Almost every day people come to this subreddit asking the same basic questions over and over again. I've put this guide together to point you in the right direction and help you get started on your forex journey.

A quick background on me before you ask: My name is Bob, I'm based out of western Canada. I started my forex journey back in January 2018 and am still learning. However I am trading live, not on demo accounts. I also code my own EA's. I not certified, licensed, insured, or even remotely qualified as a professional in the finance industry. Nothing I say constitutes financial advice. Take what I'm saying with a grain of salt, but everything I've outlined below is a synopsis of some tough lessons I've learned over the last year of being in this business.

LET'S GET SOME UNPLEASANTNESS OUT OF THE WAY

I'm going to call you stupid. I'm also going to call you dumb. I'm going to call you many other things. I do this because odds are, you are stupid, foolish,and just asking to have your money taken away. Welcome to the 95% of retail traders. Perhaps uneducated or uninformed are better phrases, but I've never been a big proponent of being politically correct.

Want to get out of the 95% and join the 5% of us who actually make money doing this? Put your grown up pants on, buck up, and don't give me any of this pc "This is hurting my feelings so I'm not going to listen to you" bullshit that the world has been moving towards.

Let's rip the bandage off quickly on this point - the world does not give a fuck about you. At one point maybe it did, it was this amazing vision nicknamed the American Dream. It died an agonizing, horrible death at the hand of capitalists and entrepreneurs. The world today revolves around money. Your money, my money, everybody's money. People want to take your money to add it to theirs. They don't give a fuck if it forces you out on the street and your family has to live in cardboard box. The world just stopped caring in general. It sucks, but it's the way the world works now. Welcome to the new world order. It's called Capitalism.

And here comes the next hard truth that you will need to accept - Forex is a cruel bitch of a mistress. She will hurt you. She will torment you. She will give you nightmares. She will keep you awake at night. And then she will tease you with a glimmer of hope to lure you into a false sense of security before she then guts you like a fish and shows you what your insides look like. This statement applies to all trading markets - they are cruel, ruthless, and not for the weak minded.

The sooner you accept these truths, the sooner you will become profitable. Don't accept it? That's fine. Don't bother reading any further. If I've offended you I don't give a fuck. You can run back home and hide under your bed. The world doesn't care and neither do I.

For what it's worth - I am not normally an major condescending asshole like the above paragraphs would suggest. In fact, if you look through my posts on this subreddit you will see I am actually quite helpful most of the time to many people who come here. But I need you to really understand that Forex is not for most people. It will make you cry. And if the markets themselves don't do it, the people in the markets will.

LESSON 1 - LEARN THE BASICS

Save yourself and everybody here a bunch of time - learn the basics of forex. You can learn the basics for free - BabyPips has one of the best free courses online which explains what exactly forex is, how it works, different strategies and methods of how to approach trading, and many other amazing topics.

You can access the BabyPips course by clicking this link: https://www.babypips.com/learn/forex

Do EVERY course in the School of Pipsology. It's free, it's comprehensive, and it will save you from a lot of trouble. It also has the added benefit of preventing you from looking foolish and uneducated when you come here asking for help if you already know this stuff.

If you still have questions about how forex works, please see the FREE RESOURCES links on the /Forex FAQ which can be found here: https://www.reddit.com/Forex/wiki/index

Quiz Time
Answer these questions truthfully to yourself:

-What is the difference between a market order, a stop order, and a limit order?
-How do you draw a support/resistance line? (Demonstrate it to yourself)
-What is the difference between MACD, RSI, and Stochastic indicators?
-What is fundamental analysis and how does it differ from technical analysis and price action trading?
-True or False: It's better to have a broker who gives you 500:1 margin instead of 50:1 margin. Be able to justify your reasoning.

If you don't know to answer to any of these questions, then you aren't ready to move on. Go back to the School of Pipsology linked above and do it all again.

If you can answer these questions without having to refer to any kind of reference then congratulations, you are ready to move past being a forex newbie and are ready to dive into the wonderful world of currency trading! Move onto Lesson 2 below.

LESSON 2 - RANDOM STRANGERS ARE NOT GOING TO HELP YOU GET RICH IN FOREX

This may come as a bit of a shock to you, but that random stranger on instagram who is posting about how he is killing it on forex is not trying to insprire you to greatness. He's also not trying to help you. He's also not trying to teach you how to attain financial freedom.

99.99999% of people posting about wanting to help you become rich in forex are LYING TO YOU.

Why would such nice, polite people do such a thing? Because THEY ARE TRYING TO PROFIT FROM YOUR STUPIDITY.

Plain and simple. Here's just a few ways these "experts" and "gurus" profit from you:

