What to look for when choosing a good Forex broker

02/21/16 • 6 min

Podcast: What to look for when choosing a good Forex broker In this video: 00:23 – Are you looking for a good Forex broker? 01:00 – What makes a broker different? 01:30 – The brokers I personally use and why 02:00 – Who to use if you live in the US 03:01 – Ensuring your funds are safe 03:15 – Use a 5pm EST start of day chart 03:50 – Tight spreads are needed throughout the entire day 05:02 – It’s your decision, your money – choose wisely 05:40 – The JPY strengthened all week 06:04 - Live trading webinar with my clients – great trading results achieved. What qualities should you look for when choosing a good Forex broker? Let's talk about that and more right now. Hi, Forex Traders. Andrew Mitchem here, the Forex Trading Coach. Today is Friday, the 19th of February. Are you looking for a good Forex broker? I've had a lot of emails come through this week, people are looking for a broker to use and coming to me saying, "Andrew, can you make some suggestions of some good, reliable, Forex brokers? I keep reading reviews about these brokers, I'm a little bit concerned about where I should put my money, who do I trust my funds with, and my Forex future with in terms of a broker. Who do I choose? How do I choose one?" Well, I've just come back from the IFX Expo in Hong Kong and at that event, there were a lot of brokers. What makes a broker different? When you look around at brokers, to be honest, a lot of them offer much the same type of thing in terms of similar type of platform, let's call it, MT4, Meta Trader 4 Platform. They offer a couple extra little gadgets and little incentives. Maybe cash bonuses, whatever it is, to try and get you on board. Basically, a lot of them from the ad side seem very, very similar so how do you determine who to go for and who to trust your money with? The brokers I personally use and why Well, for me personally, I only ever recommend four brokers. Three of them I use personally, and they are AxiTrader, Pepperstone, and Go Markets. I've had a relationship with all three of them for many, many years. I've referred a lot of people to them and I've got no problems. The odd time you get one little question here or there but almost no issues whatsoever, and if there have been issues they get dealt with real quick. I personally have quite substantial funds with all three of those brokers and I have no hesitation in recommending those three brokers. Who to use if you live in the US The other broker that I also recommend, and this is mostly for my US based clients, and that's ATC Brokers. All four of those brokers, they have very similar things in common. They have good regulations. I have a good rapport with their staff, I've found them very useful, very friendly in terms of looking after clients, good to deal with if you ever get an issue. The three Australian brokers, they're all ASIC regulated, Australian Securities Investment Commission. Now, if you're in Europe or US, you may think, "Well, why does an Australian broker really appeal to me? Well, the good thing is with those three brokers in particular, that they all have European and UK servers, they have branches over there, offices over there as well. You can have your accounts in Aussie dollars, Kiwi, Canadian, Franc, Pounds, Euros, so multiple currencies that you can trade in. I believe also ATC Brokers have a branch in the UK, I believe. Ensuring your funds are safe As a broker, you need to make sure that your funds are safe with that broker. As far as I can tell, all four of those are about as good as you can get. The other thing, they also have what I call the correct chart time. Use a 5pm EST start of day chart They start the day at 5 PM, New York time, Eastern Standard Time. That means that on the daily charts your day starts at 5 PM and ends at 5PM, 4:59. On the daily charts, there are five full, complete days within one week.

Previous Episode

Do you measure your Forex success in Pips or Percentages?

