ECN vs dealing desk: understanding what you're trading through
A lot of the brokers you'll come across fall into two execution models: market makers or ECN brokers. The difference is more than semantics. A dealing desk broker becomes the other side of your trade. An ECN broker routes your order straight to liquidity providers — you get fills from genuine liquidity.
For most retail traders, the difference matters most in how your trades get filled: how tight and stable your spreads are, how fast your orders go through, and whether you get requoted. A proper ECN broker will typically deliver tighter pricing but charge a commission per lot. Market makers widen the spread instead. There's no universally better option — it comes down to your strategy.
If your strategy depends on tight entries and fast fills, a proper ECN broker is typically the right choice. The raw pricing more than offsets the commission cost on most pairs.
Execution speed: what 37 milliseconds actually means for your trades
Brokers love quoting how fast they execute orders. Figures like under 40ms fills look good in marketing, but how much does it matter in practice? It depends entirely on what you're doing.
For someone making two or three swing trades a week, shaving off a few milliseconds doesn't matter. If you're scalping 1-2 pip moves working tight ranges, slow fills means slippage. Consistent execution at 35-40 milliseconds with no requotes offers noticeably better entries over one that averages 200ms.
A few brokers built proprietary execution technology to address this. Titan FX, for example, built their Zero Point execution system which sends orders straight to LPs without dealing desk intervention — their published average is under 37 milliseconds. For a full look at how this works in practice, see this review of Titan FX.
Raw spread accounts vs standard: doing the maths
This is something nearly every trader asks when picking an account type: should I choose a commission on raw spreads or a wider spread with no commission? The answer depends on your monthly lot count.
Let's run the numbers. A spread-only account might have EUR/USD at 1.0-1.5 pips. A commission-based account shows true market pricing but applies roughly $3-4 per standard lot round trip. broker titan fx With the wider spread, the cost is baked into the spread on each position. If you're doing more than a few lots a week, ECN pricing saves you money mathematically.
Many ECN brokers offer both side by side so you can pick what suits your volume. The key is to calculate based on your actual trading volume rather than relying on the broker's examples — broker examples usually favour one account type over the other.
Understanding 500:1 leverage without the moralising
Leverage splits forex traders more than most other subjects. Tier-1 regulators like ASIC and FCA restrict leverage to 30:1 or 50:1 depending on the asset class. Brokers regulated outside tier-1 jurisdictions continue to offer ratios of 500:1 and above.
Critics of high leverage is that it blows accounts. This is legitimate — the numbers support this, traders using maximum leverage end up negative. What this ignores nuance: experienced traders never actually deploy full leverage. They use having access to more leverage to lower the capital sitting as margin in open trades — freeing up capital to deploy elsewhere.
Obviously it carries risk. Nobody disputes that. But blaming the leverage is like blaming the car for a speeding ticket. If your strategy needs less capital per position, access to 500:1 means less money locked up as margin — which is the whole point for anyone who knows what they're doing.
Choosing a broker outside FCA and ASIC jurisdiction
Regulation in forex falls into a spectrum. At the top is regulators like the FCA and ASIC. Leverage is capped at 30:1, mandate investor compensation schemes, and limit the trading conditions available to retail accounts. Further down you've got the VFSC in Vanuatu and Mauritius (FSA). Less oversight, but which translates to more flexibility in what they can offer.
What you're exchanging real and worth understanding: going with an offshore-regulated broker gives you 500:1 leverage, fewer trading limitations, and often more competitive pricing. The flip side is, you sacrifice some regulatory protection if there's a dispute. No investor guarantee fund equivalent to FSCS.
For traders who understand this trade-off and pick execution quality and flexibility, offshore brokers are a valid choice. The key is doing your due diligence rather than just trusting a licence badge on a website. A broker with a decade of operating history under an offshore licence may be more reliable in practice than a freshly regulated tier-1 broker.
Scalping execution: separating good brokers from usable ones
For scalping strategies is the style where broker choice makes or breaks your results. Targeting small ranges and keeping trades open for very short periods. With those margins, tiny gaps in spread become real money.
What to look for isn't long: 0.0 pip raw pricing at actual market rates, order execution under 50 milliseconds, guaranteed no requotes, and the broker allowing scalping and high-frequency trading. Some brokers say they support scalping but slow down fills if you trade too frequently. Look at the execution policy before funding your account.
Platforms built for scalping will say so loudly. You'll see average fill times on the website, and they'll typically offer VPS hosting for automated strategies. When a platform doesn't mention fill times anywhere on their marketing, that's probably not a good sign for scalpers.
Following other traders — the reality of copy trading platforms
Social trading took off over the past decade. The pitch is obvious: find profitable traders, copy their trades without doing your own analysis, collect the profits. In practice is more complicated than the advertisements imply.
The biggest issue is time lag. When a signal provider executes, the replicated trade goes through after a delay — during volatile conditions, those extra milliseconds can turn a winning entry into a bad one. The more narrow the profit margins, the bigger the impact of delay.
Having said that, certain implementations are worth exploring for those who don't want to develop their own strategies. The key is finding access to real track records over no less than 12 months, instead of simulated results. Metrics like Sharpe ratio and maximum drawdown matter more than headline profit percentages.
Certain brokers have built proprietary copy trading alongside their regular trading platform. This tends to reduce latency issues compared to standalone signal platforms that bolt onto the trading platform. Research the technical setup before expecting historical returns will carry over with the same precision.