Dukascopy's history- Dukascopy has had my respect ever since I learned about their unique, state of the art platform they launched in 1999. So when they approached my firm and asked us to IB for them it was an easy decision. Dukascopy were founded by a group of nuclear physicists who developed this platform and made prime brokerage available to the common man. These days Dukascopy pumps $80 billion a day in volume through their platform and have well over $500 million in customer assets entrusted with them. To put that in perspective, Dukascopy does as much business in one day as FXCM does in a month. Obviously, Dukascopy would not be doing this much volume if they were not meeting their client's needs. Dukascopy has the money and good standing in Switzerland to become a bank by year end and plan on doing so to meet the new regulations.

Dukascopy's technology- Dukascopy's technology plugs in feeds from Lava FX, Currenex, Hot Spot FXi and also individual banks and hedge funds into their platform with give up capability. This means that they are never on the other side of any positions you take, so they have no incentive to see you lose money. This also allows you to see and trade on the best bid and ask available between all of these different sources. This also provides great liquidity which is why Dukascopy is able to do so much volume while maintaining tight spreads. Unlike other ECNs where buying something closes your sell you can hedge with Dukascopy. There are no restrictions on scalping or news trading either. For those automated traders out there Dukascopy offers Jtrader which allows you to plug in any java based trading program and trade right away. Dukascopy also offers a FIX API if you need it instead. In fact if you have a large enough account or account group they will tailor a trading platform to meet your needs. Dukascopy is also working on software to convert the Meta Trader code into Java so that you can run it on their APIs. This software is expected in two to three months and a new version of the Jforex API with all the Meta Trader indicators on it is due on August 1st. Currently if you open a live account with them they will convert one EA to Java manually for you free of charge.

Trading conditions- The minimum trade on the Dukascopy system is 100,000 units (1 lot) but I have been warned that not all parties on the network accept orders that small so it is wise to place orders for at least 250,000 units (2.5 lots) to ensure you are receiving the best bid/ask available. the maximum leverage available with DukasCopy is 1:100 and this leverage will decreases to 1:30 at 1 pm EST on Friday. Dukascopy will give you a literal margin call on the telephone if you fall below your margin requirement instead of instantly liquidating you. If your balance reaches 50% of your margin requirement they will automatically hedge your position instead of kicking you out. So if you wish to hold a position over the weekend you may do so but understand that you will be hedged if you cannot meet the margin requirement. The minimum account size is $50,000 and they have some unique banking options available. One of which is a bank guaranteed account which requires a minimum of $250,000 and allows you to send only %20 of the amount you wish to invest and insures that you are "good for" the rest. So that you can trade five times the amount you actually send to Dukascopy. Another option available for accounts over $500,000 is a Swiss bank account completely separate and segregated from Dukascopy that you can trade from. At the end of the day your profit or loss will automatically be added or taken out of your bank account. When opening your account select "Advanced Interbank Account" for a bank guarantee account and "VIP Interbank Account" to open a Swiss bank account that you will trade from. These options ensure that no matter what happens to Dukascopy your money is safe.

Extremely low commissions- Perhaps the best thing about Dukascopy are the low commissions which start at $18 per million. This is a mere $1.80 for a $100,000 USD/CHF trade and go down as your volume per month increases. This is about half of what you can expect to pay with most prime brokers around the world where $30 per million is standard for smaller accounts.