Tag: Brokers

All brokers related articles are found here. Educative, informative and written clearly.

  • The Questions You Want to Ask Your Broker about Start Trading

    The Questions You Want to Ask Your Broker about Start Trading

    Questions to ask a broker
    This is the full explanation of what you have to do in your first contact with the broker.

    By Guy Avtalyon

    We assume you already made your decision to start investing or trading but you don’t know how to start and what to ask a broker. That is the situation where you would need a broker’s help. You already examine and find several and it is time to contact them.

    What you have to do that before you open an account.

    Before you open an account, you should use the internet browser. Traders-Paradise’s advice is to visit the web pages of every brokerage company you want to analyze. That first feeling about the brokerage’ site will be maybe the most important part if you want to start trading online. You must feel comfortable while you are checking section after section and it has to be user-friendly for you and you will find if the broker has a free demo account and how long you can use it before the switch to the real.

    Some websites may be slower at the first visit but try them again, maybe when you first visited them the traffic was high. A large number of visitors can make the website operate slower sometimes. This doesn’t mean the broker isn’t good.

    OK, you picked several brokers. So what is the next step?

    First of all, you have to make the first contact. The best way is to make some phone calls or to fill a contact form and let them call you.

    Be prepared, on the first call, they will tell you precisely what you like to hear. It will be so good but also, it might not be a truth. You must be aware. So, never play on the first hint. Try them more.

    Always keep in mind, you need to find the right broker for you. So, you have to talk.

    What to ask the broker?

    You will pay for financial advice, and you will entrust your hard-earned money to some person who will act as a genuine servant of your financial future. So, you have to ask, you have to talk.

    Ask if the firm has possible conflicts of interest regarding reasons to sell particular funds or products. Just ask. If you get a precise response, then the answer will satisfy many of the next questions.

    Ask the broker about trading commissions.

    It might be surprising but lower commissions are not always the better.

    Take care of it and examine all the information you can get.

    The price per trade may explain the level of customer service. If you don’t want to trade so often it shouldn’t be the subject of your consideration. In such a case it isn’t the primary if you need 30 seconds or 3 minutes to execute your trade, so the difference in commissions isn’t important too much. Will it be $5 or $25 per trade isn’t important if you don’t plan to trade very often, for example, 15-20 trades per year. But if you plan to trade on a daily base it is important.

    Training and education

    Also, you would like to know what kinds of training and education do they provide.

    Traders and investors, both advanced and novice need constant training and education to stay up to date with the laws and practices in the trade. This includes mentorship and copy trading. Mentorship is extremely important. The legal field is changing and you would need a good mentorship to follow the best practices in order to keep mistakes minimal. On the other hand, copy trading is good for novice traders and investors but leading traders may make mistakes too. At the beginning level, they are good. After you master the trading, you should build your own strategy and approach to the trade. That will depend on your personal goals, risk tolerance, and character.

    Also, important information is about other fees.

    Ask the broker about them. That is information about costs of account-maintenance and inactivity fees. So, it is good to make a list of services and transactions you might need before you start the conversation with the broker. Ask them how much all of them will be a charge.

    Ask a broker about the minimum initial deposit

    Minimum initial deposit is something you should know before you open the trading account. We assume you know how much you can invest but does it meet the broker’s regulation? Some brokers have account minimum and you have to know is it adequate for you. This minimum has to matches your budget.

    Withdrawals

    You need to know how much you can withdraw and how much time it will take. On some websites, you will find wonderful information about it but once when you talk with a live person you might find there are so many differences for almost every case. For example, on the website brokerage can write the withdrawals take a few days. That is true but sometimes it isn’t. Very often it depends on how big withdrawal is or in which circumstances you want to withdraw. Ask for every single detail about it.

    Customer support

    This is a huge question. Ask a broker’s about customer support and services before you sign up. Is it easy to find what you want on their website or you will need to spend the whole day and click through 100 pages? Can you access to their customer support fast? Does your broker have live chat? Is there any possibility to talk face-to-face?

    Banking services

    Maybe this isn’t a big deal but still, you have to know all about payment methods.

    The best choice is a brokerage account that can serve your banking need. The brokers now offer Visa or Master cards, direct deposit, ATM cards, etc.

    Ask a broker about investment assets selection

    All brokerages offer stocks traded on the major exchanges. But if you’re interested in options, bonds, currencies, cryptos ask if certain brokerages offer them. They’re not available in all brokerage.

    A good broker will set realistic expectations in front of you. They will provide some valid information from their experience. They will be based on the current market and on details about your goals.

