One of the important steps in strating forex trading is installing various forex trading platforms and see which one is the best. If you are planning to use automated trading system, this step is still important since your system still need a tool to connect to the 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 capabilities ranged widely depend on the creator and the purpose; some of them are built solely for specific market, the other can handle forex, futures, and CFD markets.
Usually, forex trading platforms are given free by the brokers when you use their services. This can be in software form that you must install in your computer or an online platform. Nowadays, these broker’s trading platform has pretty comprehensive features at the minimum all of them are support basic charting which is the essential factor of forex market analysis.
Using a free trading platform from your broker is not always available option though; for example: if you are using Expert Advisor (EA)/forex robot, usually it can’t run at the broker’s trading platform, so you have to use another popular platform: Meta Trader (widely known as M͌).
So, what do you need from these forex trading platforms? These are a few things that a platform needs to have:
1. Easy accessibility to your account details as well as orders summary. The important thing is it should display real time value of your account based on your current open position. Example: if you close your position at the current price, your account will get profit/loss by 20 pips.
2. User friendly interface to get to your preferable currency pair. 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 get the right entry/exit price, you won’t have time to click various menu or buttons across the platform interface just to execute an order. The means to execute order has to be accessible by various ways.
4. Quick and accurate to execute order. Some forex trading platforms can’t fulfill these requirements on a steady basis. Typically, the issue is the trading platform won’t execute the order that you have specified; it will display the ‘waiting′ status while the market price keep moving thus making 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 will have various modifications in their forex trading platforms in order to make you lose a lot. Sometimes it will not execute your stop loss order with various excuses afterwards. If you have experienced this repeatedly, just withdraw your fund and find another broker.
Scam brokerage aside, there are a bunch of good forex trading platforms available from honest forex brokers just do your reasearch when selecting a broker and you will be okay. The interface of the platforms might different for each broker, but so long as it’s fulfill the four requirements that I’ve mentioned previously, it ought to serve you well.
Excellent trading platform is useless if the broker is dishonest. Check the list of fair broker at top forex broker. Additionally, see how to recognize a corrupt broker in distinguish online forex trading broker.