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What to Consider When Choosing Your Broker?

What to Consider When Selecting a Broker?

There are so many brokers out there that it can be a minefield deciding which one to trade with. Yet this is an extremely important decision and can impact on your trading and your ability to turn a profit.

Here I have compiled a list of important points to keep in mind when choosing your broker.

Regulation

This is quite possibly the most important point. Always trade with a regulated broker. There are so many scams on the internet that it is all too easy to be sucked into one. Check on the relevant regulators’ website whether the broker you are looking at is regulated. If it is not, then just walk away. No matter how good the deal is that they are offering you will probably end up worse off.

Segregated funds

A regulated broker should also have their funds segregated as a form of client protection. This means that should anything go wrong, for example the broker go under, then your funds will be segregated and therefore protected. Again, be sure to check this out with the broker.

Tights Spreads

Spreads are one of the costs in trading, so it is important to make sure you go to a broker with low spreads. However, don’t fall for any gimmicky marketing, spreads need to be all the time you are interested in trading, not just for an hour day! Look towards ECN brokers, using the ECN feeds they get their prices direct from big banks and liquidity providers. Around 70 institutions feed into the ECN pricing feed meaning the best price and tightest spread is guaranteed.

Professional Platform

Whilst whether you like a platform or not can often be fairly subjective, however there are a few things to consider. Is it easy to navigate? Are the charts useful? Does it look professional? Does it crash often? This is extremely important, the last thing that you want is to be trading and the platform crashes. You are putting your money into this broker so you need to be comfortable with the tools that they give you. This platform is what will enable you to put your trading plan into practice and you want this to be the case in as few steps as possible.

Client Services

The forex industry is infamous for its poor customer services. Have you tried to call the broker in question? Were you able to get through quickly? Have you tried emailing them? Did they respond with in an acceptable timeframe? Do you feel you have been dealing with representatives that were helpful and informed? If you were less than impressed by the responses that you received think twice before putting your money with this broker.

Stop Losses

Nowadays almost all brokers offer the possibility of using stop losses. However, there are a few out there still which don’t. Just double check that this is a tool they provide you with as without risk management your account will almost certainly fail.

 

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The Death of Bitcoin?

The death of Bitcoin?

After such a phenomenal year last year, which saw Bitcoin hit a high of almost $20,000, 2018 has been very different for the cryptocurrency. After beginning the year close to $17.,000, bitcoin has tumbled, losing almost $10,000 in the space of just a few short months.

While media euphoria and fear of missing out pushed Bitcoin higher last year; current concerns about regulation, security, and more recently, withdrawal of support from the tech giants, has sent Bitcoin 55% lower this year.

Increased regulation

Concerns over increased regulation or all out banning of cryptocurrencies has weighed on sentiment for Bitcoin. China and South Korea have been particularly vocal over their concerns regarding bitcoin and have promised a clamp down in regulation. Regulation concerns are unlikely to disappear any time soon, although the market may become more relaxed over increased regulation as it could help the cryptocurrency go more mainstream.

Security concerns

Security issues have been a concern for cryptocurrency traders since the beginning. This year a theft of half a billion dollars’ worth of bitcoins from an exchange in Japan, highlighted these concerns. Japanese regulators have since clamped down on practices in Japan, resulting in 5 exchanges being closed down this year.

Tech giants pull advertising

More recently Bitcoin has been hit by big names in tech turning their backs on the crypto currency. Google, followed by Facebook and then Twitter, have all announced that they will be banning cryptocurrency advertising. By doing so they are curtailing the online promotion of initial coin offerings, ICO’s which have become a popular way to raise funds. This action by the tech giants has raised questions over the legitimacy of cryptocurrencies – if the tech giants don’t want anything to do with Bitcoin, this could be a good time to sell out?

The death cross

Whilst the fundamentals are stacking up against Bitcoin, technically Bitcoin is also looking very shaky as Bitcoin approaches the death cross. A death cross is when the 50-day moving average moves below the 200-day moving average. This is considered a clear bearish signal, which traders often see as a flash warning. Once a price moves below the death cross, algorithms and traders alike view an asset or stock as unreliable.

It’s worth keeping in mind that Bitcoin has a very short history to use to assess chart patterns. The last time that Bitcoin experienced a death cross pattern was in September 2015, following which the price actually doubled from $250 to $500 by early November. This just goes to show that as the death cross is a lagging indicator, the pattern is not always quite as negative as it sounds.

Where to trade Bitcoin

Trading Bitcoin through a Forex broker has many advantages, not just security! One such advantage is the ability to short Bitcoin, meaning you can make money even if the price drops. However always make sure that you trade through a regulated broker.

Vantage FX is a world-renowned forex broker, that offers its clients the ability to trade Bitcoin. Most importantly, it is regulated by the Australian Securities & Investments Commission.

 

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A History of Forex: How Online Forex Trading Developed

Ancient Currency Trading

Forex trading dates back centuries. Ever since man started developing coins out of precious metals, currency trading has gained pace. It was first practiced in Egypt and after that, it was practiced by Babylonians with the help of paper notes.

Modern Forex trading is much different as compared to the initial primitive currency trading.

