Most Retail Forex Brokers are operated like Bucket Shops and such behavior is built into their business models by design.
In the United States, there are only two (2) genuine choices where you don't run the extra-high risk of being completely snowed under by a Bucket. CitiFX and Interactive Brokers, are the two saving graces in the United States, for the most part - though they both have their own issues.
One of the key elements that make a Bucket Shop so bad, is not its proprietary liquidity pool, but the disinterest in having any responsibility for protecting your interest as a trader, against the strong interest they have in maximizing their profits and deposits through any means necessary. While there is nothing wrong with a company looking out for its own profitability (in fact, they have a duty to their employees, shareholders, etc., to do so), there is something wrong when a broker which acts in ways that are disadvantageous to the trader by the very design of their core business model.
The intentional poor fill level, re-quote, slippage, partial-fill, frozen price feed, client/server disconnect, spread manipulation, core price manipulation, and the outright closing of profitable positions while allowing negative positions to remain open - are all part of the causation that makes a Bucket Shop a dangerous place to hold your production trading account.
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