Referral Links - If they require you to click a specific link to signup for something, it means they are an affiliate. They get a commission from whatever the third party is that they are sending you to. I don't care if it's a brokerage, training program, hell even an Amazon link to a book - if they insist you have to click their super exclusive, can't-get-this-deal-any-other-way-but-clicking-my-link type bullshit, it's an affiliate link. There is nothing inherently wrong with affiliate programs, but you are literally generating money for some stranger because they convinced you to buy something. Some brokers such as ICMarkets have affiliate programs that payout a percentage of the commission you generate - this is a really clever system - whether you profit or blow your entire account, the person who referred you to the broker makes a profit off you. Clever eh?
Signal Services, Education & Training Programs, Courses - If somebody is telling you they are making a killing with a signal service and are trying to convince you to join it, I guarantee they are getting a piece of your monthly fee. And better still, these signal services often work...for about a week. Just long enough to suck a bunch of poor fools into it. You see people making money, you want in so you agree to pay the $200+/month subscription fee. You follow the signals and it looks like it's making money for a few days or weeks. Then it turns sideways, you start losing money hand over fist. Pretty soon you have lost most of your trading account because you blindly followed a signal service. And better still - when you go screaming at the person running the signal service they will be very quick to point you to their No Refunds policy. To add insult to injury, the buttfucker that referred you to the signal service in the past will likely listen to you getting mad, and then come back with something like "Sorry it didn't work out, but I just joined this other amazing service and it's working great, you should come join it to earn your money back. Here's my link..." You get the point here right?
Multi-Level Marketing (MLMs) - These people are scum. They are going to offer you training and education, signals, access to forex experts and gurus, and all kinds of other shit with the promise that you will live the dream and become financially free. They are also loading you into a pyrmaid scheme where you will be hounded to recruit other people and make money off them just like you got roped into it. A really prime example here is iMarkets Live (or IML for short). Don't touch this shit with a 10 foot pole. I don't care what they are claiming, you will lose everything using them.
Fund Managers - These people make my skin crawl. It's a classic scam and it works like this - somebody will post online about how much money they are making trading forex/commodities/stocks/whatever. Most of the time they won't explicitly post they are offering a trading service, rather they just put the message out there and wait for the ignorant masses (that's you) to contact them. They will charm you. They will lie to you. They will promise you the moon if you simply wire them some money or give them API access to your trading account. Care to guess what happens next? If you send a wire transfer (or Western Union...hell any kind of payment to them) they will vanish. Happens usually after they take a bunch of suckers for the ride. You sent them $2,000 and so do 9 other suckers. They just made $20,000 and are gone. With API access to your account, you will find your account gets blown super fast or worse - possibly leaving you open to persecution by the broker you are using.

These are just a few examples. The reality is that very few people make it big in forex or any kind of trading. If somebody is trying to sell you the dream, they are essentially a magician - making you look the other way while they snatch your wallet and clean you out.

Additionally, on the topic of fund managers - legitimate fund managers will be certified, licensed, and insured. Ask them for proof of those 3 things. What they typically look like are:

Certified - This varies from country to country, in the US it's FINRA (http://www.finra.org). They need to have their Series 7 certification minimum. You can make the case that other FINRA certifications are acceptable in lieu of Series 7, but the 7 is the gold standard.
Licensed - They need to have a valid business license issued by the government. It must clearly state they are an investment company, preferrably a hedge fund because they have some super strict requirements to operate (and often require $25,000+ in fees just to get their business license, so you know they at least have some skin in the game).
Insured - They need to be backed by an insurance company. I'm not talking general insurance for shit like their office burning down. I'm talking about a government-implemented protection insurance program - in the US I believe that is issued by the Securities Investment Protection Corporation (https://www.sipc.org/).

If you are talking to a fund manager and they are insisting they have all of these, get a copy of their verification documents and lookup their licenses on the directories of the issuers to verify they are valid. If they are, then at least you are talking to somebody who seems to have their shit together and is doing investment management and trading as a professional and you are at least partially protected when the shit hits the fan.

LESSON 3 - UNDERSTAND YOUR RISK

Many people jump into Forex, drop $2000 into a broker account and start trading 1 lot orders because they signed up with a broker thinking they will get rich because they were given 500:1 margin and can risk it all on each trade. Worst-case scenario you lose your account, best case scenario you become a millionaire very quickly. Seems like a pretty good gamble right? You are dead wrong.

As a new trader, you should never risk more than 1% of your account balance on a trade. If you have some experience and are confident and doing well, then it's perfectly natural to risk 2-3% of your account per trade. Anybody who risks more than 4-5% of their account on a single trade deserves to blow their account. At that point you aren't trading, you are gambling. Don't pretend you are a trader when really you are just putting everything on red and hoping the roulette ball lands in the right spot. It's stupid and reckless and going to screw you very quickly.

Let's do some math here:

You put $2,000 into your trading account.
Risking 1% means you are willing to lose $20 per trade. That means you are going to be trading micro lots, or 0.01 lots most likely ($0.10/pip). At that level you can have a trade stop loss at -200 pips and only lose $20. It's the best starting point for anybody. Additionally, if you SL 20 trades in a row you are only down $200 (or 10% of your account) which isn't that difficult to recover from.
Risking 3% means you are willing to lose $60 per trade. You could do mini lots at this point, which is 0.1 lots (or $1/pip). Let's say you SL on 20 trades in a row. You've just lost $1,200 or 60% of your account. Even veteran traders will go through periods of repeat SL'ing, you are not a special snowflake and are not immune to periods of major drawdown.
Risking 5% means you are willing to lose $100 per trade. SL 20 trades in a row, your account is blown. As Red Foreman would call it - Good job dumbass.

Never risk more than 1% of your account on any trade until you can show that you are either consistently breaking even or making a profit. By consistently, I mean 200 trades minimum. You do 200 trades over a period of time and either break-even or make a profit, then you should be alright to increase your risk.

Unfortunately, this is where many retail traders get greedy and blow it. They will do 10 trades and hit their profit target on 9 of them. They will start seeing huge piles of money in their future and get greedy. They will start taking more risk on their trades than their account can handle.