    Beating the market is hard but at the same time exciting. Since it is hard for the majority, you need to add some weights to your portfolio. Without a broker, it is even harder. Statistics show that only 5% of market participants are successful. It is smart to use the best brokerage to be one of them.  

    Traders-Paradise recommends you to ask these questions as far as possible. Your broker has to truly serve you well. So, they should have no problem to give you honest answers.

    To get started on your broker research, use our Walls

    Traders-Paradise Team wishes you successful trading and investing.

     

  • Stop loss hunting – What to do?

    Stop loss hunting – What to do?

    3 min read

    Stop loss hunting - What to do? 2
    The truth is, there are players in the market that are hunting your stop loss.

    Stop loss orders are designed to limit the amount of money that can be lost on a single trade, by exiting the trade when a specific price is reached.

    For example, a trader might buy a stock at $50 expecting it to rise. Trader place a stop loss order at $47. But the price goes against the trader’s expectations and reaches $47. In that case, the stop loss order will be executed, limiting the loss to $3 per share.

    All new traders should use a stop loss. The stop loss order is placed when the trader enters a position.

    Why is that so important?

    Markets are moving very quickly. A stop-loss is employed to limit the possibility of a loss. It also gives the possibility to trader having to get out of the trade if the price goes against him.

    Stop loss is a must.

    Stop loss position is very important and you should be able to distinguish where to set it. A too tight stop loss can be easily triggered even when you take the right position. And a too wide stop loss is like having no stop loss at all.

    Where is the best place to set the stop loss?

    You should place the stop loss at the level that will be triggered when your position is totally wrong.

    We are referring to stop orders going forward, plain vanilla stop order, opposed to a stop limit order.

    For example, the price is going up. You are waiting for some reversal signal. But, the price changes its direction and makes a reversal trade setup. And then starts going down. You take a short position. So the last high that the price has made before it goes down is a resistance level.

    But what if you realized that taking a short position has been a wrong decision and the price will keep on going up again?

    If the price goes up and breaks above the resistance level, it means you were wrong and the uptrend was not reversed. Therefore, you have to be out. That is why professional traders say: You are either right, or you should be out.
    So where should you place the stop loss in this example?

    Stop loss hunting - What to do?

    image source: tradingwithrayner.com

    A few pips above the last high (resistance level) plus the spread.

    When price moves to your preferred direction and you are making the profit, you can move the stop loss further to lock some part of the profit you have made. At least, you can move the stop loss to breakeven, entry price, when you are in a reasonable profit. So, if the market turns around, you will get out with zero loss.

    First of all, what is stop loss hunting?

    Do you know that forex brokers make money when you take a position? Yes. They charge you some pips when you buy a currency pair. This number of pips that brokers charge when you buy currency pairs is called spread. Brokers offer different spreads for different currency pairs.

    But, the spread is not the only way that forex brokers make money. It is one of the ways. They also make money through the swap. Market brokers make money through commission as well. However, the commission is the only legal way of making money for the true ECN/STP brokers. They can make money through other ways, but they are not allowed to.

    Short note: STP refers to Straight Through Processing and it is just a name given to dealing desk brokers that have automated the dealing process. Traditionally in the spot forex market, when you place a trade, you are being filled by your forex broker is also known as an RFED.

    ECN refers to Electronic Communication Network. ECN can best be described as a bridge linking smaller market participants with its liquidity providers through a FOREX ECN Broker.

    However, whatever you pay as the spread goes to the market maker broker pocket. Also, the money you lose is the market maker broker profit. Say that, when you trade Forex through a market maker broker, in fact, you are trading with the broker, not the real currency market.

    So it makes sense that the market maker brokers like you to lose.

    Your loss is their profit. Similar, it is expected they don’t want you to win because your profit is their loss. Market make brokers make a lot of money. The statistic shows that 99% of the trader lose on their own and nobody needs to push them to lose. However, some market maker brokers get greedier and want to make more money faster.

    YOU WOULD LIKE TO READ Automatic Trading – What Is It

    Stop loss hunting is one of the ways they use to do that. They have some special robots or train some employees who monitor the clients’ trades.

    How does it work?

    The trader takes a short position and sets a stop loss. The market goes against the position and becomes so close to the stop loss. And the robot or the stop loss hunter employee increases the spread manually to help the price hit the stop loss earlier.

    But, most regulated brokers are not hunting your stop loss because it’s not worth the risk.

    The word gets out that some broker hunts their client stops loss. What? It’s a matter of time before clients pull out of their account and join a new broker.

    Would you want to risk doing that over a few tiny pips?

    We guess not.

    Most brokers don’t hunt your stops as the risk is greater than the reward.

