Brokers always enjoy the sweet spot, no matter if the traders are making profits or booking losses. Brokers will have their share of commission in either of the cases. It’s no coincidence that the forex market is the largest financial market in the world, trading on fluctuations in foreign currencies has a lot of potentials and a lot of traders are already banking on it.
To trade in forex you need to have one of the top brokers in the world, who’ll act on your behalf in the international markets. However, finding a reputed broker is the toughest task, especially for beginners given the plethora of options available of both regulated and non-regulated brokers. For that one needs to have a basic understanding of forex trading regulations, platforms, commission, fees, documentary requirements, and a lot more.
However, to ease this process for you, we have stitched up a checklist to help you find the most appropriate forex broker.
Trading Platform & Software offered:
The trading platform is going to be your gateway to the financial markets, thus it should be easy to adapt and operate.
Reputed brokers will always provide you with several trading platform options to choose from, and in most cases, trading platforms are provided by third-party solution providers.
Nevertheless, the availability of multiple trading platforms should be checked because traders have different requirements and one platform cannot fulfill all those needs.
For instance, some traders prefer trading from desktops while others prefer to use different smartphones for trading.
Demo accounts:
Availability of demo accounts is a big bonus for newbie users who are new to the domain of trading and want to learn before they infuse real capital.
Demo accounts also help customers to get acquainted with the broker and get a feel of the interface.
It’s also a tip for the users to first open a demo account with the broker you have shortlisted and then only proceed with a full-fledged account.
Reviews:
Customers are best placed and often speak the bare truth. Make sure you read reviews about forex brokers from various sources and find out what other users have to say about the broker.
Though this should not be the defining criteria, it should form a part of your due diligence process. Positive reviews hint towards the reliability and genuineness of the forex brokers.
Currency pairs offered:
Ultimately you want trading options and a broker that offers the maximum currency pairs should be weighed higher.
Though there are numerous currency pairs that experience forex trading only a few of them are never short of liquidity and thus are preferred by all. EUR/USD and GBP/USD, USD/JPY, and USD/CHF are the most traded currency pairs. Thus make sure your broker offers these pairs. Moreover, you should also check if the broker offers the pairs you are comfortable trading in or not.
IC Markets review:
Founded in 2007 it is an Australian Financial Services License (AFSL) registered broker and offers more than 3583 tradable instruments.
For its commission-based accounts, IC Markets is dedicated to offering the lowest costs.
Currently, IC Markets controls 3 regulatory entities, a European entity based in Cyprus, an Australian entity, and, an offshore entity based in Seychelles.
For traders, it offers 3 types of accounts with varying features. The first one is their commission-free Standard account that allows only spreads. The commission-based Raw Spread accounts and their cTrader Raw Spread accounts.
IC Markets keeps in mind the portability of their software and thus offers mobile apps for the three of their platforms.
You will find the Android apps and iOS apps for MetaTrader 4 (MT4), MetaTrader 5 (MT5), and cTrader.
It offers 60 currency pairs as of now and the maximum leverage that is offered is up to 500.
Though one small shortcoming with IC Markets is that it has minimum deposit criteria of $200 which might work against them as many new traders don’t look to risk $200 upfront.
To compensate, the broker charges 0 fees for withdrawals and deposits, and there are no minimum criteria for withdrawals too.
Overall IC Markets appears to be a safe pick for forex traders across trading categories.
