Forex Trading, Choice of Brokers and Study Buddies?

I am venturing into the world of forex trading, with prior experiences as a proprietary equity trader in New York and currently work in hedge fund industry, but not in investment role and none of our funds focus on currency, hence time to learn something new.

1. I am looking into choice of forex brokers and am open to suggestions.

Currently, I am looking at Rakuten Securities (formerly FXCM Asia) and Interactive Brokers. From cost perspective, Rakuten is cheaper on cost (USD 0.8 to USD 1.2 per round turn) in comparison to Interactive Brokers (USD 2 per order for monthly trading volume less than USD 1 billion). Downside is that Rakuten has no API.

Does anyone have experience with Rakuten Securities or FXCMAsia that you can share? i.e., how is their service, interface's ease of use, any issues with withdrawing money, how helpful are their resources, i.e., DailyFX Plus and any specific things that jumps out at you.

2. And because it is more fun to learn together, so I am open to have a Forex study buddy or to set up a study group.

Most of the communication will be via WeChat or Whatsapp, just sharing market news, comments and helpful educational resources. We can meet once a month or at an agreeable frequency.

I plan to commit rest of 2016 to just paper trading, so it will be a good opportunity to learn and share together.

Anyone interested to buddy up or to form a small study group (no more than 5 ppl), drop me a line.

Thanks!

K

Hi Keallach,

I would be interested in this venture. I work for a US bank in software development. I was looking for some broker who can provide the API and data, and then I can wrote some strategies/models. I am completely new to this area, and looking for lot to learn. Happy to learn with you.

Thanks