Brokers For Canadian & American Traders

[pakeha]

Oops, my apologies.

[pakeha]

Well Done

[TransparentT]

Thanks for the info, JohnnyRy! Eager to see your update in September 2023.

Update... I've been trading 2 standard lots of Guppy worth over 250,000 USD without issue at IG US.

So after an entire summer they finally allowed you to trade with them? Quite the journey just to get access to one broker!

[TransparentT]

So after an entire summer they finally allowed you to trade with them? Quite the journey just to get access to one broker!

Yerp. I wish Jemook at Afterprime had 20 million USD so he could register it as a US broker-dealer.

I wonder how many million CAD it would take for Afterprime to be registered in Ontario, Canada. The one province that always gets left to the wayside when international brokers allow Canadians to trade with them.

Once Ontario (Canada) and USA can be serviced by Afterprime, game over for everybody else.

[TransparentT]

I wonder how many million CAD it would take for Afterprime to be registered in Ontario, Canada.

Based on the Canadian IIROC rules (https://www.ciro.ca/media/16/download?inline), only 75,000 or 250,000 CAD depending on the Type classification of the broker-dealer.

I'll relay this info to them and see what they think. Based on my few conversations with their support staff they have no intention to open up this route anytime soon.

[TransparentT]

News flash... There is a new US Broker with reasonable spreads (but not the lowest) and good transparency:

Trading.com

I do wonder how much they paid for that domain, but they offer MT5!

So I did my digging and went to Trading.com, but being from Canada I was redirected to Trading.com/uk.

Notably, a quick chat with customer support confirmed the UK branch does NOT accept traders from Canada or the USA. In fact, nobody outside of the United Kingdom can trade with them:

trading.com uk convo .jpg

Then I went on Google and found out you have to go to trading.com/us specifically. I talked to their customer support agent, and it was made clear they ONLY accept traders from the USA.

Below are some quick notes I took from the website:

https://www.trading.com/us/trading/account/t1-account <- mininum deposit of $50, commission-free trading, USD deposits only. This is all for their T1 account, the only one they offer.

https://www.trading.com/us/trading/inst ... ex-pricing <- spreads look decently low (but I'm not sure about "ultra-low") if these hold up in testing a MT5 demo/live account, which I have not done. You have much better spreads for the major pairs than the minor pairs and the exotic pairs.

https://www.trading.com/us/trading/cond ... n-leverage <- leverage is anywhere from 1:50 to 1:20 for the major pairs and minor pairs, if my math checks out. You start getting into margins of 7%, 10%, and even as high as 25% for the more exotic pairs.

People should note this is a FOREX-ONLY, Empty5-ONLY broker. No indices, energies/commodities, metals, cryptocurrencies, stocks, or any other miscellaneous asset class you can think of are offered.

Make of this what you will. And JohnnyRy, please feel free to share your thoughts!

[TransparentT]

Regarding Trading.com US, Swap long and Swap short are showing in their MT5 platform's (demo) Specification window (exactly where they should be) and are presumably callable via MQL5 code. As I mentioned previously in this thread, Forex.com US and IG US hide swap rates in ways that make the rates unable to be called.

Interesting how different brokers treat their swap rates...

Makes me all the more excited to see when Ironbeam will release their full MT5 functionality. It's about time US traders finally start being treated the way they deserve to be!

[TransparentT]

Good stuff, JohnnyRy! Thanks for taking the time to look into this broker further.

I obviously can't trade with them due to my status as a Canadian, but this good news for the Americans on this forum seeking a decent forex broker who will accept them as clients.

[TransparentT]

Makes me all the more excited to see when Ironbeam will release their full MT5 functionality.

Just a heads up, T...

I chatted with Mike at Ironbeam. He said integrating MT5 has turned out to be a monumental task that they started in April of 2023 and when its finally up and running, MT5 will be connected to CQG (data provider) which is in turn, connected to the futures exchange. He also suggested using Ironbeam's API connection for any autotrading platform. I found a Python gateway for doing so at https://www.mql5.com/en/docs/python_metatrader5. However, Ironbeam only offers a 1 week demo account. I don't know about you, but I can't get an MT5-Python gateway ready for live trading in 1 week.

Good to hear about MT5 being somewhere on the far horizon, and sad to hear the demo account lasts for only one week.

Any ETA on when the MT5 integration will be complete, or do we have to just sit on our hands and wait for an announcement?

[TransparentT]

Hey T, I did some more digging at https://www.cqg.com/partners/fcms based on the CQG info that Ironbeam provided. I found https://just2trade.online/solutions/mt5global/ which offers access to multiple markets in something they call MT5 Global. The US is on their "Restrictions" document, but Canada is not. Looks like they're in Cyprus where Metaquotes is headquartered.

Thanks for the heads-up, JohnnyRy! I'll give them a look and see if they're worth pursuing further.