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Forex Broker: Choosing The Right Forex Broker
Sometimes it's hard to make a decision on which Forex broker to open our trading account, there are just too many of them. Most of them have different features, capabilities, weaknesses and advantages, for this reason I have created a checklist that can help you decide the broker to use in your Forex adventure.
1. Is it regulated?
The first question you have to ask yourself is: is the broker I want to use Regulated ? There must be no doubt about this first point. All regulated brokers must submit financial reports to regulatory authorities, and when they fail to do it, authorities have the right to fine them or terminate their membership. This enforces Forex brokers to keep transparent financial reports.
The brokers must be regulated by their local regulatory authorities, for instance, for brokers based in the US , they must be regulated by the NFA (National Futures Association) and CFTC (Commodity Futures Trading Commission), Swiss based brokers must be regulated by the FDF (Swiss Federal Department of Finance) and so on.
Also when a Forex broker is regulated allows investors to dispute any resolution, increasing the investor protection.
2. Trading Conditions
This point refers to the features of the trading platform and the trading conditions with the chosen broker. Amongst the most important factors are:
Spread - Obviously the smaller the spread on currency pairs the better the conditions are for investors and traders.
Platform execution - Trading execution refers to how fast and consistent are the execution of trades. Some brokers guarantee fast and transparent executions during normal market conditions.
Fractional trading � Some brokers allow investors and traders to trade on a fractional basis, instead of trading full lots �100,000 units� or �300,000 units�, they allow you to trade �163,345 units� or �325,911 units�. This is very helpful for trades risking certain percentage of their balance on each trade.
Safety of funds � We need to make sure our trading funds are kept in a segregated account or at least insured.
Trading platform � Easy to use and understand platform, is it reliable during fast moving markets? And what extra features it offers such as: one click buying/selling, trading directly from a chart, supports mobile devices, trailing stops, etc.)
Minimum investment � What is the minimum amount of money required to open a trading account? This aspect is very useful because before trading your full account, you need to test the waters and see how well you perform with an account with limited funds (after trading a demo account).
Margin (leverage) � What kind of leverage can be used with the chosen broker? Just to make sure our leverage requirements by our Forex strategy and methodology (leverage above 100:1 is not advisable).
Commissions � Some brokers charge commission, it is ok if they do if the spread is smaller than other brokers.
3. Diligence
Hopefully you have eliminated most brokers at this point. You should have 3 or 4 finalists. In this step do your diligences on forums, ask other traders about their experiences using their brokers, and so forth.
Some forums where you can ask for broker information are: ForexFactory, MoneyTec, ForexNews.
If brokers are registered by their local regulatory authorities, you can visit the regulator website and you will find plenty of information about Forex brokers. Some of them publish resolutions regarding Forex brokers.
Amongst the aspects you should ask and get informed are:
Customer service � This aspect is the most important of them all, are they rude to customers? Are they willingly to help customers? These are the questions you should ask in forums and fellow traders.
Slippage � Slippage is the difference between the price where the trade was executed and actual value of it. Do they honor stop loss and take profit levels? Do they guarantee it? If any one had any discrepancies, did their broker revert the result?
Manual execution � Some brokers don't like scalpers, if they catch someone doing it, they will put this trader into manual execution, so a dealer (human) must accept all transactions made by this trader. Do they do this?
Re-quotes � a re-quote happens when you click the buy/sell button and the platform doesn't accept our price, so it will give us another quote for that particular trade.
4. Testing
In this phase we should test our Forex broker, first on a demo account to see how it works, also test your system to see how it performs. If you are satisfied with the results, then try the same platform with limited funds to see how it performs on real trades. If you are satisfied again then open your full trading account with the chosen broker.
I hope this checklist help you all traders to take the right decision when choosing brokers.
Some Forex Ideas
foreign exchange rates
Another thing to keep in mind is that just because you are trading with a minimum marginal deposit does not mean you should trade at levels above your portfolio. The myth that you can get away with this every time is not true. You should not over leverage yourself. By trading in small amounts, you will be able to make safe investments that will not result in huge losses. You will win some and lose some, especially when you are first starting out.
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For position traders, the basic bias of the market in his trading time frame, the liquidity situation of the market in that time frame, and the size of trading positions must be all taken into account when exercising stops, be it based on tech levels or a certain sum of money or a percentage of a total equity. It is a must but also it is form of art like trading itself. And every trader must develop his own unique style of using stops. But unfortunately, all this can be learned only by paying a certain amount of tuition fee to the market.
foreign exchange rate
DIFFERENT CENTERS
The first hour after opening in Tokyo tend to provide the best liquidity of the day and that is when most heavyweight players try to position their way without having much difficulty for the day. Sydney open is more often used as an ambush hour by certain players using the time window till Tokyo open. One rule of thumb is when Yen jumps at Tokyo open the chances are it will continue throughout the day and a few more days. On different point, learn to position trade Yen or any other currency if one is really going to make a big money one day. Fwiw.
One hour from Tokyo open, London open and NY open are the times where most liquidity of the market exist. And that is where market makers are busy setting the trend for the session or even the day. Your observation has a merit because most of the session or daily moves are started either in London open or Tokyo open or NY open. Especially London Open. Other markets are too thin for any good sized traders to make their market views felt. Good luck.
London is just a market place where all sorts of Forex folks flock to buy and sell. It does not have to be London folks. It could be anyone from anywhere in the world with deep pockets who start setting the market direction on a given day. Same goes for NY and Tokyo sessions markets. In any case, Tokyo and NY still relatively small markets when compared to London as far as Forex goes.
forex rates
The Tokyo Fix is where the FX rate is established for the day by the banks for their customers. So even though the FX rate may change during the day the customer gets the rate at the time of the fix. There is a fix in Tokyo, London and Toronto (more I am sure). Importers generally settle their accounts on the 5th, 10th, 15th, etc, of the month before and up until the fix ():50 GMT). Sometimes, if there is an "excess" dollar demand $/JPY will continue to climb slightly after the fix. $Bulls will also use this as a staging for extending a rally. $Bears (Yen Bulls) will use this to establish better shorts.
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Both banks hold rates
Fri, 09 Nov 2007 08:35:18 GMT
How To Trade Forex
posted by FXman @ 2:05 AM
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