The moment you become curious about currencies and decide to start forex trading, you have to choose a forex broker. Your success depends on the correct selection of a broker that not only fits your desires, but also provides security, stability, professional customer support and necessary trading conditions.

Choosing forex brokers requires some research, review reading, forum discussions and the old trial and error.

While looking for the right forex broker, the following features need your upmost attention:

Account Types

We personally think that mini and micro accounts are a necessity to all beginner traders. After practicing with demo account, mini and micro accounts are literally the best way to continue practicing with minimum investment. This is because the accounts allow you to trade cents and the minimum deposit requirement can be as low as $1.

Easy-to-use Platform Interface

You probably know that most traders favor MetaTrader 4 platform, however let’s all agree on the fact that MetaTrader 4 is not the most visually attractive and easy trading platform to use.

As a beginner, it is important to understand the forex trading interface and use all of it potential. Unfortunately MetaTrader 4 doesn’t provide that and is suitable for rather advanced and experienced traders.

Trading platform needs to be easy to understand and provide pleasurable trading experience. In order to figure out whether the platform fits your needs, you can open a demo account with a selected broker and snoop around. If demo trading goes well, then you are ready for the real thing.

Another thing to consider with the revolution of iPhones and iPad is a mobile trading platform. Why limit yourself to PC trading, when you can have a trading platform accessible via your mobile device.

Minimum Deposit Requirement

How much can you invest? Forex trading is available to any type of trader and while some forex brokers require $1,000 minimum deposit, others allow you to start trading with just $50.  This creates a comfort zone for newbies and allows you to enjoy trading with the minimum risk.

Extra Fees and Commissions

Pay attention to hidden fees. Even a regulated, well-known broker may charge for inactivity or withdrawals (for example, there are brokers that take somewhere around $10 for each bank wire withdrawal).

Extra fees might be unavoidable; however it is important to know exactly what you are charged for.  The less surprises you have along the way, the better!

Customer Support

Ability to respond promptly and professionally is one of the broker’s features you cannot ignore. A good broker will offer support via email, phone and online chat during the trading hours.

Features and Tools

Your broker needs to provide good quality daily market technical and fundamental analysis and top notch charting tools. This will help you to make most logical forex trading decisions.

Execution and Spreads

Orders have to be executed instantly without slippage and delay. The faster the order is executed, the better chance for you to catch the exact moment you have targeted.

Every trade you make, you have to pay the spread, so your goal is to find tight spreads. Keep in mind, though, that sometimes you have to give up low spreads in order to choose more reliable forex broker.

Security

When the broker is regulated, it is controlled by regulatory bodies such as NFA, CFTC, FSA, BaFIN, AMF and others.  It is much more secure to deal with a forex broker that is regulated with authorized bodies.

Last but not least, listen to what other traders say about the broker you have selected. Go over forex brokers reviews, ask around forums, facebook groups and pages related to forex and talk with other traders. Be ready to try out several brokers and spend quite some time with forex brokers comparison before you find the one that works best for you.