Initial Evolution of Online Forex Trading

Online trading only made its debut after 1994. Earlier, Forex trading was mostly just limited to the bigger institutions and investors did not have any access to it. Only these big institutions could muster up the capital which was needed to trade as a low amount of leverage was provided during those days.

After the advent of the online trading platform, however, it has become much more accessible retail traders also.

ForexSignal.com has been providing Forex services to the individual trader since 1998, and we worked directly with one of the first individual Forex trader brokers, FXCM, since they were founded in 1999.

See a list of our favorite Forex brokers.

Regulatory Changes

In 2000, the commodity monetization act ensured that new regulations were built pertaining to online Forex trading. That is when the security derivatives, as well as the currency derivatives, were very easily traded.

in 2009 after the stock-market crash, CFTC and the NFA implemented what is now known as the NFA compliance rule 2-43. Due to these new rules, in 2010 the margin requirements to trade Forex were drastically increased.

By 2010, 10% of the total Forex trading was now being done by the retail traders. This 10% amounted to $150 billion per day. In 2011, the NFA proposed the maximum leverage options which can be facilitated to the retail traders. When you look into the leverages which are provided even after the new rules by the NFA, you would realize that it is more than sufficient for most of the retail traders. Ever since 2011, there haven’t been any major changes to the rules and regulations governing the online Forex trading platforms.

In April 2013, the online forex trading market swelled to $5.09 trillion in daily volumes. The online forex trading by retail traders reached an all-time high of $282 billion in daily volume in 2016.

Trading Forex Today

From its early modern beginnings in 1994 all the way up to today, the online Forex trading platforms have flourished not just for the institutional traders but also for the retail traders and have become much more accessible than ever.

The most popular trading platform used today is MetaTrader4. Find out why.

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A History Of MT4, and Why the World Won’t Convert to MT5

meta-iconWhat is MT4?

MetaTrader4, which we will refer to in this article simply as MT4, is an electronic trading platform generally employed by online retail foreign exchange speculative traders. It was developed by MetaQuotes Software and published in 2005. The software is licensed to forex brokers who offer the software to their customers.

History of MT4

MetaQuotes Software Corporation was established in Russia in the year 2000. Its first product, the FX charts, was online charting software that is used for margin foreign exchange trading for Windows PCs. Its gained immediate popularity among traders because of its convenience, speed, functionality and low cost compared to other specialized software that was available at that time. The triumph of FX charts motivated MetaQuotes to commence a new, more ambitious project referred to as the MetaQuote trading platform.

Although it bore a few similarities to FX charts, it was actually a new program, written completely from scratch, with more features than its predecessor. In particular, the new platform came with its programming language, the MetaQuotes Language (MQL), which enabled the users to program their trading strategies. It turned out to be even larger success than FX charts, and before long they were working on a new program referred to Metatrader.

Metatrader added a range of features to the MetaQuotes platform trading, and was again re-written from scratch to enable it to be faster, memory intensive and less processor. In addition to being able to trade Forex and CFDs, it could also be employed to trade futures and came with a new version of the programming language called MQL2. Further improvement and development followed, including the first mobile version of MetaTrader for PDA Palm, which was an immediate success with traders.

For the next version of MetaTrader, MetaQuotes aimed to develop MT4, on the basis that it was the company‘s fourth trading platform. Again, this was completely written from scratch, and it took almost two years to complete. Even before its launch in 2005, several brokers had decided to switch over to the new platform, and soon many more brokers were rushing to switch to MT4, which rapidly became the new standard for foreign exchange trading.

MT4 was developed with MQL4, which is significantly improved programming language used to create indicators and Expert Advisors (EAs), and is largely responsible for the explosion of interest in automated trading.

Popularity

Today, MT4 is the industry standard platform for online Forex, CFD, and the future trading; and has been chosen by almost all the leading brokerage firms, including FXCM, AvaTrade and Pepperstone. In fact, it has become so popular that even MetaQuotes themselves could not convert traders to their newer and improved platform, MetaTrader5 (MT5)

MT5

MT5 was released in 2010 with a host of new features and improvements, as well as the ability to trade stocks. However, the acceptance by clients and brokers has been very slow, and it has so far failed to match the success of its predecessor.

Here’s why:

3rd Party Applications:

There is an extensive community of trading programs that has built up around MT4 and the popularity of third-party applications such as Expert Advisor (EA) and Indicator software programs that are not compatible on the new MT5 platform.

The number one reason why millions use MT4

By comparison, the range of third-party programs for MT5 is quite low, which reduces its usefulness as a tool for automated trading.

The Future of Mt4

Unless MetaQuotes can create an effective bridge from MT4 to MT5 without having to redo all the current 3rd party applications, it is hard to accept the possibility that MT4 will be discontinued or that users will be required to upgrade to MT5 any time soon.

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700+ Pips and the JPY Keeps On Giving

Did You Get Your JPY Slice?

Hopefully you were also on the Yen train these last few days. Our Trend Trader system once again entered positions last week in anticipation of a strengthening JPY against the majors.

Over the last 7 years, the EUR/JPY, GBP/JPY, and AUD/JPY has consistently yielded the rewards.

If you were not on the Yen train with us, join the Trend Trader family today and enjoy the ride with us!

Below are screenshots of a few of the trades we closed on April 4th.

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