Test the brokers, episode 1

Most important component of highspeed trading is good trading conditions.
The profits of any such system are directly related to spread size and commissions, but in the case of scalping strategies — the impact of above factors gets merely first place, after, in fact, the choice of the strategy itself.

Selection Criterias

To compare different brokers’ trading conditions I have chosen a few of them, based on the following criteria:

1. EURUSD spread must be one of the best  (used MyFxBook statistics).
2. Minimum deposit requirements, to suite amateur trader (< $500).
3. The broker is not a straight scam (not black-listed on various broker comparing portals).

1. FxOpen, STP account
2. Exness, MINI account
3. RoboForex, ECN-Pro NDD account
4. Pepperstone, Razor account
5. TickMill, ECN Pro account
6. and Gainsy (found out that it is scam after test has been started).

Conclusions

As a result of a 2-week trading the following conclusions have been made:

1. Gainsy turned not appropriate for trading simply because it’s a scam-company (based on information from Forex Peace Army). It may get closed at any time, and the profits withdrawal can be denied any time without explanation.
   In addition, the performance on this account was one of the worst: in spite of the good ping, trading orders executed more than 3 seconds, and sometimes the execution reached 20-30 seconds!
   In general, one way or another, the company — to be thrown away.
2. Exness MINI account didn’t show anywhere close spreads that I’ve seen in their rankings in MyFxBook. As a result, vast majority of transactions have been filtered by parameter “MaxSpread”, and those which have been opened - did not yield positive result. Trading orders executed from 600 ms to 3-4 seconds, also there was several re-quotes and off-quotes.
   Most likely, in the ranking of spreads different type of account — ECN have been used, with a minimum deposit of $300.  So that account we will test next time.
3. FxOpen with its STP-account showed the execution about 300-500 ms. In general Spreads were at declared level, and EA opened good number of trades. But due to the fact that broker commissions are included in spread for this type of account, as result size of Stop Loss and Trailing Stop have been not chosen optimally. Next week, I'll adjust the setting, and release new version of Angry Beaver, which will cover commissions.
   
4. Pepperstone Razor executed trades at 500-600 ms, and spreads were very good indeed.
   But overall result was spoiled by commission, which amounted 8 cents per 0.01 lot (total $8 per lot).
5. RoboForex pleased me with good spreads, reasonable commission 4 cents per 0.01 lot ($4 per lot) and 200-400 ms execution speed.
   Some of the transaction were not opened because of lack of free margin, next week I will set a higher leverage - 1:300.
6. Undisputed leader for the first two weeks became TickMill. Despite the execution of orders at 500-600 ms, more transactions were opened on this account than on any other (i.e. the spread was the best), and the best results were obtained in some of them (the best deal — 9.1 points).
   On a flip side — it is impossible to deposit via WebMoney for the residents of my country. But in general should be fine via Skrill.
   Next week, I will compare the performance when working on a similar account with VPS.

Net execution speed (execution speed - Ping*2) for tested brokers were:

General summary made: 

• System parameters should be adapted to full range of trading conditions, including spreads and commissions.
• Execution speed may substantially affect the result, so the following tests will be conducted using VPS.

Thank you for your attention!  I look forward to your questions in comments section.