Check out these details in your forex broker prospects and see who provides the best services:

Check out their leverage

Bigger leverage means bigger chance to make more profits, but it also signifies greater risk when your analysis fails. Leverage is certainly an important element, but don’t choose a broker given that they provide bigger leverage compared to the others.

In my opinion, 1:200 leverage is good enough. A number of foreign exchange brokers even offer as much as 1:400. Well, it is your call. Just make sure to do a simple calculation before you take a position and put your stop loss appropriately to avert being wasted by the market movement.

Check out their spreads

For long term trader who aims for huge profits, another 1-2 pips in spread is not your biggest concern, but for day trader or scalper, tiny spread can really make their life easier. Based upon their spreads, fx brokers can be broken down in two groups:

- Fixed spread; this kind of broker employs fixed spread and obtain profits from that.
- Floating spread; this type of forex broker give you real spread (which constantly changing) and charge commissions for each of your trade.

Floating spread might appears lower, but it isn’t always more rewarding. Open a practice account and test them out yourself. How many times do you get spread that less than the common fixed spread? Does the floating spread well worth the commissions?

Test their trading platform

Trading platform is a solid reason to choose a broker and dump the other. A number of trading platforms are more reliable and more sophisticated than the others.In this case, you should put in priority on forex brokers that provide such trading platforms.

It’s impossible to find out until you try them, so I suggest you open a practice account and test a lot of them. I would suggest the well known MT(MetaTrader) as my primary choice, but several broker’s trading platforms can be very convenience to use.

Minimum deposit

Although I don’t think that $50 can get you anywhere in currency trading, some people might have different opinions. They might think it is great for practice or training purpose where you have real money on the line. This way, you can learn a little about trading psychology and stay calm when the market goes at the wrong way. Of course, you may not be as calm if it was $1,000 at risk, but it’s an excellent start anyway.

More about fx broker and how to identify a scam brokerage in forex broker with online service . Don’t forget to read trading systems in forex trading to discover how to get yourself a rewarding system (obviously, after you discover your broker).

There are many aspects in comparing forex brokers, but I think these 4 are the biggest concern. Find out the one that can accommodate your need the most and your trading life will be easier. Of course, don’t forget to run several tests to make sure that they aren’t scam brokerage.

The expert mode is a standard trading platform with one click order execution and a charting function that offer a variety of indicators. It also provides stop loss and take profit form right next to the order button with numerous details such as news, calendar, open trades, etc right under it, thus making easy navigation throughout the entire platform. Hedging is also allowed, but you can’t use scalping strategy here. If you are a novice trader too, take a look at how to trade forex safely to discover things to prioritize first in order to last long in forex trading world.
Features Summary

1. Trading Platform; user friendly trading platform with everything within reach quickly. The visual mode is created for novice trader in order to make forex learning less difficult while the professional mode is providing adequate features for advanced traders.

2. Leverage; provide maximum 400:1 leverage, which is pretty high.

3. Commision; eToro charges no commission or overnight fees. The company is compensated through the difference between buy and sell price.

4. Help; eToro provides its traders multi lingual Live Customer Support through phone and live chat from Monday to Friday between 06:00 and 22:00 GMT. Should you need them before or after those hours, send email or leave a message in the live chat section.

5. Spread; the lowest spread is 2 pips for USD/JPY. For EUR/USD the spread is 3 pips.

6. Deposit and Withdrawal; uncomplicated deposit and withdrawals via credit cards, PayPal, NETeller, Western Union, Wire Transfer, and so on. Minimum deposit is $50.

7. Practice Account; allow practice account.

8. Safety; eToro employ industry standard Secure Socket Layering (SSL) technology for encryption of data and doesn’t share clients data with any other institutions.

9. Unique feature: eToro has great community and each week they hold “Trading Challenge”, an even where the trader with the biggest profit gain extra cash bonus from eToro.

10. Currency Pairs; allow 16 currency pairs. Additionally, they support commodity trades such as gold and silver.

11. Forex Robot; eToro doesn’t allow forex robot or Meta Trader, thus make it impossible for forex robot user to participate in eToro.

Conclusion
The two best things about eToro are they got novice friendly trading platform and got a helpful community. The visual style trading platform and the live support will make novice trader feel comfortable while sharing information and story in the community will make the trader stay encouraged and learn more. Put simply, either you’re a novice or a professional, eToro is a great place to trade currencies and honing your trading skills.

