Raw spreads and fast execution: what traders need to know in 2026

ECN vs dealing desk: understanding what you're trading through

Most retail brokers fall into two execution models: market makers or ECN brokers. This isn't just terminology. A dealing desk broker acts as the other side of your trade. A true ECN setup routes your order through to liquidity providers — you get fills from actual buy and sell interest.

Day to day, the difference becomes clear in three places: whether spreads blow out at the wrong moment, how fast your orders go through, and requotes. ECN brokers generally deliver tighter pricing but apply a commission per lot. DD brokers mark up the spread instead. Neither model is inherently bad — it depends on your strategy.

For scalpers and day traders, a proper ECN broker is typically worth the commission. Getting true market spreads makes up for the per-lot fee on most pairs.

Fast execution — separating broker hype from reality

You'll see brokers advertise execution speed. Figures like "lightning-fast execution" sound impressive, but what does it actually mean in practice? More than you'd think.

For someone executing two or three swing trades a week, a 20-millisecond difference doesn't matter. If you're scalping 1-2 pip moves working small price moves, execution lag translates to slippage. If your broker fills at 35-40 milliseconds with no requotes provides noticeably better entries compared to platforms with 150-200ms fills.

Certain platforms built learn more here proprietary execution technology specifically for speed. Titan FX, for example, built their proprietary system called Zero Point that routes orders immediately to LPs without dealing desk intervention — the documented execution speed is under 37 milliseconds. You can read a detailed breakdown in this review of Titan FX.

Commission-based vs spread-only accounts — which costs less?

This ends up being the most common question when choosing an account type: do I pay the raw spread with commission or a wider spread with no commission? It comes down to how much you trade.

Take a typical example. A spread-only account might have EUR/USD at 1.1-1.3 pips. A raw spread account offers true market pricing but adds roughly $3-4 per standard lot round trip. With the wider spread, you're paying through every trade. Once you're trading more than a few lots a week, the raw spread account saves you money mathematically.

Many ECN brokers offer both side by side so you can compare directly. What matters is to calculate based on your actual trading volume rather than going off marketing scenarios — they usually be designed to sell one account type over the other.

High leverage in 2026: what the debate gets wrong

High leverage splits forex traders more than any other topic. Regulators restrict retail leverage at 30:1 in most jurisdictions. Brokers regulated outside tier-1 jurisdictions continue to offer up to 500:1.

The standard argument against is that it blows accounts. Fair enough — the numbers support this, traders using maximum leverage lose money. But the argument misses nuance: traders who know what they're doing don't use 500:1 on every trade. What they do is use the option of high leverage to reduce the margin sitting as margin in any single trade — freeing up margin to deploy elsewhere.

Sure, it can wreck you. No argument there. But that's a risk management problem, not a leverage problem. When a strategy needs less capital per position, access to 500:1 lets you deploy capital more efficiently — most experienced traders use it that way.

Offshore regulation: what traders actually need to understand

The regulatory landscape in forex falls into different levels. At the top is FCA (UK) and ASIC (Australia). Leverage is capped at 30:1, mandate investor compensation schemes, and put guardrails on how aggressively brokers can operate. On the other end you've got the VFSC in Vanuatu and Mauritius FSA. Lighter rules, but that also means more flexibility in what they can offer.

What you're exchanging real and worth understanding: going with an offshore-regulated broker offers higher leverage, lower trading limitations, and often lower fees. The flip side is, you sacrifice some regulatory protection if something goes wrong. There's no compensation scheme paying out up to GBP85k.

Traders who accept this consciously and prefer performance over protection, tier-3 platforms work well. The important thing is checking the broker's track record rather than just reading the licence number. A broker with 10+ years of clean operation under an offshore licence is often more reliable in practice than a newly licensed tier-1 broker.

Scalping execution: separating good brokers from usable ones

Scalping is the style where broker choice matters most. When you're trading 1-5 pip moves and keeping positions for seconds to minutes. With those margins, tiny gaps in fill quality translate directly to profit or loss.

Non-negotiables for scalpers comes down to a few things: 0.0 pip raw pricing from 0.0 pips, order execution consistently below 50ms, zero requotes, and no restrictions on scalping and high-frequency trading. Some brokers claim to allow scalping but throttle execution if you trade too frequently. Look at the execution policy before funding your account.

Platforms built for scalping tend to make it obvious. Look for execution speed data somewhere prominent, and they'll typically include virtual private servers for running bots 24/5. When a platform avoids discussing execution specifications anywhere on the website, that's probably not a good sign for scalpers.

Following other traders — the reality of copy trading platforms

Social trading has become popular over the past several years. The concept is straightforward: pick traders who are making money, mirror their activity without doing your own analysis, benefit from their skill. In practice is messier than the platform promos make it sound.

What most people miss is time lag. When the lead trader opens a position, your mirrored order goes through after a delay — when prices are moving quickly, that lag transforms a profitable trade into a worse entry. The tighter the average trade size in pips, the more this problem becomes.

Having said that, some social trading platforms work well enough for traders who can't trade actively. The key is finding access to audited performance history over at least several months of live trading, instead of simulated results. Risk-adjusted metrics tell you more than raw return figures.

Certain brokers have built their own social trading within their standard execution. Integration helps lower the execution lag compared to standalone signal platforms that bolt onto the trading platform. Research how the copy system integrates before expecting historical returns will translate with the same precision.