200 trades of break-even or profitable performance risking 1% per trade. Don't even think about increasing your risk tolerance until you do it. When you get to this point, increase you risk to 2%. Do 1,000 trades at this level and show break-even or profit. If you blow your account, go back down to 1% until you can figure out what the hell you did differently or wrong, fix your strategy, and try again.

Once you clear 1,000 trades at 2%, it's really up to you if you want to increase your risk. I don't recommend it. Even 2% is bordering on gambling to be honest.

LESSON 4 - THE 500 PIP DRAWDOWN RULE

This is a rule I created for myself and it's a great way to help protect your account from blowing.

Sometimes the market goes insane. Like really insane. Insane to the point that your broker can't keep up and they can't hold your orders to the SL and TP levels you specified. They will try, but during a flash crash like we had at the start of January 2019 the rules can sometimes go flying out the window on account of the trading servers being unable to keep up with all the shit that's hitting the fan.

Because of this I live by a rule I call the 500 Pip Drawdown Rule and it's really quite simple - Have enough funds in your account to cover a 500 pip drawdown on your largest open trade. I don't care if you set a SL of -50 pips. During a flash crash that shit sometimes just breaks.

So let's use an example - you open a 0.1 lot short order on USDCAD and set the SL to 50 pips (so you'd only lose $50 if you hit stoploss). An hour later Trump makes some absurd announcement which causes a massive fundamental event on the market. A flash crash happens and over the course of the next few minutes USDCAD spikes up 500 pips, your broker is struggling to keep shit under control and your order slips through the cracks. By the time your broker is able to clear the backlog of orders and activity, your order closes out at 500 pips in the red. You just lost $500 when you intended initially to only risk $50.

It gets kinda scary if you are dealing with whole lot orders. A single order with a 500 pip drawdown is $5,000 gone in an instant. That will decimate many trader accounts.

Remember my statements above about Forex being a cruel bitch of a mistress? I wasn't kidding.

Granted - the above scenario is very rare to actually happen. But glitches to happen from time to time. Broker servers go offline. Weird shit happens which sets off a fundamental shift. Lots of stuff can break your account very quickly if you aren't using proper risk management.

LESSON 5 - UNDERSTAND DIFFERENT TRADING METHODOLOGIES

Generally speaking, there are 3 trading methodologies that traders employ. It's important to figure out what method you intend to use before asking for help. Each has their pros and cons, and you can combine them in a somewhat hybrid methodology but that introduces challenges as well.

In a nutshell:

Price Action Trading (Sometimes called Naked Trading) is very effective at identifying when trends will start and finish. This gives you the advantage of staying ahead of the market and predicting when a change in trend direction will occur. It has the disadvantage of being really easy to screw it up if you don't plot your support and resistance lines properly and interpret the chart wrong. Because you can identify a change in trend direction, you'll generally make more profit on a new trend than a technical strategy will.
Technical Analytics (or TA) uses math and statistics to try and identify where the market is headed or confirm/reject whether a trend is happening. It has the advantage of being very math and stat driven which is hard to refute the numbers, but it has the disadvantage of being late to the party when it comes to identifying trends (hence why people call TA a lagging strategy). When people fail using TA, it's not because of the math - it's because you misinterpreted what the math is telling you.
Fundamental Analysis (or FA) uses news and macro scale events to predict what is going on. A really good example right now is Brexit, what a clusterfuck that is. Every time some major brexit news breaks it causes all sorts of choas in almost every currency pair. Fundamental trading has the highest potential profitability per trade but it also has the highest potential drawdown per trade.

Now you may be thinking that you want to be a a price action trader - you should still learn the principles and concepts behind TA and FA. Same if you are planning to be a technical trader - you should learn about price action and fundamental analysis. More knowledge is better, always.

With regards to technical analysis, you need to really understand what the different indicators are tell you. It's very easy to misinterpret what an indicator is telling you, which causes you to make a bad trade and lose money. It's also important to understand that every indicator can be tuned to your personal preferences.

You might find, for example, that using Bollinger Bands with the normal 20 period SMA close, 2 standard deviation is not effective for how you look at the chart, but changing that to say a 20 period EMA average price, 1 standard deviation bollinger band indicator could give you significantly more insight.

LESSON 6 - TIMEFRAMES MATTER

Understanding the differences in which timeframes you trade on will make or break your chosen strategy. Some strategies work really well on Daily timeframes (i.e. Ichimoku) but they fall flat on their face if you use them on 1H timeframes, for example.

There is no right or wrong answer on what timeframe is best to trade on. Generally speaking however, there are 2 things to consider:

Speed - If you are scalping (trading on the really fast candles like 1M, 5M, 15M, etc) odds are your trades are very short lived. Maybe 10 minutes to an hour tops. For the most part, scalping strategies will produce little profit per trade but make up for it in the sheer volume of trades. Whereas swing trading may only make a few trades but each one could be worth a significant amount of money.
Spread (the fee you pay to the broker when you trade) - If you are a scalper, the spread is your worst enemy because you have to overcome it very fast to make a profit on your order. Whereas swing trading the spread hardly impacts you at all.

If you are a total newbie to forex, I suggest you don't trade on anything shorter than the 1H timeframe when you are first learning. Trading on higher timeframes tends to be much more forgiving and profitable per trade. Scalping is a delicate art and requires finesse and can be very challenging when you are first starting out.

LESSON 7 - AUTOBOTS...ROLL OUT!

