How to tell if your broker is reliable in the foreign exchange market? What factors should be paid attention to to reduce the probability of encountering black platforms?
Is it legally regulated
The biggest trust endorsement of foreign exchange traders is the regulatory agency, and supervision is the most direct judgment to measure the reliability of foreign exchange traders. Be careful to identify whether it is a formal regulatory agency. Many traders will use some false regulations to fool novices. (You can go to brokersview.com to check the reputation of the regulator)
More influential regulators include the National Futures Association (NFA), the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA), the Australian Securities and Investments Commission (ASIC), the Swiss Financial Market Supervisory Authority (FINMA), and Vanuatu (VFSC). Basically, there is no regulatory effect.
Security of Account Funds
Traders generally have two bank accounts: one is a business account, which is mainly used to store company operating funds, such as employee salaries, management expenses, etc.; the other is a customer account, which is used to store customers’ trading funds. We have to choose a broker who separates the two accounts, such as handing over client funds to a third-party fund management company or using trustee services.
transaction fee
To use a straight-through broker, you generally only need to pay a certain margin according to the leverage ratio, and no additional fees are required. Be careful to prevent brokers from charging other handling fees. If you choose the form of ECN, you need to pay commissions, each standard lot (lot (Lot) is the unit of transaction quantity in foreign exchange transactions, and one lot represents 100,000 base currency in foreign exchange transactions) is about 10-20 US dollars.
Compare spreads
Straight-through brokers use spreads to make money, try to choose brokers with smaller fixed spreads, the smaller the spread, the lower the cost, but be aware that there may be brokers who take advantage of everyone’s psychology of pursuing low spreads to induce account opening, broker safety is the first , and then investigate the issue of interests.
Watch out for slippage
Because of the high liquidity of foreign exchange transactions, slippage (referring to the gap between the price placed by the customer and the actual transaction price) is inevitable, but some traders will do malicious slippage, so pay attention to whether the slippage of your trading order is abnormal. After selecting a regulated platform, investors can first deposit a small amount of funds to test the stability of the platform operation, and then increase the investment after confirming that the transaction operation will not be affected.
Trading platform deposit and withdrawal
Whether the trading platform tools provided by traders are stable, convenient and easy to use. The order execution speed of the account, whether the deposit and withdrawal are real-time. Generally, it is best to get the money into the account immediately, and it is better to withdraw the money within 1-3 working days.
Diversity of currency pairs
Choose a broker who can provide a variety of currency pairs, and be aware of the limitations of some broker platform trading varieties.
customer service
Is it possible to provide 24-hour customer service, and when you have a temporary problem, can you contact the dealer to solve the problem quickly.
Make more use of network circles
You can use search engines to search for relevant information about traders to check whether there are any bad reports and comments; you can also go to some industry communication circles and forums to consult their word-of-mouth conditions.