{"id":911,"date":"2009-11-14T15:18:00","date_gmt":"2009-11-14T09:48:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.niftylivecharts.com\/blog\/?p=911"},"modified":"2009-11-14T15:18:00","modified_gmt":"2009-11-14T09:48:00","slug":"how-to-choose-a-broker-for-forex-trading","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.niftylivecharts.com\/blog\/how-to-choose-a-broker-for-forex-trading\/","title":{"rendered":"How to Choose a Broker for forex trading ?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>A brief guide outlining some of the points you need to think about when choosing a foreign exchange broker to trade with<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li> First and foremost are \u2018spreads\u2019 and how the broker deals with them. Spreads are important as the beginner needs to minimise his risk and reduce any costs when entering and exiting a trade. Usually, spreads are quoted by the broker as being \u2018fixed\u2019 or \u2018variable\u2019 for each currency pair. I have noticed that these days, spreads are always \u2018variable\u2019 and few brokers offer truly fixed ones. Although they may say EURUSD has a 3 pip spread, what they mean is that this is the minimum spread. You can be guaranteed that in times of high volatility, when prices are moving quickly, the spread will increase. Note also, that some brokers increase their spreads if the \u2018lot\u2019 size is lower \u2013 see the types of account below. This seems a bit strange as this certainly will not encourage new business for the broker!<\/li>\n<li> One point to mention is that although this point is important for the beginner trader, as you get more experience, spreads become less of an issue when choosing a broker as they become less significant and more experienced traders will choose other features over spreads when considering what broker to choose.<\/li>\n<li> The next thing is whether the broker offers all three of the \u2018standard\u2019 accounts \u2013 regular, mini and micro. Regular accounts deal with full \u2018lots\u2019 . Although mini accounts ( are now plentiful and commonplace, they still require a certain amount of capital to open that may be beyond some new traders. Micro accounts\u00a0 deal with such small sums of money that they are better than trading demo, but the risk is low when it comes to losing capital. Consequently, they require the least start-up capital in the region of only a couple of hundred dollars.<\/li>\n<li> Various checks will be done when you open an account, and if the company is based in another country, you will need to fill in various tax exemption forms such as a W-8BEN before the account will be opened, don\u2019t let this put you off!<\/li>\n<li> Various checks will be done when you open an account, and if the company is based in another country, you will need to fill in various tax exemption forms such as a W-8BEN before the account will be opened, don\u2019t let this put you off!<\/li>\n<li> If you intend to execute \u2018position\u2019 or \u2018swing\u2019 trades, such that you will be holding overnight positions, you may want to check what rates of interest will be paid\/debited from your account. This is sometimes hard to find on some websites, but can be very revealing as most brokers offer poor \u2018carry\u2019 interest if you are in a trade for a long period of time.<\/li>\n<li> Check to see what currency pairs they offer \u2013 again, most companies offer most of the most commonly traded pairs but it\u2019s nice to see how \u2018established\u2019 they are by seeing if they offer other trades such as gold, S&amp;P, futures etc.<\/li>\n<li> Unfortunately, something you can\u2019t check is the kind of service the broker offers. Most will be \u2018discount\u2019 brokers, which basically means that they offer no trade advice or general help and if you speak to anybody on the trading floor about your trade, they will be usually be brief and \u2018to the point\u2019.<\/li>\n<li> Try to find a broker who has downloadable free software that you trade from on your computer. The other way is to trade \u2018live\u2019 from a website, but I find this inflexible, especially if you continually need to click between screens as this usually requires the loading of a new webpage and makes everything quite \u2018clunky\u2019 even if you have a fast broadband connection.<\/li>\n<li> Some brokers offer trading platform software and separate charting software, so you can use the best looking charts from one company and the platform from another \u2013 watch for variations in price quotes though!<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>A brief guide outlining some of the points you need to think about when choosing a foreign exchange broker to trade with First and foremost are \u2018spreads\u2019 and how the broker deals with them. Spreads are important as the beginner needs to minimise his risk and reduce any costs when entering and exiting a trade. [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[2918,2919,2290,1675,1670],"class_list":{"0":"post-911","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-general","7":"tag-broker","8":"tag-broker-for-forex-trade","9":"tag-forex","10":"tag-forex-trade","11":"tag-forex-trading","12":"entry"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.niftylivecharts.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/911","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.niftylivecharts.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.niftylivecharts.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.niftylivecharts.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.niftylivecharts.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=911"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.niftylivecharts.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/911\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.niftylivecharts.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=911"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.niftylivecharts.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=911"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.niftylivecharts.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=911"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}