Choosing the right broker is one of the most important necessity of a forex trading career. Not only is the question of fraud of vital importance, but also the competence of a broker may make all the difference between success and failure.
So what are the criteria that a forex trader must keep in mind while choosing the broker?
1. Safety of the Firm
The broker should be regulated. There really is no reason to deprive yourself of the advantages of government regulation… especially as the large number of firms in the market make careful scrutiny of each one of them an almost impossible task. Brokers may be unwilling to share the details of their ownership structure, or capital position with clients, but they have no such option with regulatory authorities who have the legal mandate to enforce compliance with the standards.
Regulation does not ensure against fraud, but it does reduce the risks associated with trading considerably.
2. Minimum deposit, leverage, and spread
The broker should place the floor as low as possible when it comes to leverage. A beginner has almost no use for leverage, and forcing him to take up leverage as high as 100:1 only ensures that the life of the account will be brief. Likewise, having the minimum deposit requirement as low as possible will help the trader concentrate on improving his skills with little stress.
Although industry standards make 10:1 the minimal leverage value in a mini account, there do exist several brokers that allow trading with no leverage at all. In the U.S. the maximum leverage is 50:1 for majors and 20:1 for minors.
The spread (or the degree to which the broker inflates the gap between the bid and ask prices in order to compensate itself) is another crucial criterion. Spreads should be as low as possible. This is especially the case with frequent traders, since their frequent activity with small positions makes the spread even costlier.
3. Trading Software
The trading software needs to be stable. Contrary to claims made in advertisements, you don’t need exceptional, innovative features in your forex trading platform to be successful, but stability of the connection, and reliability of the data is very important.
So setup a mini account, and test trade to check slippage, misquotes, and connectivity issues before committing to any broker.
There are other factors that would be considered as one makes the choice about the best broker, so to speak, but the above are the most important criteria in establishing the worth of a firm in the context of any trading strategy.
This concludes our free forex course and we now recommend that you try a demo account or a live account with one of our trusted brokers. ForexTradingOnline wishes you good luck!