What to look for in an ECN broker right now

The difference between ECN and market maker execution

The majority of forex brokers fall into two broad camps: those that take the other side of your trade and those that pass it through. The difference is more than semantics. A dealing desk broker becomes your counterparty. A true ECN setup routes your order through to the interbank market — you get fills from genuine liquidity.

Day to day, the difference matters most in a few ways: how tight and stable your spreads are, how fast your orders go through, and whether you get requoted. ECN brokers tends to deliver tighter pricing but charge a commission per lot. DD brokers widen the spread instead. Both models work — it comes down to how you trade.

If your strategy depends on tight entries and fast fills, ECN is almost always worth the commission. Getting true market spreads more than offsets the per-lot fee on high-volume currency pairs.

Execution speed: what 37 milliseconds actually means for your trades

Every broker's website mentions how fast they execute orders. Numbers like under 40ms fills make for nice headlines, but how much does it matter for your trading? Quite a lot, depending on your strategy.

A trader who making longer-term positions, the gap between 40ms and 80ms execution won't move the needle. But for scalpers trading quick entries and exits, execution lag translates to money left on the table. A broker averaging 35-40 milliseconds with a no-requote policy provides measurably better fills over one that averages 200ms.

Some brokers have invested proprietary execution technology specifically for speed. Titan FX developed a Zero Point execution system which sends orders immediately to LPs without dealing desk intervention — the documented execution speed is under 37 milliseconds. For a full look at how this works in practice, see this Titan FX broker review.

Raw spread accounts vs standard: doing the maths

Here's the most common question when choosing an account type: do I pay commission plus tight spreads or a wider spread with no commission? The answer comes down to your monthly lot count.

Here's a real comparison. A spread-only account might have EUR/USD at 1.0-1.5 pips. A commission-based account shows 0.1-0.3 pips but charges a commission of about $7 per standard lot round trip. With the wider spread, the cost is baked into the markup. Once you're trading 3-4+ lots per month, the commission model saves you money mathematically.

Many ECN brokers offer both account types so you can compare directly. What matters is to calculate based on your actual trading volume rather than relying on the broker's examples — they often be designed to sell whichever account the broker wants to push.

500:1 leverage: the argument traders keep having

The leverage conversation polarises retail traders more than most other subjects. Regulators limit retail leverage at relatively low ratios for retail accounts. Offshore brokers can still offer 500:1 or higher.

The usual case against 500:1 is simple: retail traders can't handle it. Fair enough — the data shows, the majority of retail accounts lose money. What this ignores something important: professional retail traders don't use 500:1 on every trade. They use the option of more leverage to lower the capital locked up in open trades — leaving more margin for additional positions.

Obviously it carries risk. Nobody disputes that. But that's a risk management problem, not a leverage problem. When a strategy needs less capital per position, having 500:1 available lets you deploy capital more efficiently — and that's how most experienced traders actually use it.

Choosing a broker outside FCA and ASIC jurisdiction

Regulation in forex operates across different levels. The strictest tier is regulators like the FCA and ASIC. You get 30:1 leverage limits, mandate investor compensation schemes, and put guardrails on the trading conditions available to retail accounts. Further down you've got the VFSC in Vanuatu and similar offshore regulators. Fewer requirements, but which translates to more flexibility in what they can offer.

The trade-off is not subtle: tier-3 regulation offers higher leverage, less account restrictions, and often more competitive pricing. The flip side is, you get less safety net if there's a dispute. No regulatory bailout equivalent to FSCS.

If you're comfortable with the risk and choose execution quality and flexibility, offshore brokers are a valid choice. What matters is looking at operating history, fund segregation, and reputation rather than only checking if they're regulated somewhere. A platform with 10+ years of clean operation under an offshore licence can be more reliable in practice than a freshly regulated broker that got its licence last year.

What scalpers should look for in a broker

For scalping strategies is one area where broker choice has the biggest impact. Targeting 1-5 pip moves and holding for less than a few minutes at a time. At that level, even small gaps in spread become profit or loss.

The checklist comes down to a few things: true ECN spreads with no markup, order execution in the sub-50ms range, zero requotes, and no restrictions on scalping and high-frequency trading. Some brokers say they support scalping but slow down orders if you trade too frequently. Check the fine print before committing capital.

ECN brokers that chase this type of trader will say so loudly. They'll publish execution speed another source data somewhere prominent, and usually include virtual private servers for EAs that need low latency. When a platform avoids discussing their execution speed anywhere on their site, that tells you something.

Copy trading and social platforms: what works and what doesn't

Copy trading has become popular over the past few years. The pitch is straightforward: identify traders who are making money, replicate their positions automatically, and profit alongside them. In reality is messier than the platform promos suggest.

What most people miss is execution delay. When the trader you're copying opens a position, your copy executes with some lag — and in fast markets, that lag transforms a good fill into a worse entry. The smaller the profit margins, the bigger this problem becomes.

Despite this, a few copy trading setups work well enough for people who can't monitor charts all day. What works is platforms that show verified performance history over a minimum of several months of live trading, not just backtested curves. Metrics like Sharpe ratio and maximum drawdown tell you more than raw return figures.

Some brokers have built their own social trading within their regular trading platform. Integration helps lower the delay problem compared to standalone signal platforms that connect to MT4 or MT5. Research the technical setup before expecting the results will translate in your experience.