What to look for in an ECN broker right now

ECN execution explained without the marketing spin

A lot of the brokers you'll come across fall into two broad camps: those that take the other side of your trade and those that pass it through. This isn't just terminology. A dealing desk broker becomes the other side of your trade. An ECN broker routes your order directly to liquidity providers — your orders match with genuine liquidity.

In practice, the difference becomes clear in a few ways: spread consistency, fill speed, and order rejection rates. ECN brokers will typically offer raw spreads from 0.0 pips but charge a commission per lot. Dealing desk brokers mark up the spread instead. Neither model is inherently bad — it hinges on your strategy.

If your strategy depends on tight entries and fast fills, ECN is almost always the right choice. The raw pricing compensates for the commission cost on the major pairs.

Fast execution — separating broker hype from reality

Every broker's website mentions fill times. Numbers like under 40ms fills sound impressive, but what does it actually mean in practice? More than you'd think.

For someone executing longer-term positions, shaving off a few milliseconds is irrelevant. For high-frequency strategies targeting tight ranges, execution lag means worse fill prices. If your broker fills at in the 30-40ms range with a no-requote policy gives you measurably better fills compared to platforms with 150-200ms fills.

A few brokers put real money into proprietary execution technology that eliminates dealing desk intervention. One example is Titan FX's Zero Point technology that routes orders straight to LPs without dealing desk intervention — the documented execution speed is under 37 milliseconds. You can read a detailed breakdown in this review of Titan FX.

Raw spread accounts vs standard: doing the maths

This is a question that comes up constantly when setting up a broker account: should I choose commission plus tight spreads or zero commission but wider spreads? The maths depends on how much you trade.

Take a typical example. The no-commission option might offer EUR/USD at full report 1.0-1.5 pips. The ECN option shows 0.1-0.3 pips but charges a commission of about $7 per lot round-turn. On the spread-only option, the broker takes their cut via the spread on each position. If you're doing more than a few lots a week, ECN pricing is almost always cheaper.

Many ECN brokers offer both account types so you can see the difference for yourself. The key is to work it out using your real monthly lot count rather than going off the broker's examples — those usually favour the higher-margin product.

Understanding 500:1 leverage without the moralising

The leverage conversation divides the trading community more than most other subjects. Regulators have capped leverage to 30:1 or 50:1 depending on the asset class. Offshore brokers can still offer up to 500:1.

Critics of high leverage is simple: it blows accounts. Fair enough — the data shows, traders using maximum leverage end up negative. What this ignores a key point: experienced traders never actually deploy the maximum ratio. What they do is use the availability high leverage to reduce the capital sitting as margin in any single trade — leaving more margin for additional positions.

Obviously it carries risk. Nobody disputes that. The leverage itself isn't the issue — how you size your positions is. If your strategy benefits from less capital per position, access to 500:1 means less money locked up as margin — and that's how most experienced traders actually use it.

Choosing a broker outside FCA and ASIC jurisdiction

Broker regulation in forex falls into a spectrum. At the top is FCA (UK) and ASIC (Australia). You get 30:1 leverage limits, mandate investor compensation schemes, and limit how aggressively brokers can operate. Further down you've got places like Vanuatu (VFSC) and Mauritius (FSA). Less oversight, but that also means higher leverage and fewer restrictions.

The compromise is straightforward: going with an offshore-regulated broker offers higher leverage, less trading limitations, and usually more competitive pricing. The flip side is, you sacrifice some safety net if there's a dispute. There's no regulatory bailout equivalent to FSCS.

For traders who understand this trade-off and choose better conditions, offshore brokers can make sense. What matters is checking the broker's track record rather than only reading the licence number. A broker with a decade of operating history under an offshore licence may be more reliable in practice than a newly licensed broker that got its licence last year.

Broker selection for scalping: the non-negotiables

If you scalp is where broker choice has the biggest impact. When you're trading tiny price movements and holding positions for seconds to minutes. With those margins, even small variations in execution speed translate directly to the difference between a winning and losing month.

Non-negotiables for scalpers comes down to a few things: 0.0 pip raw pricing at actual market rates, execution consistently below 50ms, a no-requote policy, and no restrictions on scalping strategies. Some brokers say they support scalping but add latency to fills for high-frequency traders. Read the terms before depositing.

ECN brokers that chase this type of trader will say so loudly. Look for execution speed data somewhere prominent, and often include virtual private servers for automated strategies. If a broker doesn't mention fill times anywhere on their site, that tells you something.

Following other traders — the reality of copy trading platforms

Copy trading has become popular over the past several years. The pitch is obvious: identify profitable traders, replicate their positions without doing your own analysis, and profit alongside them. In practice is more complicated than the marketing make it sound.

What most people miss is time lag. When the lead trader opens a position, your copy goes through after a delay — when prices are moving quickly, those extra milliseconds might change a profitable trade into a bad one. The smaller the strategy's edge, the more this problem becomes.

Having said that, some social trading platforms are worth exploring for traders who don't have time to monitor charts all day. Look for access to audited performance history over a minimum of several months of live trading, instead of backtested curves. Risk-adjusted metrics matter more than headline profit percentages.

A few platforms build their own social trading alongside their main offering. This can minimise latency issues compared to external copy trading providers that sit on top of MT4 or MT5. Check the technical setup before trusting that the lead trader's performance will carry over in your experience.