FXCM: Free Forex Feed

Ensign Windows includes a free Forex feed from FXCM (Forex Capital Markets), who is a major player in the Forex markets.  This free feed has real-time quotes on the following 78 currency pairs.

The real-time feed from FXCM updates with every change in a Bid or Ask.  Ensign's implementation also has a refresh capability for tick based charts, intra-day, daily, weekly and monthly charts.  Tick refresh is available for the last 70,000 ticks on each symbol pair.  Intra-day refresh is available for the last 4 months.   Daily, weekly and monthly refresh is available for the last 14 years (from May 1993 for most symbols).

The coverage of symbols are 39 symbol pairs from FXCM, and the inverse relationship for these same 39 pairs.  So while FXCM broadcasts data for 39 symbols, the feed from Ensign will give quotes on 78 symbols.  These 78 symbols will show on the Forex market group quote page.  Click the big Q button for a quote page.  Click the Forex market group button on the bottom of the quote page to show the Forex Currencies.

Steps to take:

To get the FXCM feed, download the latest version of Ensign Windows.  Click menu File | Open | Internet Services and select the Download tab.

On this form, wait for the column of Version Dates to fill in.   Select the bullet for Ensign Windows Upgrade, and then click the Download button.   The Ensign Windows program will download an upgrade, exit, and begin the installation.   Accept the default prompts which will install the Ensign upgrade.   When the installation is finished, rerun Ensign Windows.

Now click menu Setup | Connection.   Check the box for the FXCM feed and Ensign will connect to the Ensign servers and process the FXCM feed.  Check the New Server box to connect to our compressed data feed with 8 times the capacity.  Verify 11000 as the Port value, and 206.71.64.14 as the IP address.   Uncheck the FXCM feed box to stop the data feed.   If you experience difficulty in getting the FXCM feed to flow, you might try unchecking and rechecking the FXCM feed check box .

Ensign's implementation processes the FXCM feed in parallel with the data feed you subscribe to.  You can have a feed from eSignal, DTN, IQFeed, Interactive Brokers or TransAct and optionally elect to also have the 78 Forex symbols from FXCM by checking the FXCM feed checkbox.  The FXCM symbols will be automatic, meaning there is no need to enter any symbols on the Setup | Manager watch list.   Those who will use just the FXCM feed should select Ensign Internet as the Data Source.

Users are welcome to track the Forex symbols from FXCM, even though they do not have an account with FXCM.  The feed is from FXCM to Ensign's servers in Salt Lake City.  When you connect to the feed, you are connecting to Ensign's servers, and not to any FXCM server.  The historical refresh data is also maintained in a database on the Ensign servers.

Symbol properties:

The symbol format will be two currency roots separated by a slash and have a + character as a suffix.  This will make the symbols from FXCM unique and not conflict with Forex symbols from any of the supported data vendor feeds.

One word of explanation is that Ensign has imposed a 2 decimal shift on the Yen quotes.  This makes it standard with the way Ensign quotes Yen currencies from our other data feeds.  The JPY/USD+ quote shows 0.83794 when the actual price is 0.0083794.   The extras 2 leading zeros in the price just make the price harder to read.  So Ensign quotes it as 0.83794 by multiplying the actual quote by 100.  This format is easier on the eyes and mind and takes less space to show on a chart scale.

Forex is 24 hours, so here is example market hours page for the EUR/USD+ symbol.

The Forex symbols can be shown on quote pages, snap quotes, time and sales, and charted in any time frame.

Ensign is charting the changes in the Bid price.  There is no volume with each tick, so a default volume of 1 is used.   The volume that shows is a tick count total and it is treated as at the Bid on a down tick and at the Ask on an up tick.

Why do quotes differ?:

Equity and Futures traders are used to prices being the same at any given time regardless of which firm they are trading through or charting provider they are using and often assume the same holds true for spot FX. Because the spot FX market is decentralized, meaning it lacks a single exchange where all transactions are conducted, each FX dealer (market maker) may quote slightly different prices on their markets.  Therefore, any prices displayed by a third party charting provider, which does not employ the market maker's data feed, will reflect indicative prices and not necessarily dealing prices.

Market watchers, such as S&P or ESignal, compile indicative quotes as a proxy for the actual market movement.  These prices are derived from a host of contributors such as banks and clearing firms, which may or may not reflect where FXCM's market is.  Ensign Windows uses the FXCM data feed from their Order To Go dealing desk.

Q:  Can you discuss the FXCM data feed and any plans to streamline the download process?

A:  FXCM feed is via the servers we have in a data center in Salt Lake City.  We get the master feed from FXCM, and redistribute it to the 350 users that are typically connected at any given time to the FXCM server.  We also maintain the tick and intra-day refresh databases for the 39 symbol pairs.  When you refresh a chart, the request will bring the chart current based on the amount of data that is needed.  This typically is a small amount of less than 1 day and the process happens quite quickly.

If the chart is a new chart, such as a 5-min chart, then we request the full database which can be 4 months worth of intr-day bar data and then the refresh download is now 90 times longer than the typical 1 day refresh.

Possibly it is this big download takes several seconds you are observing and wish it were snappier.  By comparison to any refresh from any of our supported vendors, the FXCM refresh download is the snappiest.  One idea we do have in mind is to put in another server in our server farm that is dedicated to just refresh requests and not shared by the data feed processing. This might make the refresh a bit snappier, but how much snappier is yet to be determined.

When we developed to the FXCM feed, they had an initial API and in fast markets users observed that there was lots of lag introduced.  When we complained to their engineering they said, there was a better, faster and more virgin source for a feed if we would bypass the API that is for the general public and go direct to their Order to Go dealing desk.  So we reworked our interface with FXCM to have the upstream source feed instead of the pampered and lagging public feed.  With Ensign you are getting the real deal from FXCM order to go.  This is also the source feed they use in-house to update their internal database and I am please to see that our real-time built data base appears to match perfectly with their in-house database so there are no errant ticks.

Q:  Has FXCM stopped providing fractional pips for EUR/USD+?  I would be surprised at this, but I see none in today's data so far. I am not really sure this is a problem, as most of the information is in the whole pip data, but a fair amount of trading appears to take place at fractional pips these days.

My natural preference is for the full unrounded data, but I think which is best is unclear enough to merit providing a choice to users.  Specifically, there is clearly a little more information in the fractional pips (say when price is half a pip higher) but fractional pips also make some things a little less clear (such as a short term support level)

A:  Ensign will round the value to the number of decimals you choose to show.  So the trade is not being lost or ignored, it just shows on the quote page and chart at the nearest pip if you use a 4 decimal format.   You can elect to have it as you wish, either as #.#### format or as #.##### format.  Go to the chart properties by pressing Ctrl+P keys, and select the Symbol tab.  If you use the 4 decimal format, then all prices will be rounded to the 4 decimals.  If you want the fractional pips, then select the 5 decimal format and the rounding will be to the fractional pip.

This will affect which R value you use for Range charts.  R5 with the 4 decimals would now be R50 for the 5 decimals. 

Q:  I have some questions on the volume figure which is associated with symbols on the FXCM feed. It is quite unusual to see volume with FOREX symbols and I've been looking back through the historical data and the volume information seems quite useful information from a technical analysis point of view.  Is this the volume for all of FXCM trading for a particular symbol?

A:  The FXCM feed does not have any volume information.   However, Ensign uses a volume of 1 for each price, so what you are seeing is really a tick count.  That is useful, like real volume would be, to show periods of increased activity.  The activity is that from the FXCM order desk and is independent of what might be happening to forex trading at other clearing firms.