    But, your broker widens the spread and stops you out of your trade.

    There is a reason for this.

    A broker widens their spreads during major news release. The market has low liquidity during this period.

    YOU WOULD LIKE TO READ Stop Loss Order and How to Use It

    Take a look at the depth of the market. The bids and offers are low just before the major news release. The participants in the market are pulling out their orders ahead of the news release.

    The liquidity during such period is thin and that results in a wider spread.

    Because of this, the spreads in forex is widener. If it isn’t, there will be opportunities for arbitrage.

    So, you can see that widening is not there for fun their spread for fun. Your broker is doing it to protect themselves.
    Most brokers don’t hunt your stop loss because it’s bad for business.

    How to avoid stop loss hunting by setting a proper stop loss

    Let’s say, you find such broker.

    You can still protect yourself and beat the sharks who are hunting your stops.

    What can you do?

    Here are 3 techniques you can use:

    • Don’t place your stop loss just below Support (or above Resistance)

    Stop loss hunting - What to do? 1

    image source: bpcdn.co

    • Don’t place your stop loss at an arbitrary level
    • Set your stop loss at a level where it invalidates your trading setup

    The bottom line

    The one way to stay away from the stop loss hunting is trading through a bank account.

    Trading the longer time frames is another way of staying away from stop loss hunting. Well, nothing can 100% prevent a scam broker from cheating the clients. But trading the longer time frames is a good way to lower the risk. On that way, you will have wide stop loss orders that are harder to get hunt unless the broker increases the spread for hundreds of pips.

    In general, you will finally have to close your account and leave when you trade with a scam broker that hunts your stop losses and cheats because nothing that fully stops them from cheating you.

    Therefore, you’d better choose a good broker from the first day or trade through a bank account.

    risk disclosure

  • Buying Stock Without a Broker – Ways to Do

    Buying Stock Without a Broker – Ways to Do

    Buy Stocks Without Broker - Ways to DoIs it possible to buy stocks without a broker? Why shouldn’t be? Here is how to do that.

    By Guy Avtalyon

    Buying stock without a broker offers some advantages and disadvantages. Young investors are worried about investing in the stock market.

    The financial crisis of 2008 strongly disturbed our formative professional years. We can still feel its specter lingers a decade later. Only 33% of millennials own stock, according to a 2016 Bankrate survey.

    The other survey, a 2015 Harvard University survey found that just 14 percent of millennials trust Wall Street.

    As any good stockbroker or experienced investor can tell you, you can find bad brokers more often than the good one.

    Being “bad brokers” means those who put their own interests above that of their clients. We have a list of bad reputation brokers here on Traders Paradise’s wall of shame.

    So, we must consider how to buy stock without a broker.

    However, that worst brokers do this in a perfectly legal way, by causing desire and weaknesses to their clients’.

    How do they do that?

    Here are three main practices that bad stockbrokers practice. They claim to their clients that aiming for stability rather than growth. Wrong!

    Usually, they force clients to obtain an income from two different sources, typically in an illicit way. Also, some of them are emphasizing low-risk, low-return, high-fee structured products in client accounts.

    That’s why many new investors ask how to buy stock without a broker.

    Because of the lack of confidence in brokers, many millennials don’t have the startup cash to fund an IRA or a brokerage account. That typically requires either automatic monthly payments or a minimum investment of around $1,000-2,500, plus commission fees of around $4-7 for every trade.

    For those people who want to go down this path to business ownership, one option can be to check out direct investment plans.

    But it is with varying degrees of success. Of course, there is no requirement that you have to work with a broker to invest in stocks or particularly equity funds.

    Buying stock without a broker offers some advantages and disadvantages.

    You will need to measure them based on your personal situation. But our goal is to provide you a good handle on how to invest without a broker.

    But it’s up to you to make a decision about whether such an approach is appropriate for you. You have to know your unique circumstances and preferences. Because there is no unique solution for everyone.

    Let’s say, you had a broker but you noticed that your broker sometimes uses unfamiliar words and phrases to describe investment concepts. Some of this stockbroker jargon is simply a shorthand that brokers use amongst themselves. They use them to refer to familiar situations without having to go into any detail on the underlying concept.

    Your head is going to explode hearing every time some strange words that cause suspicions.

    But investing can be simpler if you buy stock without a broker. Just by investing in shares through a company’s direct stock purchase plan.

    The first and easiest way to buy stocks without a broker

    It is when companies, often blue chips, fund a special type of program. It is called a DSPP or Direct Stock Purchase Plan.