Yeah...I'm a geek and grew up with the Transformers franchise decades before Michael Bay came along. Deal with it.

Forex bots are called EA's (Expert Advisors). They can be wonderous and devastating at the same time. /Forex is not really the best place to get help with them. That is what /algotrading is useful for. However some of us that lurk on /Forex code EA's and will try to assist when we can.

Anybody can learn to code an EA. But just like how 95% of retail traders fail, I would estimate the same is true for forex bots. Either the strategy doesn't work, the code is buggy, or many other reasons can cause EA's to fail. Because EA's can often times run up hundreds of orders in a very quick period of time, it's critical that you test them repeatedly before letting them lose on a live trading account so they don't blow your account to pieces. You have been warned.

If you want to learn how to code an EA, I suggest you start with MQL. It's a programming language which can be directly interpretted by Meta Trader. The Meta Trader terminal client even gives you a built in IDE for coding EA's in MQL. The downside is it can be buggy and glitchy and caused many frustrating hours of work to figure out what is wrong.

If you don't want to learn MQL, you can code an EA up in just about any programming language. Python is really popular for forex bots for some reason. But that doesn't mean you couldn't do it in something like C++ or Java or hell even something more unusual like JQuery if you really wanted.

I'm not going to get into the finer details of how to code EA's, there are some amazing guides out there. Just be careful with them. They can be your best friend and at the same time also your worst enemy when it comes to forex.

One final note on EA's - don't buy them. Ever. Let me put this into perspective - I create an EA which is literally producing money for me automatically 24/5. If it really is a good EA which is profitable, there is no way in hell I'm selling it. I'm keeping it to myself to make a fortune off of. EA's that are for sale will not work, will blow your account, and the developer who coded it will tell you that's too darn bad but no refunds. Don't ever buy an EA from anybody.

LESSON 8 - BRING ON THE HATERS

You are going to find that this subreddit is frequented by trolls. Some of them will get really nasty. Some of them will threaten you. Some of them will just make you miserable. It's the price you pay for admission to the /Forex club.

If you can't handle it, then I suggest you don't post here. Find a more newbie-friendly site. It sucks, but it's reality.

We often refer to trolls on this subreddit as shitcunts. That's your word of the day. Learn it, love it. Shitcunts.

YOU MADE IT, WELCOME TO FOREX!

If you've made it through all of the above and aren't cringing or getting scared, then welcome aboard the forex train! You will fit in nicely here. Ask your questions and the non-shitcunts of our little corner of reddit will try to help you.

Assuming this post doesn't get nuked and I don't get banned for it, I'll add more lessons to this post over time. Lessons I intend to add in the future:

Demo Trading
Why you will blow your first account and what to do when it happens
Trading Psychology (this will be a beefy one and will take a while to put together)
Exotics vs Majors and which you should focus on as a newbie (aka how to blow your account in a single trade with exotics)
Which Broker Should You Use? (This is covered in pretty good detail on the FAQ already - https://www.reddit.com/Forex/wiki/index - so I may not bother)
Hedging (there isn't really a good guide written on this anywhere)
Doubling Your Risk to Save Your Ass or Lose a Shit Ton (aka Martingale & Anti-Martingale)
Risk On/Off
Forex Calendars
Currency Strength / Heat Maps
Swap
Margin Calls (What are they and why are you getting them?)

If there is something else you feel should be included please drop a comment and I'll add it to the above list of pending topics.

Cheers,

Bob

What are the commissions for trading in Forex?

