If you’re going to be successful as a trader you’ll need to have an efficient broker. There’s no single choice that can be recommended for everyone because what suits you best will depend on your specific needs. This guide will help you to make a good decision.
Compare offerings
The first thing you’ll need to establish is precisely what each broker has to offer. Do they cover the kind of trading you want to be involved in and if so how does the quality of their offerings compare? How good are their forex spreads and do they have a good variety of other assets available? Comparing costs can be tricky because brokers make their money via a number of different fees, so be cautious about this – low fees on trades doesn’t necessarily mean low costs overall.
Compare info resources
When you need to make decisions fast it helps to have the most important info you need all in the same place. Make sure that your broker provides the charts you need in forms that you find intuitive. Many also offer regular market news updates, and well populated user forums can be a big help when it comes to keeping track of trends over time.
Compare learning resources
If you’ve already been looking at a few brokers you’ll have noticed that there’s a big disparity in the number and quality of learning resources they offer. If you’re serious about trading over the long term it really is worth prioritising these. Most useful of all is a demo account that you can continue to use to try out new strategies. You should also look for easily searchable text resources, webinars and video courses.
Avoid scams
Sadly, there is always a risk that when you’re looking for a broker you could fall foul of scammers. The usual rule applies here: if it looks too good to be true, avoid it! Use the established trade publications to do your research. This etoro review is the sort of thing you should be using rather than relying on public review sites which are sometimes exploited by scammers. Check with regulators to make sure that they cover the broker you choose.
Stay secure
Although they’re better informed than most of us about what the markets are doing, brokers are often quite small companies working with large amounts of money and as such they face a degree of risk. Make sure that your money will be kept in a ringfenced account and that there is insurance in place so that you can recover it if the broker collapses.
The better you get to know the system that your broker uses, the faster you will be able to work, so most people prefer not to move between brokers very often and some stick with just one throughout their trading careers. This means that finding the right fit really matters, so take your time, do your research and, most importantly, be clear about what you want before you take the plunge.