    The main goal of these plans originally was designed as a way for businesses to let smaller investors buy ownership directly from the company. In the beginning, they were working through a transfer agent or plan administrator. They still do the same. Most plans allow investors to buy stock without a broker if they agree to either have an amount taken out of their checking or savings account every month for six months. Often $50 is the acceptable minimum. The other way is to make a one-time purchase, which will cost you $250 or $500.

    These plans are surely not as comfortable as getting a broker. You can’t just buy and sell a variety of company stocks at any time, for instance. Plus, you won’t have a diverse portfolio if you only own stock from a few companies. Moreover, with some plans, you won’t even escape fees. So, you have to be careful about what you sign up for.

    This means trades without commission

    But we have to say, direct stock plans are a good way to experiment with the stock market without putting too much money into the game.

    Ordinarily, the plan administrators use your cash to buy shares of the company. It can be on the open market or freshly issued from the business itself, on predetermined dates. The average cost of the purchases is weighed out.

    Also, they can use some other methodology to equalize the cost among investors. And the direct stock purchase plan statement arrives quarterly. All with a listing of the number of shares you own and dividends you receive.

    Some direct stock purchase plans trades without commission. Others charge small fees. Usually $1 or $2 plus a few cents per share, for each purchase. A larger fee, about $15 and a few cents more per share, for a sale. This is a lot lower than what you have to pay at a full-service broker.

    Buy stock without a broker by taking advantage of the dividend reinvestment program

    In this way, you can add additional shares to your holdings.

    This means to enroll in a stock’s dividend reinvestment program or DRIP. DRIPs provide you to take cash dividends, paid out by the company you partially own. And you may plow them back into buying more shares, charging either nominal fees or nothing at all. It depends upon the individual plan.

    Have this on your mind. For a typical stock, that’s a lot of transactions over 25 or 50 years on which you aren’t paying commissions. The typical stock may pay out a dividend four times per year. So, count! DRIPs usually come with cash investment options that resemble direct stock purchase plans.

    This opportunity means you can regularly have money withdrawn from your account, or send in one-time payments whenever you like.

    A lot of long-term investors have become skilled at building wealth through these types of accounts. Buying stock without a broker for years, even decades is a very nice way. You must be heard stories about some housekeeper who left behind $5 million opulence.

    They did it just on the way we said above.

    You can buy stock without a broker by obtaining a single share through a specialized gifting service

    Unfortunately, the financial industry’s decision is to move away from paper stock certificates.  And this has become a bit shaky.

    But, up until recently, you could use companies that allowed you to buy a single share of stock to get your name on a corporate shareholder list.

    Hundreds of companies offer these plans, but each has its own rules for eligibility. It’s normal to be careful about investing in stocks. But some estimates that the average millennial would lose about $3.3 million in retirement savings by avoiding investing completely. Direct stock plans are an easy way to learn the basics and establish a portfolio.

    All without spending money, time, and nerves on brokers. Anyway, buying a stock without a broker may be a clever move for investors.

    Learn how to trade in the financial academy.

  • Good And Bad Investment

    Good And Bad Investment

    2 min read


    When you work hard to earn money and you earned a surplus that you can invest, you want to make sure it isn’t going to disappear on you. Take your time to carefully understand an investment prior to putting your money into it. It is a very important concept. 

    Sometimes it’s better to miss out on a great investment than it is to be involved in a bad one.

    Of course, there are good and bad investments, but the question is how to tell if something is a good or bad investment.

    The act of accumulating and investing wealth is a dangerous proposition.

    The hardest part of the process isn’t picking the right investments, but rather, guarding our hearts from the greed of money.
    We need to always be aware of the desires and possibilities, especially when money is involved.

    While supposedly ”market-beating” brokers and advisors tend to profit in all market conditions. On the other side, we have the performance of the typical investor over the past 20 years. But we can precisely describe them as shockingly poor.

    There is a lot of confusion surrounding investments, but truth is that investment is anything that you can buy and hold on to in order to gain value.

    Literally, the investment can be anything you can buy and sell.

    The key is to realize there is no such thing as a naturally good or bad investment.

    What I mean is if you make right timing, you can be wrong about valuation and strategy, and still come out with a profit.
    Or if your valuation is strong, you can be wrong about timing and strategy and still come out with a profit. You may have a

    positive expectation with good risk management. In other words, your strategy is good.

    But your profit is assured over time even though any single investment can fail on timing and valuation.

    Successful investing is all in the process: risk management, strategy, and timing. It takes work and effort.

    There is no one-stop solution. There is no magic pill. If you’re looking for instant solution and asking what is a good investment, your thinking is in the wrong direction.


    Everything, but literally everything can be a bad or good investment, depending on the moment you enter, the strategy, the trading plan, investment plan.