Visit eToro

The Basic: You Always Sell and Buy Simultaneously

One of the most confusing ideas for people who aren’t informed about forex trading is the idea of “sell high buy low” to gain profit. To put it differently, you “sell” first, then “buy” later. Just how could I sell something if I do not have anything in my possession?

It will be easier to explain it with illustrations, so here it is:

You might have seen this before: EURUSD = 1.3578. It implies that 1 EUR is equal to 1.3578 USD.

- If you buy EURUSD at 1.3578, it means you RECEIVE 1 EUR and PAY 1.3578 USD. Quite simply, you buy EUR and sell USD at the same time.

- If you sell EURUSD at 1.3578, it means you PAY 1 EUR and RECEIVE 1.3578 USD. In other words, you sell EUR and buy USD simultaneously.

The Concept of Pips

A “pip” (percentage in point) is the smallest movement that a currency pair can have.  Example: present GBPUSD is 1.7657, then it moves up 1 pip, it will turn into 1.7658. To put it simple, you need to simply watch the decimal number. Commonly, 1 pip is 0.0001, but there are cases such as USDJPY where 1 pip is 0.01.

Here’s another illustration:

- EURUSD is 1.4300, then it moves down 10 pips; thus: 1.4300 – (10 x 0.0001) = 1.4290.

- USDJPY is 101.35, then it moves up 20 pips, tus: 101.35   (20 x 0.01) = 101.55.

The Concept of Leverage

Leverage is a system that enables common people who don’t have large amount of capital to be involved in currency trading. Quite simply, your broker “lent” you the capital that you need to back up your trades.

Example: with 1:300 leverage and USD 500 deposit, you can trade 300 x 100 = USD 150,000 worth of currencies. Look into the facts of a forex broker with competitive spread and leverage in another look at FBS broker .

The Concept of Lots

In forex trading, you trade in “lots”.  Commonly, the regular size for a lot is 100,000 for any base currency.  In other words, if you deposit USD 500 at a forex broker that offer 1:400 leverage, then you can trade 500 x 400 = 200,000 worth of currencies or 2 lots. Depend on your broker, they could also offer you 10,000 lot size.

The Concept of Profit and Loss

It is exactly like any other trades on the planet, you’ll need to buy at low price and sell at high price. The only difference here is that you could sell first when the price is high, then buy later when the price has fell. As I have explained above, it is possible since you always buy and sell simultaneously.

The profit/loss formula for every currency pair with 4 decimal (such as EURUSD) is:

(pip difference x 0.0001) x lot size x lot volume

Note:

- Pip difference is sell price – buy price

- The result is in the right side of currency pair. Illustration: in GBPUSD, the result is in USD.

Example:

Buy 1 lot of EURUSD at 1.4500, then sell it at 1.4550

Pip difference: (sell price – buy price)/0.0001 = (1.4550 – 1.4500)/0.001 = 50 pips (profit).

Profit = (50 x 0.0001) x 100,000 x 1 = USD 500.

Mastering forex trading basics might seem difficult, but it can save you and tour money in the long run. An easier way to do it is simply open a demo account, then have a step by step lessons that you can practice immediately at the demo account. By using this method, you’ll find it easier to comprehend the lessons and concepts. Have a look at currency trading course for free step by step course that cover the fundamental basics of forex trading.

New to forex global trading? Not a problem, if you prepared to learn there are many reliable forex guide over the web where you can start your lesson. Actually, trading forex for amateur is a lot easier now than 10-20 years ago. Here’s the reason:

1. You trade through the web, which mean you can access it from pretty much everywhere in the world, even when you’re looking after your child or waiting for shoppers in your local shop.

2. You may get all precise market data that you need and credible tips easily from the internet. These data will make it more convenient for you to determine whether a transaction is rewarding or not.

3. There are lots of trusted software that will do the hard work for you like analyzing market, giving signal for the best time and position to trade, and even executing order for you! Check the details of a rather simple strategies that can be applied to create steady profits at another look at forex wealth builder .

4. A $10,000 account size is not mandatory, you could open a micro account with as little as $25. Of course, you simply can’t expect lots of profit from this.

5. I understand that forex global trading also has high level of risk and might not suitable for all investor. By employing a practice account you can get about $50,000 in your equity and start experimenting on trading with real market data, prices, charts, and advices. Read the facts of the best recommended forex brokers where you can start your experiment on .

Even if you have got your arms around it and start trading with live accoun. It’s really advisable to own one or two demo account to master as well as experiment with a variety of new strategies.