New Beginner info / FAQ section for futures

I feel like with all the cheating and drama going on with spot fx we should at the very least have a dedicated section on the right for guidance on futures contracts.
The shady Cypriot brokers and ones on other random islands are lying and selling a dream so let's take a look at the reality of spot fx...
Currency markets are the most liquid and active markets of any sector. However, there is also a great deal of misinformation, slick advertising, and even outright deception regarding this $2 Trillion Dollar a Day marketplace. For starters, a large percentage of that $2 Trillion is traded through what is referred to as the interbank market. The interbank market is the top-level foreign exchange market where banks exchange different currencies. This trading between banks is not accessible to retail traders and is estimated to account for the vast majority of the Trillion Dollar liquidity factor that attracts so many retail traders in the first place.
Here are a few of the reasons to trade futures:
-Level playing field for all participants
-Deep liquidity on major currency contracts
-Safety and security of central clearing
If your Forex brokerage firm uses a dealing desk, your buy and sell orders never actually reach the true Forex market. In other words, you do not have access to the inter-bank market. Instead you are buying and selling at prices set, and potentially manipulated by the dealing desk. This is known as conflict of interest.
The Chicago Mercantile Exchange guarantees each transaction. Futures contracts are legally binding! This means that if you go long a currency futures contract and your speculation was correct, you will walk away from the trade with your profit even if the person that took the other side of the trade fails to pay. This is what we call counterparty risk.
Take a moment, have a break and take a look at all the horror stories on forex factory, for instance.
Whether you are a large institution or an individual trader, everyone is on equal footing when it comes to pricing currency futures. EVERYBODY gets the same price regardless of who you are (individual or mega bank). Best price wins, it is as simple as that — something that is not always the case in the fragmented OTC FX market. The spreads are also very tight if you trade liquid future contracts.
Spot fx brokers also control their price feeds. They can widen the spreads as they see fit and they can really screw you over if they want to. Believe me when I say that most fx brokers don't want you to win! Even the ones that claim to have liquidity providers... Those are nothing but price feeds. Quotes. Nothing more....
And Forex firms offering a "fixed" 3-5 point spread may not be charging traders commission outright, or even in a form that shows up on an account statement, but there are significant costs built into the synthetic market that they provide to you.
No middle man, no market maker. Yes, Forex is an electronic market, but your order still ends up on a "dealing desk" where a human handles your order. Or an algorithm... Basically, a Market Maker. He could make you or break you. With E-mini Futures you have a level playing field. You trade on a centralised and CFTC regulated exchange. Whether you're Goldman Sachs or Joe from Idaho, you get equal treatment!
If you're worried about Liquidity - 1.5-3m contracts trade hands everyday on the S&P 500 E-mini Futures Contract. If you want in or out of a position, there is almost always someone waiting and willing to take the other side of your trade (24/5) just 1 tick away. This simply isn't true for all Forex Pairs.
Low Cost of Doing Business - Commissions on a self directed SP500 E-mini Trade (ES) should be no more than $3.00 per side or $6.00 per round turn. While many Forex Brokers tout "Zero Commission", we all know there's no free lunch. Forex Brokers don't need to charge a commission because they make money off of the bid/ask spread "they create" and then take the other side of your trade. Run the numbers... for every $100 in profits or loss, you will spend a larger % in "cost of doing business" in the Forex Market than you will in the S&P E-mini Market. Don't take my word for it... go take some real trades and you'll quickly see the truth.
Zero Interest - If you you trade the ES intraday, expect to put up $500 per contract as a "bond" for lack of a better term. That's it. No hidden cost. Forex however, has a "cost of carry" associated which means interest may be charged or paid on positions taken.
Fiduciary Responsibility - Even regulated US Forex firms are not required to segregate customer funds. If a regulated firm goes under, you do not have the protection of the CFTC and the NFA as you do in the Futures Markets.
Turn ON The Volume Please - In Forex, since there is no centralised exchange, it is impossible to get a true read on volume. Not so with the S&P 500 "ES" E-mini. Simply turn on the volume indicator and you have exact numbers for Volume Analysis. GS and CITI have huge research departments with hundreds of employees, but they know nothing about volume that you don't know via a free indicator on your direct access trading platform. Just one more example of the level playing field we constantly speak of.
Centralised Clearing - All trades are cleared via the CME - Chicago Mercantile Exchange. All trades, including time and sales, are public information and posted in real time.
Edit: By the way, if you're worried about discrepancies, currency futures charts look almost exactly the same as their spot fx siblings! So you can easily apply your current strategy to this market, too!
A great example would be "M6E" vs "EUUSD"
SO GUYS, LET'S ACCEPT REALITY AND LET'S DO SOMETHING ABOUT IT. DO YOU AGREE?
Source: cfrn.net

Oanda's spreads are HUGE Part 2

The XTRD Megathread

What is XTRD?

XTRD is a technology company that are introducing a new infrastructure that would allow banks, hedge funds, and large institutional traders to easily access cryptocurrency markets.
XTRD is launching three separate products in sequential stages to solve the ongoing problems caused by having so many disparate markets. Firstly a unified FIX API followed by XTRD Dark Pools and finally the XTRD Single Point of Access or SPA.
Our goal is to build trading infrastructure in the cyptospace and become one of the first full service shops in the cryptocurrency markets for large traders and funds.

A single FIX API for trading across all connected exchanges
A robust GUI for manual cross execution on all crypto markets
A large liquidity pool, based on orders books from all connected exchanges
Best prices and best top of book execution net of fees
Low transaction fees
99.99999% reliability and uptime
Fast execution
Parent/child orders on multiple exchanges to minimize individual market impact
Advanced order types common in the equity and FX trading space
Establish XTRD as a premier market-making entity to mitigate spreads and increase liquidity in the cryptocurrency space
Derivative trading - XTRD plans to connect to LedgerX (US based, approved by the CFTC) for cryptocurrency options and swaps to offer unified hedging and derivate trading strategies
Robust, US based technical support
Reliable and familiar deployment methods for institutions:
- IPSec as a connectivity option across the Internet
- Cross connection options
- Collocation space or VPS (Virtual Private Servers) that clients can rent from XTRD
- UAT/Sandbox environment for testing

What are the industry issues?

COMPLEX WEB OF EXCHANGES. A combination of differing KYC policies, means of funding, interfaces and APIs results in a fragmented patchwork of liquidity for cryptocurrencies. Trading in an automated fashion with full awareness of best pricing and current liquidity necessitates the opening and use of accounts on multiple exchanges, coding to multiple API’s, following varying funding and withdrawal procedures. Once those hurdles are cleared, market participants must convert fiat currency to BTC or ETH and then forward the ETH on to an exchange that may not accept fiat, necessitating yet another transaction to convert back to fiat. Major concerns for market participants range from unmitigated slippage and counterparty risk to hacking prevention and liquidity.
HIGH FEES. Execution costs are even more of a factor. Typical exchange commissions are in the 0.1% – 0.25% range per transaction (10 to 25 basis points), but the effective fees are much higher when taking into bid and ask spreads maintained by the exchanges. As most exchanges are unregulated, there is generally no central authority or regulator to examine internal exchange orders that separate proprietary activity from customer activity and ensure fair pricing.
THIN LIQUIDITY. A large institutional order, representing a sizable percentage of daily volume can move the market for a product, and related products in an exchange by a factor of 5-10%. That means a single order to buy $1,000,000 worth of bitcoin can cost an extra $50,000-$100,000 per transaction given a lack of liquidity if not managed correctly and executed on only one exchange. By way of comparison, similar trades on FX exchanges barely move markets a fraction of a percent; those price changes cost traders money, and deter investment.

