Trading with Saxobank A/S

1. SAXO WEBTRADER - A browser based, no download needed application that allows you to trade the standard Forex currencies, with mobile access.
2. SAXO MINITRADER - A downloadable version for accounts of 2,000 US Dollars and more, enabling Forex and Indices trading.
3. SAXOTRADER 2 - The full software version engulfing all personal services for private accounts of over 10,000 US Dollars.

Essentially, Saxo Trader is a good all round platform offering many products to trade, but as with all brokers, they are after your money if they can get it. They offer trade ideas and say they have no slippage on stop buy/sells, but that is simply not true. They are more often wrong than right and slippage can be as much as 30 pips on EUR/USD!! Having asked a Saxo Bank trader (through their 24 hours chat line) for his view on spot gold over the next two days they said bullish but with no reasons to reassure you. I asked the same question 20 minutes later and the response was bearish. When I asked why the sudden change, the told me that that is what the 15 minute graph is showing . Their platform is quite complex (this in the positive sense of term) but canceling orders in a fast market can be a nightmare. I rang to close an order when I was away from the system and it took exactly 7 minutes from when they answered the phone to close the position. This turned a winning trade into a loosing one. If you are already loosing the order takes 10 seconds to close!

They say: "In quiet market conditions, the spread may be even narrower but in periods of volatile markets, the spread may be increased and auto execution disabled". So, it's not the best broker on the planet, but I think they are - at least - honest. The customer service was also good for me. Saxo Bank offers a wide range of tools in the home page of the site, some of which include: technical analysis, free streaming news (including Dow Jones Newswire, AFX and MNI), prices and charts, demos, spreads and conditions etc. The good thing about all these tools is that most of them can be integrated with your pda device or mobile phone by SMS (WAP) or directly by phone alert.

I asked my Saxo Bank account manager about their policy towards scalping and he told me that scalping is allowed at Saxo bank however sniping is not. He defined sniping as using a software to perform very fast trades targeting few pips per trade. He said that using a software for sniping eliminates risk since the software know exactly the market direction. He added that Saxo bank have a powerful set of systems that can easily catch a sniper and prevent him from trading.

And your first 300.000 Danish Crowns (about 40.000 Euro) is safe, in the unlikely event that Saxo Bank faces financial difficulties. An insurance guarantee fund for all Danish banks covers all clients regardless of Nationality and Residence. Note that currently, SaxoBank can only offer Forex and Forex-related products (Options, Forwards, and Spot Gold and Silver) to US residents. Saxo has also recently acquired FSA approval and opened a UK Branch (http://www.saxobank.co.uk) which is however mainly targeted to institutional investors.

So Good luck w/ Saxo. If they seem like FXCM after a while, like O...A did for me, try manual entries and exits. It has helped me tremendously. But, I have to watch the screen more often doing it all manually. It's a give and take.

Has anyone else had experience of SaxoBank Trader? If so, I'd like to hear from you about your experience with SaxoBank, please write to us by filling the form below.

Comments	Date
By mark	2007-03-27 11:30:52
Whats saxobank like just for trading normal shares, had no wrenching on my small profits so far, but are they likely to wrench when I make a nice big profit, or are these problems just confined to FX and CFDs any advice appreciated
By Dan	2006-11-29 07:50:21
Hi Andy, I'm sending you my experience with SaxoBank so that other readers are warned before entering the pot so as to say... Here's what occurred: I and my partners carefully read the Saxo customer trading agreement and tested the Saxo platform before opening a FX trading account. We identified areas of concern and were told in reply both by our Saxo sales rep and the account manager later assigned to us that the problems that concerned us would not materialize. In particular, we asked for assurance, and received it, that Saxo would not price discriminate against our positions and orders. The customer trading agreement -- in very fine print mind you -- allows Saxo to price currency pairs differently for different customers. That's a free pass for manipulation against the customer, and we knew that going in. However, to repeat, Saxo assured us that it never actually price discriminated against individual customer positions and orders and that the prices streamed to the Saxo Trader (the platform) were the same for all customers and would be reliable for trading. None of these promises and assurances were honored. When our profitable limit orders were breached by prices streamed to the platform, Saxo intervened against the orders and refused to honor them. It replied that the breaching prices were mistakes ("misquotes"), yet it never corrected its own charts to correct the so-called misquotes. It hardly could if it was stopping out at those prices other customers in positions opposite our side of the currency pair. In short, it collected from the losers (the stop losses) and welshed on the winners (our limit orders). And, by the way, our own stop orders always were filled instantly, which is to be expected since Saxo, as the house, profited from every stop. We opened a six-figure USD forex trading account with Saxo Bank after demo-trading the Saxo Trader for more than one year. After a successful first week of real-money trades, Saxo cheated us out of more than 12k USD by manipulating prices against our orders and refusing to fill profitable limit orders. The latter occurred three times, in each case after the limit price of the order was breached with room to spare. Saxo called the breaching prices “misquotes.” No misquotes on the demo ever. No misquote ever when a price hit one of our stops. Our stops were always filled instantly. Here's an illustration possibly useful to novices: - Man in a casino plunks down three black chips ($300, the size, say, of a fx mini-account) at a blackjack table. The hand is dealt: he gets nineteen. - Dealer has a ten showing and turns his hole card, an eight, for total of eighteen. Man smiles. - "Mis-card," dealer says as he fans the deck, pulls out a ten, and lays it squarely on top of the eight. "20" dealer says as he sweeps in the three black chips. The above is one trick in the bag of tricks facing customers of spot fx dealers. It’s the chief trick Saxo used against us. Now, knowing those are the rules that operate, why would anyone open an account with a spot fx dealer? Also bear in mind that SaxoBank's so-called Danish regulator (Finanstilsynet, the Danish Financial Services Authority) will not provide Saxo customers with any information on Saxo. When we were burned, we contacted the regulator, informed it that were Saxo customers, and were told by it in reply that it could not disclose anything about Saxo. Nor do Danish banking laws apply to SaxoBank's forex dealing. Thus, like us, you will be without any protection at all when (not if) you are cheated.

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