For example: when you have accustomed to trade based upon technical analysis such as charts and make a profit, you might want to open a practice account and test trading based upon news or rumor. If it has great result, it is possible to combine those two and check the result in your other demo account before try it in your real account.

Another important thing in forex global trading is understanding the currency pair that you are keen on like EUR/USD, AUD/USD, or EUR/GBP. Every one of them has unique characteristics and demands different strategies to achieve profits.

Is it more complicated that you may think? Yes, it is. I’ll be lying to you if I say you can master it overnight. However, it is the FACT that mastering and gaining profit from forex trading is easier than before as there are tons of lessons and softwares that you can help you. Note that if you decide to invest a little of your time, effort, and money to master forex global trading, the reward in the future is huge. Begin your success in trading forex by grabbing cost-free trading course on learn currency trading online and find out what you should and shouldn’t do so that you can create profits from the forex market.

There are many options available if you’re looking for forex signal service, but beware that some of them are scams and following these scammers’ signals will only lead to disaster. Here are some useful tips when selecting a good signal provider:

1. Do not rely on information from forums
While forums can provide a good place to ask questions and get answers, the answers are not always from credible source. You’ll always find negative and positive reviews about a service, but you’ll never know the story behind it.

Most novices in forex trader always expect quick and big profits and when they can’t achieve it from the signals, they start posting negative reviews all over the net. Sometimes, they experienced two loss trades and immediately claim that the system don’t work; note that if you have a trading system that can give you 10 winning trades for every 15 trades, it is not impossible to have 2-3 loss trades at the beginning.

2. Protect your investment
In every signal, usually a signal provider will give you take profit and stop-loss info, so you don’t have to worry about that; however, managing your money is something that you must do by yourself. As stated above, it is not impossible to begin your trade with losing streak. This is maybe due to the signal’s provider incompetence or you just selected a bad time to start trading. Either way, it is a wise decision to know your own limit by not throwing all your money into single trade.

3. Monthly fee
When you subscribe for a forex signal service, you’ll be charged with monthly fee. Calculate your monthly cost and expected profits carefully before making any decision. Many signal services fees are around $100/month, so you’ll want at least that much profits per month. In this case, using $100 mini account clearly isn’t a good idea, so if you can only spare that much, it may be better to switch to another method. Check the available alternatives at top profitable system.

4.Practice account
Like other trading system, you’ll need to test the signals in a demo account before putting your money on the line. This may seem like wasting time and money for the monthly fee, but it is better than losing your entire funds in a live account. AvaFX is a good place to start a demo account; see why I recommend them at a review of AvaFX.

If you’re a trader that won’t let a forex robot manage your trades but don’t want to analyze the market on your own, forex signal service is the best solution. If you’re going to use this service, make sure you’ve prepared for it and test it first to see how it performs against real market movement. Check  Forex Automoney for the most recommended forex signals.

Nevertheless, if you’re not familiar with forex trading at all, you still have to start with theories such as definition of leverage, pips, currency pair, etc. But since the motto of a good forex trading tutorial is “make the student do it”, here’s what you should do:

1. Open a demo account in an online forex broker that uses MetaTrader4 trading platform. Here are some suggestions: AvaFX, TadawulFX, and FXCM. Note that AvaFX and FXCM offer two types of trading platform, so make sure you choose MetaTrader4 (also known as MT4) for when you decide to use EA later. Check AvaFX review to see why I highly recommend AvaFX.

2. After you install the platform, log in and check the platform interface. With the trading platform before you, it’ll be easier to explain something and you can test it right away.

On the top left section, you’ll find the currency pair table. The “symbol” column consist of currency pairs such as USDCHF (US Dollar and Swiss Franc), GBPUSD (British Pound Sterling and US Dollar), EURUSD (Euro and US Dollar), and so on.

The “bid” (AKA “sell”) columns beside it contain the exact amount of the second currency that you will gain when you sell one unit of the first currency. Example: sell EURUSD at bid rate 1.362 means you spend EUR 1 to gain USD 1.362.

The “ask” (also known as “buy”) column represents how much you must spend the second currency to gain the first currency. Example: buy EURUSD at ask rate 1.378 means you spend USD 1.378 to gain EUR 1.

Now right click on one of the currency pair and click “new order”. A new order window will pop out and you’ll see two big “sell” and “buy” button. At this point, you don’t have to implement any forex trading strategies, so just try to click one of them and you’ll get a confirmation message that you have executed the order successfully. You can check your trade information at the “trade” tab at the bottom of your MT4 platform.