What are the XTRD solutions?

FIX API
An API is an “Application Programming Interface”, a set of rules that computer programs use to communicate. FIX stands for “Financial Information eXchange”, the API standard used by most financial organizations as the intermediary protocol to communicate amongst disparate systems such as market data, execution, trade reporting, and order entry for the past 25 years.XTRD is fixing the problem of having 100 different APIs for 100 exchanges by creating a single FIX based API for market data and execution – the same FIX API that all current financial institutions utilize.XTRD will leverage our data center presences in DC3 Chicago and NY4 New Jersey to host FIX trading clients and reduce their trading latencies to single milliseconds, a time acceleration of 100x when it comes to execution vs internet. More infrastructure and private worldwide internet lines will be added in 2018 and beyond to enable secure, low latency execution for all XTRD clients, FIX and PRO.
XTRD PRO
XTRD PRO is a professional trading platform that will fix the basic problems with trading across crypto exchanges – the need to open multiple web pages, having to click around multiple windows, only being able to use basic order types, and not seeing all your positions, trades, and market data in one place.XTRD PRO will be standalone, downloadable, robust end-to-end encrypted software that will consolidate all market data from exchanges visually into one order book, provide a consolidated position and order view across all your exchange accounts, and enable client side orders not available on exchanges – keyboard macro shortcuts, VWAP/TWAP, shaving the bid and offer, hit through 1% of the inside, reserve orders that bid 100 but show 1, SMART order routing to best exchange and intelligent order splicing across exchanges based on execution costs net of fees, OCO and OTO, many others.
XTRD SPA
XTRD SPA is the solution to bridge cross-exchange liquidity issues. XTRD is creating Joint Venture partnerships with trusted cryptocurrency exchanges to provide clients on those exchanges execution across other exchanges where they do not have accounts by leveraging XTRD’s liquidity pools.An order placed by a client at CEX.IO, XTRD’s first JV partner, can be executed by XTRD at a different exchange where there may be a better price or higher liquidity for a digital asset. Subsequently, XTRD will deliver the position to CEX.IO and then CEX.IO will deliver the execution to the client, with XTRD acting as just another market participant at the CEX.IO exchange.XTRD does not take custody of funds, we are a technology partner with exchanges. All local exchange rules, procedures, and AML/KYC policies apply.
XTRD DARK
Institutions and large market participants who have large orders of 100 BTC or more generally must execute across multiple markets, increasing their counterparty risk, paying enormous commissions and spreads, and generally having to deal with the vagaries of the crypto space. Alternatives are OTC brokers that charge multiple percents or private peer-to-peer swaps which are difficult to effectuate unless one is deeply in the space.XTRD is launching XTRD DARK – a dark liquidity pool to trade crypto vs fiat that matches buyers and sellers of large orders, discreetly and anonymously, at a much lower cost. Liquidity is not displayed so large orders do not move thin markets as they would publicly. The liquidity will come from direct XTRD DARK participants as well as aggregation of retail order flow into block orders, XTRD’s own liquidity pools, connections with decentralized exchanges to effectuate liquidity swaps, and OTC broker order flow.XTRD is partnering with a fiat banking providebroker dealer to onboard all XTRD DARK participants for the fiat currency custody side with full KYC/AML procedures.

XTRD Tokenomics

TOKEN USAGE. XTRD will generate the XTRD utility tokens via smart contact during the Token Generation Event (TGE) in Q1 of 2018. The XTRD utility token will be utilized on the XTRD network by market participants to pay for execution, VPS, market data, software licensing, and other fees. Market participants will be able to purchase XTRD tokens directly from XTRD’s liquidity pool. The TGE will be preceded by a private institutional sale and a SAFT (Simple Agreement for Future Token) Platform based presale. The XTRD token will be fully ERC20 compliant to ensure that it functions properly on the Ethereum blockchain, similarly to other ERC20 tokens.
XTRD TOKEN LIQUIDITY AGGREGATION. The XTRD token will be used to create liquidity in the overall cryptocurrency market. Along with the utility of the XTRD token to pay for fees on the XTRD platform of products, most of the XTRD token revenue will be used to increase the inventory of other cryptocurrencies that are in demand by our customers. This will create points of liquidity for our customers to access across the worldwide crypto exchange ecosystem. These liquidity points will be created using XTRD tokens that are paid back into the system for fees. 70% of funds raised in the token sale will be used for liquidity aggregation.
XTRD STAKING. Discounts of 25% on XTRD services (execution, colocation, market data, software licensing) will be available for token holders in general and discounts of 40% on XTRD services will be available for token holders who maintain an average monthly stake of at least 50,000 XTRD tokens. Fiat will be accepted at no discount to par. Execution fees will generally be set as a percentage of the gross trade amount, based on a combination of factors such as liquidity, the pair being traded, market conditions at the time of the trade, and so on. All charges will be marked to market and remain constant, no matter the value of the XTRD token (a $10 charge will be 2 XTRD if $5 each or 0.5 XTRD if $20 each).
TOKEN LEGAL CONSIDERATIONS. XTRD tokens are ERC20 compliant utility tokens functioning on the Ethereum blockchain. The value of XTRD is derived purely from serving as a medium of payment for services by market participants in the XTRD trading ecosystem. XTRD tokens confer no voting rights, profit participation, equity, ownership of intellectual property, revenue sharing, rights to dividends, transfer of ownership upon company sale, control of company assets, or any decision-making ability regarding XTRD or its’ operations. XTRD tokens are not designed for speculation. In summary, XTRD tokens are not securities. XTRD Digital Assets, Inc has obtained a qualified legal opinion concurring that XTRD tokens are not to be considered “securities” under applicable U.S. securities laws given their failure to meet all prongs of the Howey Test.