    For someone who is trying to identify solid investment opportunities from among various available choices, it would be helpful if you are able to identify financial opportunities as distinctively good or bad.

    However, it’s not always a black-and-white task.

    Some of the processes depend on your own good perception. There are some red marks that forewarn of a potential losing bet. However, as well as some positive signs that could lead to a profitable investment.

    The average investor’s investments underperformed the returns of almost every asset class. Part of the reason for this is the tendency of investors to buy high and sell low.

    In times of market volatility, many investors panic and dump their stocks. They often make poor investment choices. They are seduced by the promise of high returns from investment products. That is difficult to understand and hampered with high fees.

    A good investment is one that meets your goals and objectives.

    A bad investment is one that doesn’t meet your goals and objectives.

    To find good investments you must have an understanding of what is realistic. What kind of return should you expect on an investment? If you have a good sense of what is and is not possible you are less likely to get scammed.

    You must be able to keep your eye on your chosen investment, and this is something that can be hard to do. Not all investments are easy to track in this way. The best thing to do is to make sure that your focus is primarily on material assets, as these are the kinds of things you can easily see, and they are more likely to be easily tracked too. As long as you can keep an eye on your investments, you can be sure that you are doing with it what you should be doing in order to make money.

    I presented you a few essential rules you can use to avoid bad investments and recognize good.

    Those are not must-follow rules. You can think of them more as guidelines. Especially if you’re a new investor, using these rules to stay away from bad investments can help you to make better choices.
    And never look for the big, fast wins. You’ll be crushed.

    Risk Disclosure (read carefully!)



  • Broker and You! Fighting or cooperating?

    Broker and You! Fighting or cooperating?

    Broker and You! Fighting or cooperating?
    The broker is known as a market maker and market maker takes the other side of your trade.

    By Gorica Gligorijevic

    Broker and you, what a nice relationship! Okay, you think your Forex broker is on your side. Nice! Wonderful! I’m excited! You have it! You found the best!

    But, are you sure that your broker wants especially you to be the winner? At the same time, 95% of Forex traders lose. And you have special status? Really?

    Do you really think your broker has built his business on the minority 5% who win? C’mon! Don’t be silly!

    Whether you’re already in the 5% elite (congrats) or working your way to it, you must know these three things. It can make the difference between long-term successes or Forex failure.

    How does your broker see you? 

    Really, what does he think about you? Actually, from your broker’s point of view, .you are an “A” group or a “B” group.

    The broker is not emotional. He has numbers and percentages in front of him.

    One group traders make up the 95% who constantly lose and the other traders are people who have been consistently profitable or more than 3 months.

    Group A, group B. 95% or 5%. Nothing else. If you are a newcomer, the broker will automatically add you to the “A” group until you prove otherwise.

    But, WHY?

    You have done nothing to be there, you are beginner!!! You just opened all of this for your first time!

    The answer is simple, your broker knows that 95% of new traders will lose, so he’s 95% sure he’s put you in the right group.
    Well, he isn’t sure 100%, notice that! If you lose, he wins. Only that matters!

    Forex brokers are known as market makers and market maker takes the other side of your trade. Never forget that someone somewhere is holding the other side of your trade.

    Let’s say you decide you sell 1 standard lot of EUR/USD. Now for you to take that trade, someone else has to buy 1 standard lot of EUR/USD. Right?  In other words, there always has to be a buyer and a seller for a trade to take place.

    If your broker is a market maker, he’s holding the other side. In other words, if you win, he loses.

    Simple? Yeah!

    But a bit unpleasant. Brokers make most of their money betting on the fact that you are going to lose. This is the conflict of interest 1/1!

    Honestly and fortunately, the majority of brokers don’t take the other side of your trades.

    Instead, they pass them on to other traders, acting more along the lines of what you had in your mind that a ‘broker’ is. Most of them simply connect buyers and sellers and take a commission on facilitating the trade.

    Your broker, your true and professional broker, will never take the other side of the trade, and he will never bet against you as a client. This secret has been revealed! Share with others!

    And be cautious, it never can be too much.

  • Women are better at investing Than Men

    Women are better at investing Than Men

    2 min read

    Women are better at investing

    Reports find that women are better at investing than men.

    Period!

    The big investment firm Fidelity says that female investors outperformed males last year by 0.3%. In fact, Fidelity found that females outdid men in the past decade.

    Women have had a pretty bad reputation in global financial markets. As investors, the perception is that they joined the game too late, they saved too little and they invested too conservatively.

