Comparison of Broker Spread, Stop and Freeze Level
I decided that it was important to compare my current broker to at least two other brokers. A demo account was setup and then the Spread, Stop and Freeze Level were recorded over roughly 1 day. The following 2 Graphs show the results:
The positive aspects of the second broker that I looked at, are that it has a zero commission and a spread that was largely below 0.0002, which is better than my current broker. However, the spread is very spikey and jumps considerably near news events and there is a huge increase near the overnight trading hours of roughly 22:00 GMT. It also has a StopLevel of 10 points, unlike my original broker, which may make risk management more difficult, especially if the Broker changes this level. I would say that this broker is really worth considering as it has some positive aspects and some negative.
The positive aspects of the third broker that I looked at, are that it has a zero commission and a spread that was largely below 0.00025, which is slightly better than my current broker. The spread is also less spikey than Broker 2. However, the increase near the overnight trading hours of roughly 22:00 GMT is larger than my current Broker. It also has a huge StopLevel of 50 points, unlike my original broker. The large StopLevel makes me very concerned and I doubt that I would use this Broker.