Who is XTRD intended for?

XTRD is mainly aimed at major institutions, hedge funds, algorithmic traders who are currently unable to enter the crypto markets.
These firms include companies such as Divisa Capital run by XTRD Advisor Mushegh Tovmasyan.

XTRD Weekly Updates

Upcoming Events

Futurist Conference - August 14-16th Toronto
Blockchain Shift - October 11-12th Miami
The Trading Show New York - September 26th

AMA's

Further AMA's will be coming soon!

XTRD In The Media

Bloomberg Markets Bitcoin Growing Pains. Bloomberg
XTRD Brings Wall St Trading Infrastructure To Crypto Markets - Fintech News
Bad Crypto Meets Alex Kravets - Podcast Interview
Alex Kravets On Modernizing Crypto Exchanges - Podcast Interview
How Exchanges Work On Wall Street And How They Will Work In Crypto Markets. - Crypto 101 Podcast
Ethereum Outperforms Bitcoin - Article Feature
Crypto Markets Are Broken - CoinTelegraph Alex Guest Writer
Wall Street Comes To Crypto - CryptoCoinNews Article / Interview
Cryptocurrency Businesses Real Value - Business News Daily
Cryptocurrency Market Psychology - CBS News
Bitcoin Slides Again - Expert Option - Reuters

Resources

More information will be added to this thread as the project develops.
We are currently looking for key community members to assist in building out this thread.
If you are interested please email [[email protected]](mailto:[email protected])

My experience with Norbit's Gambit [google sheets link included]

Just want to share my experience doing Norbit's Gambit, for anyone that may want to learn on my experience, or tell me all the ways in which I am wrong.
I've posted a question earlier, asking how to make sure the market didn't swing in the wrong direction. And yes, I understand it's called a "gambit" for a reason.
=== TL;DR === - Wanted to save $65 on currency conversion while buying CAD $3,500 worth of US stock - Overestimated forex fee, underestimated NG cost - Murphy happened... - Lost potential gains of CAD $185.80 while waiting - Is the gambit ever worth it?
=== The goal === - On August 25th, use about CAD $3,500 to buy some US Netflix (NFLX) shares
=== The method === - Buy DLR in CAD - Call brokerage to journal over to US side - Sell DLR.U in USD - Buy NFLX with USD
In a lot of my research, I've been told the "fee" when going through the brokerage (Questrade in my case) is 2%. That's not too accurate.
=== The brokerage Forex rate/fee === So I assumed 2% of $3,500 would be $70.
However it's really an addition of 199 basis points to the exchange rate. I believe they use the closing exchange rate on the date of the transaction.
So if the exchange was 1.2500, it's 1.2699, and $CAD 1000 nets $USD 787.46 ($USD 12.54 short of ideal $USD 800). If we convert 12.54 to CAD, it's $CAD 15.68 or 1.568% on the original $CAD 1000.
But if the exchange is 1.2200, it's 1.2399, and $CAD 1000 nets $USD 806.51 ($USD 13.16 short of ideal $USD 819.67). If we convert 13.16 to CAD, it's $CAD 16.06 of 1.606% of the original $CAD 1000
The "conversion fee" is dependent on the exchange rate, but I can't figure out a quick direct way to calculate what the "fee" would be in source currency %. The closest guesstimate is to divide the basis points by the current exchange rate, as below:

In first example, 0.0199 / 1.25 = 0.0159 or 1.59%
In second example, 0.0199 / 1.22 = 0.0163 or 1.63%

On August 25th, the exchange rate was 1.2483. So the above guesstimate for the Forex "fee" would be $55.80. Or more accurately $54.91, close enough. Still, that's 21.5% lower than the broad *$70** estimate earlier.*
=== The NG effective fee === Here once again, the common consensus is that the NG's fee is just a cost of buying and selling an ETF. So, with QT's free ETF purchases, the guesstimate is just about $5 for the selling commission.
When I bought DLR ETF on August 25th, I got it for CAD $12.42 per share (that's not the day's close price, but what I actually paid). the US side of DLR.U is always US $9.93. The gives the DLR Exchange Rate of 1.2508... already different from the ideal 1.2483 (I suppose that's how the ETF makes money)

CAD $3,502.44 buys 282 whole shares of DLR (I will address the extra $2.44 later)
No buying comm, but ECN of CAD $0.0035 * 282 = $0.99
Selling comm and ECN: US $0.99 + $4.95 = $5.94

So, it would appear the cost/fee of NG is just CAD $0.99 + US $5.94 (CAD $8.40)... but not quite. Let's look as the actual US dollar amounts. Since we can only buy whole shares of DLR + ECN fee, from this point I am converting CAD $3,502.44 + $0.99 = $3,503.43

