Online Forex Brokers – a Checklist for Choosing One
Choosing a forex broker is important in maximising your trading profits and making sure your trading experience is smooth.
Here you will find a checklist so that you can find a broker that will maximize your trading experience.
1. Execution Only
Your broker is only there to help you transact your orders and make sure your account runs smoothly – they should NOT give trading recommendations.
Many novice traders think this is a good idea and their broker knows best, however if he could make money trading he wouldn’t be a broker!
Brokers are there to transact orders and that’s all.
If you don’t take responsibility for your trading you won’t win.
2. Look for tight spreads
This is your cost of doing business and the less you pay the more of your profits you get to keep.
Look for spreads from your forex broker of 3 – 5 pips for trading the majors.
There should be no other commissions or fees – make sure the spread is all you pay.
3. Leverage
Look fro leverage of at least 200:1, although many brokers will offer you more and some go as high as 400:1.
4. Trading platform
Check it out and see how useable and reliable it is and that you get 24 hour support, if you need it at anytime for any problems you may encouter – not all brokers offer 24 hour service so beware.
5. Ease of funding and minimum investment
Today, many forex brokers will let you fund an account online with as little as a $100.00.
If you are a novice starting small is a good way to get your feet wet.
These companies also allow small minimum trades.
If there are online payment facilities, you can fund your account quickly and equally get your profits back quickly.
6. Guaranteed stops
If you are a novice trader and worried about the unlimited liability that margin trading presents, you may want to guarantee your stop and there are many brokers who will provide this comfort for a fee.
7. Extras
A forex broker is not there to give you trading advice but it is nice to get extras such as demo accounts, free newsletters, reports and other educational material, which can help you improve your trading – You will find many brokers who offer a lot of extras and if you are new to trading they are well worth having.
Your forex broker is important and if they provide all of the above in terms of service, you should be able to maximize your trading experience and profitability.
Also you can see the video related to online forex brokers
Online seminar about the Forex market and how to succesfully trade using a proven methodology. Presented by The Trading Institute (www.thetradinginstitute.com), this video shows a live trade using the Thinslice Trading methodology, information about the forex, forex brokers, how to trade…
Here some answer the question about online forex brokers
How to trade gold an oil?Is it all online like stocks?If yes do brokers offer leverage like in forex?
Is it harder to predict the price of gold and oil or the price of stocks and currencies?
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Tags: brokers, course, currency, forex, strategies, Strategy, trading
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September 12th, 2009 at 8:50 pm
Oanda allows you to trade a number of what they call "exotic" currencies including the USD/CNY. The last time I checked though the spread was fairly high.
Good luck.
Paul Upp
September 12th, 2009 at 9:50 pm
Wouldn't it be great to have one broker that does it all?
But a stock broker doesn't have a license to trade commodities, and vice versa.
And wouldn't it be great if you could afford the best in the business, the most advanced technologically, on the cutting edge of online trading?
TerraNova is such a broker. Now you can have your cake and eat it too, and trade anything you wish from one broker, albeit, not from one account. Obviously, the laws cannot be broken. Their subsidiary, or is it parent company, Townsend Electronics, is the one that electronified and digitized the NASDAQ, and I believe they're getting ready to do the American Stock Exchange next.
You'll be amazed at their trading software. I've been using RealTick for over a year, and still haven't learned how to use all of the features.
It's all really incredible. I am just a Day Trader in index futures, and have no association with any of these companies, and have nothing to gain by applauding them; they simply deserve the applause, and you should take the opportunity to check them out.
September 13th, 2009 at 7:48 pm
Ultimately, you can check with the Securities and Exchange Commission: http://sec.gov/
I use FXDD and they're for real.
If you already have a futures broker, you can also trade Currency Futures. I also trade the Forex, but I get better fills on the futures.
Actually, I trade the Forex through PermiereTrade software, and most of their customers (over 1,000 on the Message Board) trade through FXDD. But I can choose any broker.