    Additionally, insults about women capacities and their mental abilities appeared from respectable figures. Larry Summers’ comment that innate differences between men and women may explain the relatively low number of women scholars in the physical sciences. Those words raised a lot of uproar in academic circles and at Harvard University, where at the time Summers was serving as president. Some are ready to claim that this controversy cost Summers his job. Lawrence Summers must be noted, served as U.S. Treasury Secretary during the Bill Clinton presidential years and became an economics professor at age 28 and has written 150 scholarly papers. He advised President Obama on what to do about the biggest banks and the auto industry during the Wall Street subprime debt meltdown of 2008.

    Have you seen the statue of the “fearless girl” facing the Wall Street bull?


    State Street Global Advisors put up the statue to mark International Women’s Day and it’s getting a lot of attention.

    What that statue try to tell us? The market is blind to your sex. The market is blind to your gender.

    Try to type in some browser, “Are women investors better than men?” Google will list a stream of stories that argue such a case. I found AARP’s website began one article with these words: “Overall, women are better investors than men.”

    And as an example, they cited research from professors at the University of California-Berkeley who concluded, after a study of stock trading patterns between the sexes, that men trade 45% more than women. The scholars argued that since frequent trading eats away at returns, women thus performed a full percentage point better than men.

    C’mon! That is NOT the right reason.

    The true fact is: In 2016 female investors earned higher returns and saved more of their pay to fund retirement accounts than men. The first thing that Fidelity said was that men were 35% more likely to make more trades, meaning that brokerage eats away at the portfolio. That is the first women’s advantage.

    “It is a double whammy,” says Alexandra Taussig, Fidelity’s senior vice president for women investors. “The myth that men are better investors is just that – a myth.”

    The second advantage is that women assume less risk, such as not loading up entirely on equities. They also invest more in vehicles like target-date funds, whose automatic allocations make for smarter diversification, Fidelity said.

    Women are better at investing
    Women are better at investing because women have more guts. Meredith Whitney became famous for making a bearish call on Citigroup (C) in late 2007, saying the big bank will be forced to suspend its dividend and she was right.

    Over the years, women have made strides in the field of equity research and portfolio management. You can read about their adventures on Wall Street via books such as “Tiger Woman on Wall Street” by Junheng Li.

    A study by academics Terrance Odean (University of California, Berkeley) and Brad Barber (University of California, Davis), also found that women outperform men, by roughly 1 percent a year.

    Invest like a wonder woman, means shifting to a long-term focus, saving more up front and giving up on trying to time the market with brilliant trades.

    As I said in the beginning, success in the market does not depend solely on gender affiliation.

    The stock market doesn’t know who you are, it cannot know whether you’re male or female. Nor will it ever care, in the first place. But women are better at investing.

    Do you know where to invest? FIND HERE

    Risk Disclosure (read carefully!)

  • Trading Stocks Platform – How To Find The Best

    Trading Stocks Platform – How To Find The Best

    2 min read

    (Updated October 2021)


    The best trading stocks platform must be available from the beginning of the signup process.

    Trading stocks platform is simply software for trading, it’s a kind of online broker. It is very important for any investor. And the most powerful tool in your hands. Every trader has it’s own investment style of trading. An abundance of brokers’ offers allows individuals to choose what best fits their needs.

    If you’re an active trader looking to try your hand at beating the markets, you probably have a good idea of what you want from a brokerage: low costs, premium research, innovative strategy tools, and a rich with features trading platform.

    trading stocks platform

    This era of trading stocks platform makes the world as high-risk/high-reward investing accessible to the wide public. Profitable investing takes time and hard work. It also requires you to use the best trading stocks platform that fits your investing goals, educational needs, and learning style.
    If you are new investors, selecting the best trading stocks platform can make the difference between a great new income stream and an inevitable frustrating handover.

    You have to know one thing, there’s no sure-fire way to guarantee investment returns. But there is a way to set yourself up for success by selecting the right trading stocks platform that best suits you. I’ll try to show you all the important things you should be looking for in your ideal brokerage on your path to find the best online broker.

    For a starter, take a moment to focus on what is most important to you in a trading platform, before you start clicking on brokerage ads. You’ll be surprised!

    Recognize your needs when choosing a trading stocks platform.

    You must know them.

    If you are a novice, you may prioritize things such as basic educational resources, large glossaries. Also, you might prefer easy access to support services. Maybe the ability to have practice trades before you start playing with real money is more important to you.

