ECN vs dealing desk: understanding what you're trading through
A lot of the brokers you'll come across fall into two execution models: those that take the other side of your trade and those that pass it through. This isn't just terminology. A dealing desk broker is essentially your counterparty. An ECN broker routes your order directly to banks and institutional LPs — you get fills from real market depth.
For most retail traders, the difference shows up in a few ways: how tight and stable your spreads are, fill speed, and requotes. A proper ECN broker generally give you tighter spreads but add a commission per lot. Dealing desk brokers widen the spread instead. There's no universally better option — it hinges on how you trade.
If you scalp or trade high frequency, a proper ECN broker is typically the better fit. The raw pricing compensates for the commission cost on most pairs.
Why execution speed is more than a marketing number
Brokers love quoting fill times. Numbers like "lightning-fast execution" sound impressive, but how much does it matter in practice? It depends entirely on what you're doing.
For someone making two or three swing trades a week, shaving off a few milliseconds doesn't matter. For high-frequency strategies working small price moves, slow fills translates to worse fill prices. If your broker fills at under 40ms with no requotes provides noticeably better entries versus slower execution environments.
Certain platforms put real money into proprietary execution technology that eliminates dealing desk intervention. Titan FX, for example, built their Zero Point technology that routes orders directly to LPs without dealing desk intervention — their published average is under 37 milliseconds. You can read a detailed breakdown in this Titan FX review.
Raw spread accounts vs standard: doing the maths
This is something nearly every trader asks when picking a broker account: is it better to have the raw spread with commission or zero commission but wider spreads? It varies based on how much you trade.
Take a typical example. A standard account might show EUR/USD at 1.0-1.5 pips. A commission-based account gives you 0.1-0.3 pips but charges around $3.50-4.00 per standard lot round trip. With the wider spread, the cost is baked into the markup. Once you're trading 3-4+ lots per month, the raw spread account saves you money mathematically.
Most brokers offer both side by side so you can pick what suits your volume. The key is to calculate based on your actual trading volume rather than going off marketing scenarios — those often favour the higher-margin product.
High leverage in 2026: what the debate gets wrong
Leverage divides forex traders more than almost anything else. Regulators have capped leverage to relatively low ratios for retail accounts. Brokers regulated outside tier-1 jurisdictions can still offer 500:1 or higher.
The usual case against 500:1 is that retail traders can't handle it. Fair enough — the numbers support this, traders using maximum leverage lose money. But the argument misses nuance: professional retail traders don't use the maximum ratio. They use the option of more leverage to lower the capital tied up in each position — leaving more margin for additional positions.
Obviously it carries risk. No argument there. The leverage itself isn't the issue — how you size your positions is. When a strategy requires reduced margin commitment, access to 500:1 frees up margin for other positions — and that's how most experienced traders actually use it.
Offshore regulation: what traders actually need to understand
The regulatory landscape in forex operates across tiers. At the top is FCA (UK) and ASIC (Australia). Leverage is capped at 30:1, require negative balance protection, and limit how aggressively brokers can operate. Further down you've got places like Vanuatu (VFSC) and Mauritius FSA. Lighter rules, but which translates to higher leverage and fewer restrictions.
The trade-off is not subtle: offshore brokers means higher leverage, lower trading limitations, and often more competitive pricing. But, you get less safety net if something goes wrong. There's no regulatory bailout equivalent to FSCS.
Traders who accept this consciously and prefer performance over protection, offshore brokers can make sense. What matters is doing your due diligence rather than only reading the licence number. An offshore broker with a decade of operating history under an offshore licence can be more reliable in practice than a brand-new FCA-regulated startup.
What scalpers should look for in a broker
For scalping strategies is where broker choice has the biggest impact. When you're trading tiny price movements and keeping for less than a few minutes at a time. In that environment, even small differences in execution speed translate directly to profit or loss.
What to look for isn't long: true ECN spreads at actual market rates, execution under 50 milliseconds, guaranteed no requotes, and no restrictions here are the findings on holding times under one minute. Some brokers say they support scalping but add latency to orders if you trade too frequently. Look at the execution policy before committing capital.
ECN brokers that chase this type of trader tend to make it obvious. They'll publish execution speed data somewhere prominent, and usually throw in VPS access for running bots 24/5. If the broker you're looking at doesn't mention execution specifications anywhere on their site, that's probably not a good sign for scalpers.
Social trading in forex: practical expectations
The idea of copying other traders took off over the past decade. The pitch is obvious: pick someone with a good track record, copy their trades without doing your own analysis, and profit alongside them. In reality is more complicated than the marketing suggest.
The biggest issue is time lag. When the trader you're copying opens a position, your mirrored order fills milliseconds to seconds later — and in fast markets, that lag can turn a profitable trade into a losing one. The smaller the average trade size in pips, the worse this problem becomes.
Despite this, a few copy trading setups deliver value for people who don't want to develop their own strategies. Look for platforms that show audited performance history over no less than 12 months, not just simulated results. Risk-adjusted metrics tell you more than headline profit percentages.
Some brokers offer their own social trading alongside their standard execution. This can minimise latency issues compared to external copy trading providers that bolt onto the trading platform. Look at whether the social trading is native before expecting the results will carry over in your experience.