ECN vs dealing desk: understanding what you're trading through
Most retail 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 is essentially the one taking the opposite position. An ECN broker routes your order through to the interbank market — you're trading against genuine liquidity.
Day to day, the difference becomes clear in three places: spread consistency, fill speed, and requotes. Genuine ECN execution generally give you tighter spreads but apply a commission per lot. DD brokers widen the spread instead. Neither model is inherently bad — it hinges on your strategy.
If you scalp or trade high frequency, ECN execution is generally worth the commission. Tighter spreads 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 "lightning-fast execution" make for nice headlines, but how much does it matter in practice? More than you'd think.
A trader who executing a handful of trades per month, shaving off a few milliseconds won't move the needle. For high-frequency strategies trading small price moves, execution lag can equal money left on the table. A broker averaging under 40ms with no requotes provides noticeably better entries compared to platforms with 150-200ms fills.
A few brokers built proprietary execution technology specifically for speed. One example is Titan FX's Zero Point technology designed to route orders immediately 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 ends up being the most common question when picking their trading account: is it better to have a commission on raw spreads or markup spreads with no fee per lot? It comes down to how much you trade.
Take a typical example. A standard account might show EUR/USD at 1.0-1.5 pips. A raw spread account offers 0.1-0.3 pips but adds a commission of about $7 per standard lot round trip. With the wider spread, the cost is baked into the spread on each position. At more than a few lots a week, ECN pricing saves you money mathematically.
Many ECN brokers offer both as options so you can see the difference for yourself. What matters is to calculate based on your actual trading volume rather than trusting hypothetical comparisons — they tend to favour one account type over the other.
Understanding 500:1 leverage without the moralising
High leverage polarises the trading community more than most other subjects. The major regulatory bodies limit leverage to 30:1 or 50:1 depending on the asset class. Brokers regulated outside tier-1 jurisdictions still provide up to 500:1.
The standard argument against is simple: inexperienced traders wipe out faster. This is legitimate — the data shows, the majority of retail accounts do lose. What this ignores a key point: traders who know what they're doing don't use full leverage. What they do is use the option of high leverage to reduce the money locked up in any single trade — freeing up margin for other opportunities.
Sure, it can wreck you. Nobody disputes that. But that's a risk management problem, not a leverage problem. If what you trade needs reduced margin commitment, the option of higher leverage frees up margin for other positions — which is the whole point for anyone who knows what they're doing.
Offshore regulation: what traders actually need to understand
The regulatory landscape in forex operates across different levels. Tier-1 is FCA, ASIC, CySEC. 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 jurisdictions like Vanuatu and Mauritius and Mauritius (FSA). Lighter rules, but that also means better trading conditions for the trader.
What you're exchanging real and worth understanding: going with an offshore-regulated broker means 500:1 leverage, lower account restrictions, and often more competitive pricing. But, you have less regulatory protection if something goes wrong. You don't get a regulatory bailout paying out up to GBP85k.
Traders who accept this consciously and prefer better conditions, offshore brokers work well. The key is doing your due diligence rather than only checking if they're regulated somewhere. A platform with a decade of operating history under an offshore licence is often more reliable in practice than a newly licensed site tier-1 broker.
Broker selection for scalping: the non-negotiables
Scalping is the style where broker choice makes or breaks your results. You're working 1-5 pip moves and holding for less than a few minutes at a time. With those margins, even small variations in execution speed equal real money.
Non-negotiables for scalpers comes down to a few things: true ECN spreads with no markup, fills in the sub-50ms range, zero requotes, and the broker allowing holding times under one minute. Some brokers technically allow scalping but add latency to fills if you trade too frequently. Read the terms before depositing.
Brokers that actually want scalpers will say so loudly. They'll publish execution speed data somewhere prominent, and often include virtual private servers for running bots 24/5. When a platform avoids discussing execution specifications anywhere on their marketing, take it as a signal.
Following other traders — the reality of copy trading platforms
Social trading has grown over the past decade. The pitch is straightforward: pick someone with a good track record, mirror their activity in your own account, and profit alongside them. In practice is messier than the marketing make it sound.
The main problem is time lag. When the lead trader opens a position, your mirrored order fills milliseconds to seconds later — when prices are moving quickly, those extra milliseconds might change a profitable trade into a losing one. The tighter the profit margins, the more this problem becomes.
Despite this, a few implementations deliver value for traders who don't want to trade actively. Look for platforms that show audited trading results over no less than 12 months, instead of simulated results. Risk-adjusted metrics are more useful than the total return number.
Some brokers have built their own social trading within their main offering. This can minimise the execution lag compared to standalone signal platforms that connect to MT4 or MT5. Look at the technical setup before trusting that the lead trader's performance can be replicated in your experience.