Forex Currency Trading

by Jay Moncliff

Access to foreign exchange (forex), the most extensive market on the planet, is generally through an intermediary known as a forex broker. Similar to a stock broker, these agents can also provide advice on forex trading strategies. This advice to clients often extends to technical analysis and research approaches designed to improve client forex trading performance.

Financial institutions are generally the most influential in the forex market through
high-volume, large-value forex currency transactions. Historically, banks enjoyed monopolistic access to the forex markets, but through the Internet, any forex speculator can also enjoy 24 hour access to the market via a forex broker.

Secure web connections today allow many forex traders to work from home, where ready access to news and other technical advice informs decisions on what forex positions to take. Similar moves are being made by stock brokers, who are also moving out of banks and other traditional institutions.

Your needs in the market will influence your choice of forex broker. Online forex brokerage firms, known as houses, provide those new to the forex market with detailed research, advice and simulators to learn how to use their forex trading tools. The experienced online forex trader is catered to by other broking houses, with in-depth advice, but less focus on forex trading instruction based on the assumption that you are familiar with the forex market. To make an informed choice, it is advisable to trial several differing online forex broking houses and their trading tools to find the best fit for your needs.

Jay Moncliff is the founder of http://www.forex-web.info a website specialized on Forex Broker, resources and articles. For more info visit his site: Forex Broker

Article Source: http://www.upublish.info

If you go to your favourite search engine and do a search for ‘forex brokers’, you will be bombarded with endless results of companies all vying for your business, so how do you decide which one to go with? Well here’s five important points to consider:

- Location

Always look at where a company is registered. After all if you’re going to be sending money to a company in order to start trading, do you really want to be sending it to an offshore company based in some remote part of the world, and can you be sure that you’ll be able to successfully withdraw money when the time comes?

- Regulation

Following on from the last point, if they’re based in the US or UK, for example, check that they’re fully registered with the relevant regulators, such as the NFA and CFTC in the US and the FSA in the UK.

- Reputation

Reputation is another point to consider and again requires a little bit of research. Do a search at your favourite search engine for the company you are researching and see what other people have to say about them. What better way to find out about a company than seeing what other traders have to say about them?

- Trading Platform

If you’re going to be using a company’s trading platform on a regular basis, then you need it to be easy to use and user-friendly in general so test drive the demo platform if they offer one. Also look to see what extras are included such as charting facilities and news updates.

- Spreads

If you’re a short-term trader this is a very important factor. If you’re a long-term trader looking for moves of several hundred points each time, then a few extra points spread won’t make much difference, but if you’re a scalper or short-term trader then it can be the difference between making money and losing money. After all it’s obviously so much easier to make money trading the GBP/USD intraday with a 2-3 point spread than a 5-10 point spread.

So there you have five important points to consider when choosing a forex broker. You’ll notice I didn’t mention margin as a factor. This is because it’s far too easy to be attracted to brokers that offer up to say 1:400 leverage, and therefore allow you to take out very large positions with a small margin, but this is a very dangerous game and it’s all too easy to over-leverage yourself and wipe out your account completely.

James Woolley runs a blog at http://theforexarticles.com where you can learn forex trading. You can also read his review of Avi Frister’s Forex Trading Machine by visiting http://theforexarticles.com/forex-trading-machine-review