FXCM Do Take Orders – Without Stops!

I telephoned FXCM again about my latest problem with an expert advisor that was unable to place any orders. I eventually managed to speak to a very helpful lady with an American accent who is a MetaTrader specialist in their sales department. She'd obviously been asked this question before, and here is my understanding of her explanation.

• Although FXCM Ltd. have a UK office and are FSA regulated their servers are in the United States.
• The software on those servers is in the process of being revised to comply with the NFA's new hedging regulations.
• In order to comply with the first-in first-out aspect of the new NFA rules FXCM's MetaTrader platform currently rejects orders that include non-zero stop-loss or take-profit levels.
• To get around this you need to place an initial order with no stop or limit, then as soon as possible thereafter modify that order with your desired stop-loss and profit target.

Apparently to assist their customers in these difficult times FXCM are prepared to reprogram EAs free of charge. I pointed out that might be difficult in practice, if you didn't have the source, or if you didn't want your broker to know how your robot worked. The nice lady said just send us the piece of code that places the orders, and we'll send you back a version that works. I thanked her for her generous offer, but pointed out that here at the Trading Gurus we are perfectly capable of fixing our own robots.