“Forcing” the student to test and practice the lessons themselves is a must in a good forex trading tutorial; this way, they can grab the concept being taught faster. By familiarizing yourself with your trading platform interface and it features, you’ve understood how forex trading works. I recommend that you claim free forex trading course that utilizing tutorial method in a MT4 trading platform at forex trading course.

How do they decide when to open or close positions? Like all software in the world do: executing a set of rules from its creator. In this case, the rules represent a trading system. These rules are what matter if you’re looking for the best forex EA, but today’s market is full of scammers, so you need to be very careful and do a few things:

1. Is the creator confident enough to offer 100% money back guarantee?
The guarantee can indicate how much confidence does the creator has for his product; furthermore, this also show that he won’t just take your money and leave. Nevertheless, you also must realize that most EA now are sold under certain marketing network that literally “force” them to offer the money back guarantee, so while the money back guarantee is a good sign, it is not a guarantee that you’ve got the best forex  EA.

2. Test the EA performance on a demo account
Test the EA against real market movement is something that you can’t skip as there are too many EA that can prove their performance in the backtest but fail miserably during real trades.

With the 100% money back guarantee, usually you’ll have around 60 days or so to test it in a demo account. In this case, unless you have your own PC/laptop that on 24/5 to host it, you may have to rent a space in a VPS. Remember that have it run in a PC that keep turned on and off will greatly cut its performance. For the demo account, you can open $100,000 demo account at AvaFX; learn more about them at AvaFX review.

Another factor to consider when testing EA in a dummy account is waiting for at least a month before judge its performance. Based on my experience, there are EA that trade aggressively during the day (backed by scalper trading system), but there is also EA that wait patiently for higher profit opportunity. With the second type, you may have to wait for a few days before it makes its first trade.

Either way, if you see your balance grow at the end of the month, then it is a good sign. If you aren’t satisfy with the growth, you may want to test more aggressive settings and see how it turns out at the end of the second month. If your balance is not growing at all or even reduced, you know what to do.

Identifying the best forex EA is not something that can be done with one or two month testing. If your EA has been shown good performance during two months test period, you may want to test it for another month or using mini account to see if it performs well in different market condition. I suggest you check best forex robot for great EA recommendation.

These are some factors that need to be considered when you opened a currency trading account:

1. Leverage
Leverage means the use of various financial instruments or borrowed capital, such as margin, to increase the potential return of an investment. In forex market, it means a loan that is provided to an investor by the broker that is handling his forex account.
Example: Leverage 200:1 where 1 standard lot is USD10,000. In other words, you will have to deposit USD10,000/200= USD50 in order to open 1 standard lot.
Difference in leverage can means different profit opportunity, so make sure you have checked this factor.

2. Spreads
Spread is the different between bids and ask price. Ask is the price when you buy while bid is the price when you sell. Different trading companies offer different spread and took compensation from it. Some other brokerages will charge commissions for each trade in addition from this spread. The higher the spread, the harder it will get to gain profit, so this is an important factor to check.

3. Currencies to Trade
Usually, standard trading account allow major currency pairs such as USD/JPY or EUR/USD, but other currency pairs such as EUR/CAD or EUR/AUD can also offer large profits and you may want to give it a try. It is only a matter of taste; if you don’t find the other currency pairs appealing, then it doesn’t matter.

4. Good Customer Support
It is important to know that you are deal with a real company with real person behind it so you will want to have direct contact means such as live chat or telephones. This is important to solve your problem as quickly as possible; sending email and waiting the response for days is not how a credible company works.

5. Software
After you open a currency trading account, there are brokers that will give you the trading or analysis software as one of their features, some others won’t. I’ll just go with the free ones.

6. Funding Option
Most of the companies are accepting funding in many major ways; some others only receive funding via paypal and bank. Use whichever fit your preferences and convenience.

7. Have Practice/Dummy/Demo Trading Account
In a practice account, you can get access to the trading platforms and start practicing online trading. This demo account can also be used in other ways:
-To facilitate your strategies/trading signals/forex robots testing. Since demo account also uses real market data, you can get accurate test results.
-While using the practice account, you can see if the trading platform is easy to use or not. Some platforms are more difficult to use than the others.

8. Support Many Languages
If English is not your first language, having an account with your native language can make everything easier.

