1. Do they have low spreads?

The spread, in Forex trading, is the difference between the buy price and the sell price of any given currency pair. The lower the spread the more money you save.

2. Does the Broker have low minimum account openings?

If you are new to Forex Trading and also for those that don’t have millions of dollars in risk capital to trade, being able to open a micro trading account with only $250 (but it is better to use at least $1,000 for risk management) is a great feature.

3. Is there instant automatic execution of your orders?

When choosing a Forex Broker, this is very important. Do not go for a firm that re-quotes you when you click on a price or a firm that allows for price ‘slippage’. When you are trading for small profits, this is extremely important. You need a WYSIWYG (what you see is what you get) broker which means you want instant execution of your orders so the price you see and “click” on is the price that you get.

4. Do you get free charting and technical analysis?

Make sure you pick a broker that gives you access to the best charts and technical analysis available to active traders. Find a broker that provides free professional charting services and allows traders to trade directly on the charts.

5. What should you do with leverage?

Leverage can either make you super rich or super broke. Most likely, it will be the latter. As an new trader, you don’t want to use too much leverage. It is good to not use more than 100:1 leverage for Standard (100k) accounts and 200:1 for Mini (10k) accounts.

Have fun researching to find your new broker!

The time zones of the major markets are:

Time Zone                    New York                  GMT
Tokyo Open                 7:00 pm                     0:00
Tokyo Close                  4:00 am                     9:00
London Open                3:00 am                     8:00
London Close                12:00 pm                   17:00
New York Open             8:00 am                    13:00
New York Close             5:00 pm                    22:00

Forex is all about the Foreign Exchange.  It is usually used when talking about the Foreign Exchange Market where people change money from one currency to another.

You would have probably changed money before if you have travelled overseas.  Of course, you can use your credit card and not have to worry too much about cash, but most people will change some money into the local currency at the airport or other foreign exchange place.  You will give a certain amount of cash to the cashier and they will give you back the new currency.  You will get back a different amount of money back.  The amount you receive back is decided by the currency market which compares what they are worth when compared with each other.  If you are from the USA and are travelling to Europe you will get less euros back than you had in US dollars as the euro is currently worth more than the US dollar.  The way the amounts are worked out on the forex is very complicated and is effected by many factors.  The currency market prices fluctuate all the time throughout the day.

Being able the trade the Forex Market online happened around 1996.  Trading relies on currency pairs as you need to compare two currency prices, as in the example above with the US dollar and euro.  Although I used those in my example, the top traded pairs are the EUR/USA and GBP/USD.

The Most Traded Currencies in Order are:

1. United States dollar (USD $)
2. Euro (EUR €)
3. Japanese yen (JPY ¥)
4. British pound sterling (GBP £)
5/6. Swiss franc (CHF) and Australian dollar (AUD $)