How to Pick the Right Forex Trading Broker

Picking the right forex trading broker can be a tedious exercise for most traders. There are more than a hundred online brokers today and more are coming on board. Since the foreign exchange market is worth trillions of dollars, it offers lucrative opportunities for brokers to set up their firm online. The challenge is with too many choices, it is hard to decide which is best for you. This piece of information would provide you with the necessary tips to pick an ideal forex trading broker.

Since the foreign exchange market is decentralized, it can be hard to identify fraudulent practices by unscrupulous brokers. When finding a broker, do make sure to follow the following pointers and your chances of finding an honest and reliable forex trading broker are dramatically increased!

1. Always request for references that you can speak with.

2. Do a check with the local regulatory agencies and make sure that the forex trading broker is registered. For US-based brokers, see if they are registered as Futures Commission Merchants (FCM) with the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) and registered with National Futures Association (NFA).

3. Compare the account details such as the minimum deposit required, leverage, spreads and so on. Ask them specifically are there any commissions chargeable, lot fees, etc. This is to ensure you do not incur hidden costs. Some sneaky traders deliberately give you an impression that they are the cheapest to use but in actual fact load you on hidden charges.

4. The trading platform needs to be user-friendly. Many traders especially first-timers find it challenging to navigate around the site just to make sense of the charts and currency prices. If there are demo accounts, try them.

5. REQUOTING. This is a big pitfall that many traders fell into before realizing. Low spreads and commissions do not mean much if the forex trading broker decides to "trick" you with requoting. Basically, what it means is that when you transact with a buy/sell call for a currency pair at a certain price, the broker requotes and charge you on the requoted price rather than what you see.

The difference in transacted prices can be as much as 9 pips and beyond. Be wary of those dealers that keep requoting when you are making huge gains! It is common to have occasional ones but when it happens way too often, you should smell a rat. Always choose one that have a "no requoting" policy.

You Don't Have to Lose in The Forex Market

How often do the forex market rates change? Monthly? Daily? Hourly? Try this: "The forex market rates change every second to every fraction of a second!"

Whether you realize it or not, you have been exposed to a great concept. Read it again. I know you probably already knew this fact. Even though you already know the answer it will benefit you to think about it deliberately. The only thing that you need to know for sure is the currency exchange rates will continue to fluctuate continuously while the forex is open. Opportunities to make money are created continuously!

You do not have to worry about how much these forex market rates change at this point. The rates change by various amounts at various times. The important idea that you need to understand is that prices fluctuate every second, you have new opportunities developing to buy low and sell high. Forex trading even allows you to short sell. You can make money in either direction.

The way forex trading is structured allows you to profit enormously from small price fluctuations. On a 1% price fluctuation, you can make a 200% profit. This is due to the leverage of forex trading.

The forex market has a DAILY trading volume of around 1.5 TRILLION dollars. That is 1,500 Billion! This means that 1,498, 574 skilled traders can each take $1,000,000 out of the forex market each day, and the forex market would still have more money left than the New York Stock Exchange every day! The potential exists for forex profits. So there is plenty of money for plenty of traders to use the same trading techniques and profit immensely.

A Great Forex Trading Indicator - Try This Strategy

Forex trading can be tough if you do not know what you are doing. That is why I have provided the following simple yet helpful forex trading strategy. The Simple Moving Average (SMA) is an extension of the trend line concept. The SMA is plotted on a graph by the charting program of the forex market data. The SMA takes the average of the close price of a given number of the last few periods. Any number of periods can be selected. You can have a SMA 5 or an SMA 20. An SMA 5 will take an average of the previous 5 close prices on the chart and will plot it on the chart along side the other price data. Each bar will use the previous 5 bars worth of data to calculate a point and plot it on the graph.

If the SMA is generated using a large number of periods (like an SMA 50 or SMA 75), you could interpret it similarly to the trend line. But if you select "faster" SMA's (like SMA5 or SMA20), you need to use a different strategy.

I am about to give you a strategy using the SMA. It is called the SMA Crossover Method. The SMA is one of the most commonly used indicators and can be found on almost any charting package. When you plot the SMA, you will be able to slect a line color to plot it. Make sure to use a different color than the actual prices on the chart.

Step 1: Plot an EMA5 using blue (or any color you like).

Step 2: Plot an EMA20 using red (or any color that is different than step one's color).

You now
have two SMAs plotted on the chart. You also have two signals.

Buy Signal: When the SMA5 Crosses the SMA20 moving upward.

Sell Signal: When the SMA5 Crosses the SMA20 moving downward.

The beauty of this method is that the price of the currency pair cannot go up significantly without triggering the buy signal.

This was a very simple and practical indicator that should really improve your trading results as you implement the strategy outlined above. As always, I do strongly suggest starting with a small account with a good trading platform. If you are looking for a really good performing platform then click on the link below. Good luck trading.