ECN execution explained without the marketing spin
The majority of forex brokers fall into two broad camps: market makers or ECN brokers. This isn't just terminology. A dealing desk broker becomes the other side of your trade. A true ECN setup routes your order through to banks and institutional LPs — you're trading against actual buy and sell interest.
For most retail traders, the difference becomes clear in how your trades get filled: spread consistency, how fast your orders go through, and order rejection rates. A proper ECN broker will typically offer raw spreads from 0.0 pips but apply a commission per lot. Dealing desk brokers pad the spread instead. There's no universally better option — it hinges on what you need.
If your strategy depends on tight entries and fast fills, ECN is almost always the right choice. Getting true market spreads more than offsets the per-lot fee on most pairs.
Execution speed: what 37 milliseconds actually means for your trades
You'll see brokers advertise fill times. Numbers like "lightning-fast execution" make for nice headlines, but what does it actually mean when you're actually placing trades? More than you'd think.
A trader who placing a handful of trades per month, the gap between 40ms and 80ms execution is irrelevant. But for scalpers targeting small price moves, every millisecond of delay translates to money left on the table. A broker averaging in the 30-40ms range with zero requotes offers measurably better fills versus slower execution environments.
Some brokers put real money into proprietary execution technology that eliminates dealing desk intervention. One example is Titan FX's Zero Point technology designed to route orders immediately to LPs without dealing desk intervention — their published average is under 37 milliseconds. You can read a detailed breakdown in this Titan FX broker review.
Raw spread accounts vs standard: doing the maths
This is a question that comes up constantly when setting up their trading account: is it better to have commission plus tight spreads or markup spreads with no fee per lot? The answer varies based on how much you trade.
Take a typical example. A standard account might have EUR/USD at 1.1-1.3 pips. A raw spread account offers 0.1-0.3 pips but charges a commission of about $7 per lot traded both ways. On the spread-only option, look here the broker takes their cut via every trade. If you're doing moderate volume, the commission model is almost always cheaper.
A lot of platforms offer both account types so you can compare directly. Make sure you do the maths with your own numbers rather than trusting marketing scenarios — those usually make the case for whichever account the broker wants to push.
High leverage in 2026: what the debate gets wrong
The leverage conversation divides forex traders more than most other subjects. The major regulatory bodies restrict leverage to 30:1 in most jurisdictions. Brokers regulated outside tier-1 jurisdictions still provide up to 500:1.
The usual case against 500:1 is simple: retail traders can't handle it. Fair enough — the numbers support this, the majority of retail accounts lose money. The counterpoint is a key point: professional retail traders don't use the maximum ratio. They use the option of more leverage to lower the capital locked up in any single trade — freeing up funds for additional positions.
Yes, 500:1 can blow an account. That part is true. But blaming the leverage is like blaming the car for a speeding ticket. If what you trade benefits from reduced margin commitment, having 500:1 available lets you deploy capital more efficiently — most experienced traders use it that way.
Offshore regulation: what traders actually need to understand
The regulatory landscape in forex exists on a spectrum. Tier-1 is regulators like the FCA and ASIC. Leverage is capped at 30:1, mandate investor compensation schemes, and generally restrict how aggressively brokers can operate. Further down you've got the VFSC in Vanuatu and Mauritius FSA. Lighter rules, but the flip side is more flexibility in what they can offer.
What you're exchanging real and worth understanding: tier-3 regulation offers 500:1 leverage, lower account restrictions, and often lower fees. The flip side is, you sacrifice some safety net if the broker fails. No regulatory bailout equivalent to FSCS.
For traders who understand this trade-off and pick performance over protection, offshore brokers can make sense. The important thing is checking the broker's track record rather than just reading the licence number. A broker with 10+ years of clean operation under VFSC oversight can be more reliable in practice than a freshly regulated FCA-regulated startup.
What scalpers should look for in a broker
For scalping strategies is one area where broker choice matters most. Targeting 1-5 pip moves and staying in for less than a few minutes at a time. In that environment, even small differences in execution speed equal the difference between a winning and losing month.
What to look for is short: true ECN spreads with no markup, execution in the sub-50ms range, a no-requote policy, and explicit permission for scalping and high-frequency trading. Some brokers say they support scalping but throttle orders if you trade too frequently. Check the fine print before funding your account.
ECN brokers that chase this type of trader will say so loudly. You'll see execution speed data somewhere prominent, and often offer VPS hosting for running bots 24/5. If the broker you're looking at doesn't mention fill times anywhere on their marketing, that tells you something.
Following other traders — the reality of copy trading platforms
The idea of copying other traders has grown over the past several years. The appeal is straightforward: identify profitable traders, replicate their positions in your own account, and profit alongside them. How it actually works is less straightforward than the advertisements make it sound.
What most people miss is the gap between signal and fill. When the trader you're copying opens a position, your mirrored order goes through milliseconds to seconds later — during volatile conditions, the delay might change a profitable trade into a worse entry. The more narrow the strategy's edge, the more the impact of delay.
That said, certain social trading platforms work well enough for traders who don't want to develop their own strategies. What works is transparency around verified track records over at least a year, not just simulated results. Metrics like Sharpe ratio and maximum drawdown tell you more than headline profit percentages.
A few platforms have built in-house social platforms integrated with their standard execution. This tends to reduce the delay problem compared to third-party copy services that sit on top of MT4 or MT5. Check how the copy system integrates before expecting historical returns can be replicated in your experience.