Opening a currency trading account doesn’t has to be difficult or complicated; just make sure the account support all that you need in currency trading. I suggest you read 4xp review for this matter; I’m really confident that it can solve your problem.

A trading account that gives you many benefits will be wasted if you don’t have a solid system to back up your trading activities; check the best trading system and you’ll have everything that you need to start squeezing profits from the forex market.

A trading platform is a tool that used by the trader to access forex market and do various other things such as execute orders, analyzing charts, view live price, etc. The other features ranged widely depend on the creator and the purpose; some of them are built solely for certain market, the other cover forex, futures, and CFD markets.

Usually, forex trading platforms are given free by the brokers when you use their services. It can be comes in two forms: online platform or a software that you must download and install to your computer. These days, these broker’s trading platform has quite complete features; at the very least they are all support basic charting which is the bread and butter of forex market analysis.

Due to various circumtances, you can’t always use trading platform from your broker; for instance: if you utilize Expert Advisor (EA) or forex robot, you must have it run under Meta Trader 4 (MT4), a popular trading platform.

So, what do you need from these forex trading platforms? These are some things that a platform should have:

1. Easy access to your account information as well as orders summary. One of the important feature is it must display real time value of your account by calculating current price and your open positions. Example: if you close your position at the current price, your account will get profit/loss by 20 pips.

2. Easy access to the currency pair that you want. It should give you real time valid updates on the currency movement and quick live chart for analysis purpose.

3. Easy to execute orders. When the market has hit the right price, you don’t have time to clicking various button and link across the screen just to make an entry. It should be easily found everywhere.

4. Quick and accurate to execute order. These are problems that experienced by many traders that use various low quality forex trading platforms. Usually, the problem is the trading platform won’t execute the order that you have given; it will display the ‘waiting’ status while the market price keep moving and make you lose potential profits.

This problem can be caused by connection issues which sometimes also experienced by a good broker, but it can also caused by something worse: you are using scam brokers trading platform. These brokers are designing their forex trading platforms so it will make it hard for you to have a winning trade or proper risk management. Sometimes it will not execute your stop loss order with various excuses afterwards. If you have experienced this again and again, just withdraw your account and find another broker.

To help you with this issues, I’ve setup a list of the most trusted broker on the net. Since a trading platform usually comes in a package with the broker, it will provide a good solution for you. Find the info at best forex broker.

Conclusion
In some ways, choosing a trading platform is the same as choosing a forex broker; a good broker will provide you with a good trading platform. The forex market is already ferocious as it is, you don’t need your trading platform or forex broker works against you. By having a good trading platform, you have helped yourself to protect your investment.

Based from my own experience, my #1 recommendation is a forex broker with the world leading trading platform that support forex robot at 4XP review.

If you implement day trading strategy, you only need to analyze the market for the day, make quick decisions, and make many trades in that day. A few of these trades will be winning trades while some other will end up as losing trades. With a good system, you can minimize the loss and maximize the profits, so even if you have more losing trades than winning trades, you will still make profits at the end of the day. Your philosophy is “tomorrow is a whole new day”.

Scalper is a solid example of a trader who uses forex day trading system heavily. Scalper is a day trader who can notice every small movements in the market that has profit potential. His goal is to open as many positions as possible where each position will generate small profits.

It may seems very demanding to make a stream of quicke executed trades, but nowdays you don’t really have to do it on your own. Like any other strategies, day trading is running with a set of rules, so it is possible to have a good forex day trading system that will do the analysis, signals, or even the trades for you.

Most of these systems are using short time frames chart like fifteen minutes or five minutes chart as their decisions base. The technique is combined by various indicators, general and neural applications, and back testing features to make even better prediction. But relying solely on technical analysis is not how a good trader works; using fundamental analysis is also important to make order decision.

Some day trading system users don’t believe in fundamental analysis application in short term trading, but there are cases where some news can create large influence to the market in just a few minutes and that is where a day trading system user can get his profits.

Example: Unemployment Claims, Existing Home Sales, and UK Retail Sales are some news that can cause high volatility in the market where a right entry will bring you high profits within minutes or hours.

A good forex day trading system can be created if the creators understand the crucial elements of day trading such as precise analytical software and multiple news sources to rely on. When all the prerequisites have been met, even build a scalper robot is not impossible.

Read about a forex trading robot that utilize scalping method very efficiently at FAP Turbo Review. Already know about this robot? Boost its scalping mode by applying some tweaking! Learn about it at FAP Turbo Expert Guide Review