    For example, an experienced investor, possibly someone who executed hundreds of trades already but is looking for a new trading stocks platform. Such will prioritize advanced charting capabilities, conditional order options, or the ability to trade derivatives, mutual funds, commodities, and fixed-income securities, as well as stocks.
    Trading Stocks Platform - How To Find
    And you have to be honest with yourself about where you are right now in your investing tour and where you want to go. Do you want to try your hand at day-trading but don’t know where and how to start? Maybe you like the idea of tailoring your portfolio, or you want to pay a professional to provide it done right?

    For now, I suggest you start with this crucial deliberation as a way to determine which of the brokerage features would be the most important to you.

    To help yourself to find and use the best trading stocks platform be honest when you are answering these questions.

    a) How much do you already know?
    b) What kind of trades will you want to execute?
    c) Are you an active or passive investor?
    d) What kind of help do you need?
    e) Define your goals

    Be brutally honest with yourself about how much time, energy, and effort you are willing to put into your investments. Your answers may change over time, no one can anticipate all their needs and goals for the rest of their life. Just start with where you are right now.

    Pay attention to several things while finding the best trading stocks platform



    * Does the brokerage website offers two-factor authentication
    * Do they clearly explain how they use encryption or “cookies” to protect your account information and how they work?
    * Try searching the web for reviews of the brokerage, using keywords like “insurance claim”, “fraud protection”, “customer support”, “chargebacks”, “easy withdrawal”
    * Will the company reimburse you for losses resulting from fraud? etc.

    And then test it!

    Every brokerage should have a decent description of what kinds of tools and resources it is trading stocks platform offers. But sometimes the best way to evaluate platform quality is to give it a test drive. For brokers that allow you to open an free or demo account. It might be worth the effort to go through the signup process just to access and test the trading platform.

  • Forex Scams and How to Avoid Them

    Forex Scams and How to Avoid Them


    There is a high level of possibility to get trapped in some Forex scams. Here is how to recognize them and avoid falling in them.

    By Guy Avtalyon

    Forex scams are the reality but you must know how to avoid them

    The Forex market is among the most active trading markets in the world. Hence, participants are ranging from multinational corporations to large banks, to speculators, to governments, and a small fraction of individual professional traders. Even more so than other markets, investing in Forex can be very profitable.  

    However, there is a risk involved in these investments but we’re not talking about normal risk in any type of investment. I’m talking about Forex scams, where the investment is simply an obvious case of fraud. We all can find on the internet how individual traders complain through forums about how their brokers screwed them.
    The forex market involves very active trading of over $1 trillion each day. Futures and currency options put the trading at closer to $5 trillion daily.

    Still, there are a lot of opportunities for many forex scams over promises of quick fortunes through “secret trading formulas” or algorithm-based “proprietary” trading methodologies.

    What are Forex scams? 

    For example, signal sellers. One of the challenges a novice forex investor faces is determining which operators to trust in the forex market and which to avoid. The signal seller is offering a system that purports to identify favorable times for buying or selling a currency pair. They all claim they want to provide information that leads to favorable trading opportunities. But signal sellers usually charge a daily, weekly, or monthly fee for their services. Otherwise, how they can earn?

    How does typical work? 

    The scammer gains the trust of his/her victims with a promise of a great and quick profit. Indeed, it’s possible to make a big profit by trading on the Forex market, but not in the way that the fraudster promise. The scammer takes money from the client (actually the victim) and claims that he/she will earn big profits by trading currencies on Forex. In the beginning, the profit is big. But this profit was not realized by scammer’s trading on Forex. The scammer uses the money of newer customers to pay promised earnings to previous clients.

    But, victims of fraud, thrilled with good earnings, often decide to invest even more money with the fraudsters. In addition, they often recommend a good opportunity to earn money for their friends so that the network of clients is rapidly increasing. The scam ends after the inflow of new customers ceases to exist or be diminished to the extent that the fraudster is no longer able to pay good earnings to older clients. Then the victims realize that they were deceived and that had lost everything they had invested.

    How to identify Forex scams?

    The easiest way to identify a fraudster is if he/she requires a client to deposit money in cash, bypassing payments through the bank. Real Forex brokers work solely payments through banks. Real Forex brokers provide customers with access to the market where the client decides which currency to buy or sell, depending on which trading result is. Additionally, every client at any time of the day or night can access to the account and can track the status of his account in real-time.

    How to avoid Forex Scams?

    Since you are into currency trading to make money, you must know how to avoid Forex scams. The information here will help you a lot on how to avoid Forex scams.

    Whenever you are dealing with some site, be cautious, and don’t trade with websites that say you that Forex trading is simple. The scammers capitalize on the human nature of wanting things quick, easy, and convenient. Method to avoid Forex scam is for you to keep away from any website that claims to have a secret trading system. Don’t ever fall victim to these incorrect offers. A lot of Forex traders believe the fact that there is a holy grail or secret trading method that will make a profit for them overnight. Reading reviews of experts will help you to find the broker that fits your Forex requirements. Reviews are a good solution anyway, they can help you to recognize those that can bankrupt soon or save you from scams. The truth is that you need a lot of hard work and patience to succeed in Forex trading.

