During the discovery stage of the lawsuit, we gained access to the trade reports from Refco, which revealed a whole can of worms. In a nutshell, our trader was using GFT's corporate account to place trades at Refco and then having GFT place the trades into our account at GFT, in addition to the trader's own personal account. This is called Post Trade Allocation and is totally illegal, to say the least. As you would guess, the trader was having GFT allocate most of the winning trades to his own account and most of the losing trades to our account, at the tune of 100:1 leverage!!!! If that's not bad enough, our account was marked up by 2 pips per trade, which was totally unauthorized and undisclosed to us, also very illegal. Apparently, these extra 2 pips were being split between GFT and our trader. Since the trade entry and exit prices were manually entered into our GFT account, they could easily hide the 2-pip markup. It wasn't until we gained access to the Refco reports that this was discovered and can be seen by the 2 pip discrepancy between the Refco trade prices and the trade prices in our GFT account. We could also see there was a 1 pip discrepancy between our trade entry/exit prices on his GFT account and the Refco account, which leaves 1 pip profit per trade for GFT. A 2-pip markup may not sound like much but at 100 trades per day at $50 Million per trade, that adds up to $200,000 in 4 days, exactly the amount we lost. Therefore, Gary Tilkin (or GFT) made a swift $100,000 in 4 days and so did our trader, who is now serving time in prison for investment fraud. In a nutshell, Gary Tilkin conspired with an unethical trader to churn our account and make himself $100,000 in 4 days. Oh, and I forgot one of the best parts. Shortly before we opened our account at GFT, Gary Tilkin received a notice from the FBI to be on the lookout for our trader "Don O'Niel" for suspected investment fraud. One of his staff members revealed this in court while under oath, yet they cooperated with the trader and knowingly performed many illegal activities on our account. Do you think Gary Tilkin mentioned to us that our trader was under suspicion by the FBI for investment fraud? Not a chance! There was just too much money in it for him.

As you may have guessed, we won our lawsuit, which they appealed and were going to continue to appeal all the way to the Supreme Court claiming that the CFTC doesn't have jurisdiction over the forex spot market, which is technically arguable but the laws are ever changing to include it due to cases like this and scumbags like Gary Tilkin. So after 2 years of battling with them, we eventually settled out of court for 50% of our losses. The total lawsuit was for $600,000 as we had another large investor involved who was part of our lawsuit so the total settlement was for $300,000. If you perform an NFA background check on GFT, GFF, or Gary Tilkin, you probably won't find much since they always settle out of court to avoid the judgements. This is how they keep their record clean and is probably how most brokers keep their record clean so be careful who you trust with your money! Just because a broker is CFTC regulated doesn't mean it is being run by ethical people.

The Best Forex Brokers

Now that we've narrowed our list of forex brokers down to the two best ones (FXCM and Oanda), let's review their forex trading platforms and then you can decide which broker you would like to open a forex demo account with...

FXCM's Forex Trading Platform

The price feed on FXCM's forex demo accounts is not as accurate as their live accounts so sometimes there can be price variations on a demo that will stop out a position which would have remained open on a live account. But this problem isn't isolated to just FXCM. I've found that the price feed in demo accounts with most forex brokers is not entirely accurate. This is probably because the price feed for demo accounts comes from a separate price server, which have much fewer resources to ensure it's accuracy so don't freak if the prices in your demo account don't exactly match that of any live account. Some demos are on time delays and some are just not that accurate.

 

Oanda

Oanda has a great reputation and has always had the tightest spreads (smallest fees) of all the forex brokers that I know of, until FXCM released their new Mini Lot platform this month (July 2008). Now these two broker have about the same fees. Oanda also has a very user friendly trading platform, which also allows you to trade Gold and Silver. There is really nothing negative to say about Oanda except they aren't quite as financially strong as FXCM but are probably in the top 5 in the industry for financial strength. If you will be trading any large sum of money, or if the security of your funds is #1 on your list, as it should be, then my personal suggestion would be FXCM. However, if you have any interest in trading Gold or Silver to help hedge your crashing US Dollar, then Oanda may be the better choice.

Thanks for Reading

I hope this information has been helpful for you. If you are interested in trading Foreign Currency as a way to hedge the US Dollar or as an investment, then you may be interested in the automated trading platform offered by ProSignal.net. They offer a 99% hands-free trading platform (software) that does all the trading for you 24 hours per day. Your only job is to open an FXCM brokerage account through their website and then choose which trading strategies you would like traded on your account. The software will take over from there. You can take a look at the past-performance of all 300+ trading strategies to choose from on their website www.ProSignal.net

If you have any questions about the information on this page or forex in general, you may contact me at: ForexGuy @ earthlink.net  (leave out the spaces).

Thanks,

Don 

 

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Risk Disclosure:

Past performance posted by Signal and Systems Providers (“Providers”), is not necessarily indicative of future results. No representation is made that any account is likely to achieve profits or losses similar to those shown. In fact, there are frequently sharp differences between hypothetical performance results and the actual results subsequently achieved by any particularly trading program. The composite monthly results are primarily hypothetical results of the master demo and its representation of the Providers, though performance results displayed may represent a combination of live and hypothetical results and are not exclusive to either. There are numerous other factors related to markets in general or to the implementation of any specific trading program that cannot be fully accounted for in the preparation of hypothetical performance results and all of which can adversely affect actual trading results. In the event that specific trades were simultaneously executed in hypothetical and live, real-time trading, the lesser of the two results will be displayed. There is no guarantee that one applying these methodologies would have the same results as the hypothetically posted. Since trading successfully depends on many elements including but not limited to a trading methodology and a trader's own psychology, the web site does not make any representation whatsoever that the above mentioned trading systems might be or are suitable or that they would be profitable for you. Please realize the risk with any investment and consult investment professionals before proceeding. The trading systems herein described have been developed for sophisticated traders who fully understand the nature and the scope of the risks that are associated with trading. Should you decide to trade any or all of these systems' signals, it is your decision.

DEMO trading and hypothetical performance results have many inherent limitations, some of which are described below. No representation is being made that any forex trading account using any signals from a Provider(s) will or is likely to achieve profits or losses similar to those shown; in fact, there are frequently sharp differences between hypothetical forex trading performance results and the actual results subsequently achieved by any particular forex trading program.

One of the limitations of hypothetical forex trading performance results is that they are generally prepared with the benefit of hindsight. In addition, hypothetical forex trading does not involve financial risk, and no hypothetical forex trading record can completely account for the impact of financial risk in actual forex trading. For example, the ability to withstand losses or to adhere to a particular forex trading program in spite of trading losses are material points that can also adversely affect actual forex trading results. There are numerous other factors related to the forex markets in general or to the implementation of any specific forex trading program, which can not be fully accounted for in the preparation of hypothetical forex trading performance results, and all of which can adversely affect actual forex trading results.

It should also be understood that hypothetical performance results may be posted on the website or given to third parties by other methods. Such hypothetical performance results have inherent limitations in that they have been prepared with the use of past performance, and past performance is no guarantee of future results. Performance can and does vary between individuals.

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