I'm proud to announce that we have published our initial online forex broker ratings which covers 118 online forex brokers. The entire list can be found at Top Rated Online Forex Brokers. Here is the current top 20 -



1. aleccohFx (aFx)

2. Dukascopy Swiss FX

3. ABN AMRO Marketindex

4. EFX Group (EFX)

5. Delta Stock

6. HotSpot Fx

7. FINEX Group

8. Windsor Brokers, Ltd.

9. MB Trading

10. FCMarket

11. AvailTradingCorp. (ATC Brokers)

12. Questrade Inc.

13. Alpari IDC

14. MG Financial Group (MG Forex)

15. FxPrice LLC

16. Forex Capital Trading (ForexCT)

17. Swiss International

18. LiteForex

19. eToro

20. My Private Trade



How did we come up with these ratings? Well, here is the methodology that was used.



1. We collected ratings anywhere on the Internet we could find where we could be reasonably confident that actual individual traders were giving their own ratings. In other words, no pure marketing sites that pretend to be independent reviews. Right now, we are using about a dozen sites for this purpose.



2. Since the different sites used different number ranges for rating purposes, the numbers for each site were converted to a ratings scale of 1 to 10.



3. The numbers for each site were then adjusted so the median for each site was 5, so as no one site would be given more or less weight. They do, of course, receive more weight for the number of ratings posted.



4. Then a margin of error was applied to each online forex brokers' ratings, adjusted to the median of 5. The result of this is that those brokers with a large number of ratings have a very small adjustment but those with a small number of ratings may get a large adjustment and generally end up a bit above or below 5.



There you have it. Are we happy with out initial ratings? Well, no not really and we will refine our methodology as we go on. One thing I am toying with is to combine these ratings with the popularity ratings, giving half weight to the individual trader ratings and half to popularity, which is a combination of website traffic and the number of individual trader ratings.



Initially I was hesitant to put much stock in popularity because I know popularity can come as much from a good marketing program as it can from providing good services. However, after thinking about it, people who have an account with an online forex brokerage are voting for that broker in perhaps the most important way, with their wallet. Also, the main thing I am unhappy with in our initial ratings is I think perhaps, even with the margin of error adjustment, that some small brokers have been overrated.



Following is the top 20 when using this new proposed methodology. We probably will post both rating systems on the web site and let our visitors choose which one to use, or perhaps use both.



1. Dukascopy Swiss FX

2. MB Trading

3. Oanda

4. Interactive Brokers UK

5. EFX Group (EFX)

6. MG Financial Group (MG Forex)

7. aleccoFx

8. Delta Stock

9. Alpari IDC

10. Questrade Inc.

11. Global Forex Trading (GFT Forex)

12. LiteForex

13. Marketiva

14. TradeStation Securities

15. FINEX Group

16. FX Solutions

17. HotSpot Fx

18. Capital Market Services (CMS Forex)

19. Interbank FX

20. Windsor Brokers, Ltd.



I do think that this is probably more representative of the top brokers out their in the real world of forex trading. An online forex broker has to be both popular and have good ratings to make this list.



I would love to hear from anyone out there who has an opinion on either our ratings or our methodology. Look forward to hearing from you!