    A lie or truth about Forex?

    If you’ve ever searched by some browser for the word “Forex”, you weren’t surprised that some sites write about Forex fraud, often placed on the first page. You will find that Forex is a big fraud and legalized robbery. The “big”, that is brokers and large financial institutions, have teamed up to take the money from the “little ones”, that is ourselves.

    We can completely calmly say that Forex is no fraud and it will never be.

    So, the Forex market is really great as the potential for earning. Forex trading is real, and Forex at itself is not a scam. People are something else. Some people will always find a way to cheat, deceive, dupe, swindle. That’s the nature of human beings.

    That still does not mean the Forex is a scam, not at all. Everyone should be on the lookout for any potential on Forex and invest their money wisely.

    If you have personal experience, share it with us and others.

  • The Best Broker and How To Choose?

    The Best Broker and How To Choose?

    forex broker
    Choosing the best broker seems like a simple process. But in reality, it can be a nightmare.

    By Guy Avtalyon

    Finding the best broker is not easy. Not at all!!! I’ll give you seven tips on how to do that.

    In the very beginning, you want to be sure that the broker has the right credentials, understands the market, has similar wealth-building beliefs as you do. Trust me.

    What is the main point  when you have to choose the best broker

    a) make sure a broker offers the services and features you most need,
    b) don’t pay extra for services and features you don’t need or want.

    The best approach is to make a list of facilities you want from your broker. 

    Tips and tricks for choosing the best broker

    1. Minimum Trades  – Check if there is a clause about minimum trades that you will have to do as well as the penalty for not complying with the requirement. There are actually brokers who have no minimum requirement or require only a few hundred dollars.
    2. Costs – Consider the commissions and other fees that broking companies charge.  Brokers typically have a wide assortment of fees for cost per trade. That’s the holy grail of the online brokerage universe.
    3. Customer service – Look for customer reviews online or on specialized forums, please. Make sure that the broker offers such support and it’s available during more than just “regular business hours”. Check if it’s available in various forms: email support and live chat can be more convenient contact methods than a direct phone.
    4. Investment options – Some ‘’full-service’’ brokers may not offer products of all asset management companies or AMCs. A good broker is one that offers you the ability to invest in a large number of assets: stocks, bonds, mutual funds, exchange-traded funds (ETFs), real estate investment trusts.  You will need a broker who can provide you with all of the possibilities if you want to spread your investment wings.
    5. Investment Advice – The problem may arise if you are not DIY (do it yourself) type. Some brokers will offer limited investment advice, while others will provide a full investment advisory service, usually for a small fee, some will charge a higher fee if you need broker assistance. You have to explore what suits you best.
    6.  Asset Allocation Guidance – Especially for new investors Asset allocation is one of the more challenging investment functions. It can be complicated enough to decide on initial asset allocation, but even more, involved to maintain that allocation going forward. Periodic rebalancing is not the easiest of tasks if it must be done manually and will be necessary to do from time to time. Most robo advisor services will handle asset allocation and automatic rebalancing as part of their account management fee. If you’re looking for “hands-off” investing, robo advisors could be the best option for you. You have to find out if the broker offers this service and if there is an additional charge.
    7. Types of Retirement Accounts  – It’s best to confirm this at the very beginning that the broker offers multiple types of retirement accounts to invest in. And even if you want only a regular investment account right now, you may decide to open a custodial account for one of your children in the future. If you have confirmed that these options are existing before you first sign-on, you can be relaxed. I know that most investors like to have all of their various accounts with a single broker, particularly if they are happy with the service.

    What type of trader do you want to be?

    Are you an active trader or buy-and-hold investor? Whatever you are, it will affect your choice of broker. If you are a buy-and-hold investor and invest in index funds, making a few trades per year, fund selection may be more important to you than low transaction fees.

    You have to determine if you’re an investor which means long term investing, or active trader, short term trading. If you are still learning how to trade stocks online, you shouldn’t rush into choosing a broker. Everyone eventually develops their own trading style.

    Online stock brokers offer a wide array of features and fees. Choosing a broker with a good reputation is worth it. Someone with the features you really need and a reasonable fee structure. Don’t let yourself be attracted by a platform with the bells and whistles. Especially when you are at the beginning.

    Readers, what do you look for in the right investment broker? Let me know and share it with others.