Online Brokers
The foreign exchange market is the largest financial market in the world, and it offers excellent speculative opportunities for traders. Furthermore, getting started trading Forex online for your own personal account is probably far easier than you may have thought, especially if you were only familiar with how currencies traditionally traded in the Interbank Forex market.
Thanks to the advent of online Forex trading within the last decade, these days you just need a relatively recent computer connected to the Internet, some free trading platform software, a modest amount of non essential risk capital to deposit as margin to collateralize trading positions with, and a trading account that you can set up with one or more of the many internet based Forex brokers.
Basically, the retail foreign exchange market is growing rapidly in popularity, and it is catered to by the many brokers. They are all standing ready to take in your margin deposit and open up an account for you to trade Forex in. The following section will describe in greater detail how that process works.
Selecting an Appropriate Online Forex Broker
In order to actually begin trading currencies, you will first need to select one of the many Forex brokers to open an account with. Due to the large number of brokers available, it can initially seem like quite a daunting task to choose among them.
Accordingly, you will need to have developed an understanding of what services you absolutely need to have provided by your broker, as well as what non essential services and features you would like to have your broker provide as well.
Since many internet brokers can provide you with a good foreign exchange execution service, the most important thing is that you make sure to choose a reputable and well regulated Forex broker that you feel you can trust with your money and which offers all of the services you require.
82% of retail investor accounts lose money when trading CFDs with this provider. You should consider whether you can afford to take the high risk of losing your money.
Open a Forex Account
Once you have actually taken the time to decide which service is best for you to open an account with, actually opening the account is a rather straightforward process.
In order to sign up for an account, you can usually just simply visit the broker’s website, obtain and complete the appropriate form for opening an account, provide required documentation, and then fund the account.
Once the funds are actually credited to your trading account by your broker, which can take a few days to happen, you will then usually be able to place orders and execute trades in the Forex market.
Providing Documentation and Funding an Account
The documentation required to open up an account with most brokers tends to be pretty standard. In most cases, it is limited to an official form of identification, such as a driver’s license or passport, a credit or debit card and some additional proof of residence, such as a utility bill in your name.
Furthermore, account funding procedures used by most services are also fairly straightforward. Many online brokers accept account funding by using a bank wire transfer or a credit or debit card payment. In some cases, they will even accept a Paypal or Moneybookers account transfer.
Remember to choose a broker that can best accommodate transfers from where you keep your risk capital. Also make sure that any transfer and account withdrawal fees are minimal.