Podcast: Do you measure your Forex success in Pips or Percentages? In this video: 00:30 – Money management and Risk 00:50 – How important are Pips? 01:30 – Percentages are the same regardless of your account size 02:15 – The problem with counting success in Pips 03:20 – All trades should have equal risk 03:52 – Download my Forex Calculator and use it – It’s Free! 04:30 – I’ve taught people from all over the World how to trade Forex 05:20 – A +2.3% account gain this week 05:50 – Help eliminate emotions and stop blowing your account How do you measure your success as a Forex trader? Do you look at the number of Pips you make, or do you look at the percentage return on your account you make? Let's talk about that and more right now. Hi traders, it's Andrew Mitchem here, The Forex Trading Coach. Today is Friday the 12th of February. I want to talk about a really topical subject. Money management and Risk I've had quite a lot of emails this week from people asking about money management and risk. I've also had quite a few emails from people saying, "Andrew, look, you know, I've made my account go from $1000 to $5000 and then I've blown it all in one day. I get that type of email quite often. What it shows me is that there are so many people out there who don't understand correct money management. How important are Pips? Unfortunately, when you look around online the vast majority of people tell you to measure your success of any strategy or years as a trader in terms of the number of Pips you make. I personally believe that that is not correct. I'll give you some examples of why. Just to quickly read out an email here that someone sent to me. "Hey, Andrew, can you tell me why I express my success in percentages and why I think that's better than Pips?" This person says, "Percentages depend on the account and, actually, say nothing about your success whereas Pips show you what's going on right now. That's from Jera Flow. Percentages are the same regardless of your account size I'm not sure that it's quite right, because for me a percentage is a percentage. It doesn't matter, regardless of your account size. As an example, this week right now I'm up 2.3% on my account right now. If I had a $10,000 account that means I've made $230 this week. If I had a $100,000 account it means I've made $2300 this week. It's still the same amount. It's the same amount risked. It's the same amount in terms of percentage gain made. The only thing that makes the difference between actual monetary value is the size of the account, but I'm still risking the same amount on each of the two accounts, and I'm still making the same amount on each of the two accounts. To me that's a far better way of being profitable than by looking at the number of Pips you make. The problem with counting success in Pips The problem is, let's say you took many trades on shorter time-frame charts, say like one-hour charts, 15-minute charts, and you made lots of small profitable trades, let's say. You made 10 Pips, and 15, and 20, and 30, etc., those sort of smaller amount of Pips. The thing is then you go and take a trade on say a daily chart and it loses 100 Pips, so that one trade that goes wrong completely outdoes and takes away from all those gains that you've made on all those shorter time-frame charts on lots of really good successful trades. You may have 80-90% win rate within your trading in terms of your profitable trades, but that way of trading in terms of looking at the number of Pips you've actually gone backwards and lost money. Whereas, if I had an equal risk on each one of those trades, regardless of it's profit target and regardless of its time-frame chart, for instance, then if I can make let's say half, or let's say I'm risking half of 1% on each of those trades but I'm making somewhere between 1, 1-1/2, even 2% gain if it's a full profitable trade. All trades should have equal risk

Next Episode

Forex Tips to Help You Enjoy Your Trading

Podcast: Forex Tips to Help You Enjoy Your Trading In this video: 00:25 – Trading remotely using the longer time frame charts 01:00 – Look at the daily charts once a day 01:35 – Trade for a few hours only if you wish to trade 5 min charts 02:20 – Trade a realistic amount of time 03:25 – Use the New York Close of day 04:20 – Trading the British Pound crash 05:10 – Still looking for GBP/JPY short trades 06:20 – Trade what the charts are telling you Would you like some tips on how you can really enjoy your Forex Trading? If you would, listen up! I've got some really good tips to share with you right now. Hi Traders! This is Andrew Mitchem here, The Forex Trading Coach. Today is Friday, the 26th of February. Trading remotely using the longer time frame charts I'm here on the beautiful beach of Oneroa, which is on Waiheke Island just off the coast of Aukland, New Zealand. I want to share with you some tips about how you can invest and enjoy trading. What I've done today, because I've taken trades on the daily charts, and also I’ve looked at 12 hour charts, and 6 hour charts, means that I can be here. Sit down in a café, had a coffee and some breakfast, taking my trades, and now I've got the rest of the day to enjoy this beautiful place before I need to go back and look at charts again. Look at the daily charts once a day The reason for that is several things. One, when I'm trading the daily charts, it means I mean to look at the charts just once a day. There's so many people I hear from that are saying, "Andrew, I'm doing okay at trading. I might be making some money." Most people actually say they are losing money when they come to me. The problem is that so many people think the best way to trade is to stare at 5 minute charts all day. They all get together on forums and are all texting each other. That's fine, if that suits you. It's absolutely fine. Trade for a few hours only if you wish to trade 5 min charts I’ve got a number of clients who do extremely well by trading those shorter time frame charts. If you are to trade those short time frame charts, what I would strongly suggest you do is just dedicate an hour or two per day at the same time, if you can, and just look at those shorter time frame charts for a certain time every day. You get use to what that market is doing at that time. Really, if you want to be trading and to enjoy it as a longer term thing to do, as a job let's say, then realistically, you are far better off ... Excuse me, I need to put these on. That's better. It's so bright here that I need sunglasses on. Really what you need to be doing is looking at longer timeframe charts. You need to be looking at daily charts, twelve hour charts, six hour charts, etc. Trade a realistic amount of time Realistically, that is going to give you something you can trade day after day, week after week, year after year without being a burden to you. That's one of those things that if you are trading 5 or 10 hours a day staring at charts, just think of it this way: Would I want to be doing this in six months time? Would I want to be doing this in a years time? If your answer is yes, well that's fine, but how do you then go away and enjoy the places like this and trade at the same time? The beauty of looking at those longer timeframe charts is I can plan my day around what I'm doing around my trading. I can come here and enjoy the scenery and trade daily charts. The great thing about the daily charts is that at exactly the same time as the daily charts closes, which is 5pm, New York time. I can also look at the 4 hour, 1 hour charts if I want to or 4 hours, 6 hours, 8 hours, or 12 hour charts. Use the New York Close of day There's multiple different timeframe charts I can look at exactly the same time and look at those trades. As an example, today I've taken two trades on the daily charts and I've placed two on the twelve hour charts also.