If you don't already have charting software and a data feed, this may well be what you should be concentrating on. Of the legitimate brokers, they're all pretty much the same, if the spreads are comparable. You shouldn't pay over 2 or 3 pip spread on the majors, definately something to ask about.
On the futures, you pay a commission, rather than a spread difference, and they are in points, rather than pips. The currency futures are just like any other commodity. I use a very professional charting and trading platform called RealTick, through TerraNovaOnline; state-of-the-art stuff, technically oriented. TerraNova is the home of the Day Trader. I can trade currency futures for $11 roundtrip, which is not possible on the Forex. I pay $200/month for RealTick, but I think you can get their Investor package for free, which is RealTick just sized down to one screen. I use five 21" monitors. But Investor would be a good starting point. Check out their free trial offer.
http://terranovaonline.com/
Here is PremiereTrade's website:
http://www.premieretradeai.com/index.php
The great thing about PremiereTrade is their Message Boards and their Live Trader Commentary, and the ability to speak with their traders at any time. Keeping you informed is their business, and this is real unusual. They do not tell you when to trade, the software does that, but you are always informed; a definate plus.
Other Forex sites:
http://www.dailyfx.com/
http://www.forexnews.com/
Here's a good Forex educational site:
http://www.babypips.com/forex-school/market-hours.html
And here's another legitimate broker, this one international:
http://www.gftforex.com/land/index.asp?aid=500
September 14th, 2009 at 2:33 am
I enter nothing but hedge positions with both Interbank FX and GFT.
You can also place conservative hedge positions when you buy two currency pairs at the same time such as the USD/CHF and the GBP/USD. This can pay you a net positive interest each day and as a general rule, the two pairs tend to move in opposing directions with each other. Keep in mind though, that the forex market sometimes has a mind of its own and you should never participate without fully understanding and accepting the inherent risks.
Hedge trading is a very intriguing way to participate in the Forex market and very few people actually understand the benefits.
Good luck.
Paul
September 14th, 2009 at 11:39 am
When choosing a forex broker you need to find reliability and security as well as competitive pricing. The main factors you want to take into account is the leverage offered and the spreads on the forex pairs.
I have been trading forex for years and found a few brokers to be very reliable while most forex brokers are not trustworthy. You can find a list of the best brokers at http://www.forexlane.com/brokers.html
September 14th, 2009 at 12:07 pm
FXCM. Go see for yourself.
September 15th, 2009 at 12:38 am
I use Interbank FX and GFT. I don't find their spreads to be any better or any worse than anyone else but I appreciate their customer service and user friendliness of their apps.
InterbankFX has another cool feature and that is the ability to use their credit or debit cards in order to quickly access money from your account. One word of caution is that all brokers make it very each to put money in….and many make it extremely difficult or time consuming to get money out. I guess they like that float.
The third reason that I like Interbank FX is that they have actually developed an EA for us that monitors my account balance and automatically closes all my positions and locks in my profits using either a profit target or a trailing stop setup. It is very cool waking up and seeing that you have just made $800 while you were asleep.
Lastly, we have negotiated institutional interest rates with both of these firms that are not available to other retail clients.
I hope this helps.
paul
September 15th, 2009 at 11:51 am
I have traded both MB Trading and FXCM live and have not had significant liquidity issues with either. However, to answer your question as to whether "most online brokers" are good at "hitting your limit buy and sell orders" mainly depends on the position size your attempting to enter the market with, the time of day and currency pair your attempting to trade.
And to answer your question whether your "simulator" will work with "one of these brokers" really depends on which code the simulator was created in. Is it an Expert Advisor coded for Metatrader? If so, MB Trading does not yet support the Metatrader software ( though are Rep there tells us they are working on it). MB uses the MBT Navigator which is much more difficult to create auto trading software for. FXCM recently began using Metatrader in conjunction with their FX Trading Station 2.0. Their Metatrader platform has huge drawbacks including not allowing demo accounts, not supporting multi-user accounts, and reportedly experiencing problems communicating between their FX Trading Station trade servers and their Metatrader Trade servers. I would recommend you google "Metatrader broker reviews" and find the brokers that best works for your situation.