Ideally, with exchange of 1.2483, CAD $3,503.43 nets US $2,806.56
I paid CAD $3,503.43 to buy 282 DLR shares
I sold DLR @9.93 for US $2,800.26
Less US $5.94 comm+ENC leaves me with actual cash of US $2,794.32

The difference between the ideal US $amount and what I am left with is the "fee" for doing NG. US $12.24, or CAD $15.28. This sets the NG's Effective Exchange Rate as 1.2538 or a "NG's fee" of 0.44%. Please note that this rate/fee is *based on the converted amount*: the more you convert, the less/cheaper it is.
So comparing the actual cost of NG vs QT's auto conversion and the guesstimates is quite different - Actual $15.28 vs $54.91 ($39.63 spread) - Guesstimate $5 vs $70 ($65 spread)
=== The Time factor === Now that I have US $2,794.32, let's buy some NFLX. The date now is Sept 5th (yes, the NG completed earlier, but I am human... also QT didn't call me when the journaling was completed so I got sidetracked).
Before doing the NG, I calculated that NFLX dropped about 2.02% in 10 days. It could also go up by same amount. That 2.02% rise on CAD $3,500 value would be a gain of $70.7... comparable to $65 guesstimate loss of doing currency auto-conversion through QT (QTAC). So in my analysis, at worth case it would be a wash, in best case I save some money on NG. ... We already know now that the actual cost of QTAC is much less ....

On September 5th, NFLX traded (at time of my purchase) at $178.79
That's a 6.74% increase of August 25th's price of $167.50 (at the time of me recording the price)
US $2,794.32 buys 15 whole shares for $2,681.85 + $4.95 Comm = US $2,686.80 spent. [Weirdly enough I had no US ECN fees in spite of doing odd lot market orders]
This leaves US $107.52 in cash
Total US Portfolio value (cash + NFLX value) $107.52 + $2,681.85 = $2,789.37

This was the end result of my NG: spent CAD $3,503.43 and 11 days later I have a US stock+cash Portfolio of value US $2,789.37
But considering the increase in NFLX stock over those 11 days, what if I would have just went with Questrade's Auto-conversion (QTAC) route?

QTAC exchange rate on August 25th, 1.2483 + 0.0199 = 1.2682
CAD $3,503.43 will net US $2,762.52
That would buy 16 whole NFLX shares @167.50 for US $2,680 + $4.95 comm
Total spent US $2,684.95 and left with $77.57 cash
Cash + NFLX Portfolio value US $2,757.57

In 11 days, the value of NFLX is @178.79 - Current value of 16 NFLX shares = US $2,860.64 - Plus cash US $77.57 for a Total Portfolio Value of US $2,938.21
If, on August 25th, I would have auto converted currency with QT and bought NFLX, I would have a portfolio value of US $2,938.21 on September 5th.
Instead, starting the Norbit's Gambit on August 25th, I bought NFLX on Sept 5th and have a portfolio value of US $2,789.37
Instead of saving a guesstimate of CAD $65, I have lost potential gains of US $148.84 or CAD $185.80
=== Murphy... or Loonie... whatever === In all of above, I tried to keep the currency fluctuations isolated. So apart from initial conversion on August 25th, all my future (September 5th) portfolio values were in USD. But as Murphy would have it, the BoC rate announcement made the loonie stronger in between my NG.

On September 5th, the ideal exchange rate jumped to 1.2235
DLDLR.U had a somewhat delayed reaction, and was almost same at 1.2236

Based on above, doing QT auto-conversion - On August 25th, nets US $2,762.52 - On September 5th, nets US $2,817.62 I would have got US $55.10 more just by doing the QTAC later.
If I would have bought NFLX on September 5th after doing QTAC - 15 whole shares @178.79 + $4.95 comm leaves me with US $130.82 in cash - Total NFLX + Cash portfolio value of US $2,812.67
That's still US $23.30 more than doing the NG, although still less than just buying NFLX outright on August 25th and letting it grow.
=== Final conclusion === Smaller amount (CAD $3,500) for NG for a stock purchase that could/did swing 6% was not worth it. Loonie getting stronger also made the whole exercise fruitless, but even eliminating the currency fluctuation, the growth of the stock outperformed the savings of NG.
Playing with my numbers, assuming the currency fluctuation is fixed, for CAD $3,500, doing Norbit's Gambit vs Questrade's Auto-Conversion is breaking even when the stock appreciation is no more than 1.18% during the time it takes to complete NG (11 days in my case). Even if you are more punctual and can complete it in 5 days, you still need to make sure the stock doesn't appreciate more than 1.18% in 5 days.
By comparison, if converting CAD $10,000, it's break even if stock rises 1.27% during that time. When doing CAD $50,000 then 1.31%
Hmm.... so even at high amounts of CAD $50,000 the tolerance to stock fluctuation is pretty low. So is it worth it?
Ultimately I've:

Overestimated the Forex fee
Underestimated how much NFLX could swing
Got distracted to do it in more timely manner
Also ... loonie...

For anyone that cares, here is public Google Sheets docs to verify my math (File -> Make a copy, in order to edit values) https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/12nH8Q_0cKFtFTW_yomASHtpLXN6oYuTgkXeTNAMkQGY/edit?usp=sharing

Will Robinhood be getting into forex?

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Are ECN Brokers Better Than Other Alternatives?

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