Forex Trading Platforms | What You Should Know About Trading Platform
If you are into online forex trading, you must choose a trusted one from various forex trading platforms that scattered through the internet. It is still a must even if you are planning to use an automated trading system since your automated system still need means to connect it to the market.
A trading platform is software that connects a trader and the forex market by providing basic features such as live price, execute orders, and account management. The other features ranged widely depend on the creator and the purpose; some of them are built solely for certain market, the other cover forex, futures, and CFD markets.
Usually, forex trading platforms are given free by the brokers when you use their services. This can be in software form that you must install in your computer or an online platform. These days, these broker’s trading platform has quite complete features; at the very least they are all support basic charting which is the bread and butter of forex market analysis.
Using a free trading platform from your broker is not always available option though; for example: if you are using Expert Advisor (EA)/forex robot, usually it can’t run at the broker’s trading platform, so you have to use another popular platform: Meta Trader (widely known as MT4).
So, what do you need from these forex trading platforms? These are some things that a platform should have:
1. Easy access to your account information as well as orders summary. The important thing is it should display real time value of your account based on your current open position. Example: if you close your position at the current price, your account will get profit/loss by 20 pips.
2. Easy access to the currency pair that you want. It should give you real time valid updates on the currency movement and quick live chart for analysis purpose.
3. Easy to execute orders. When the market has hit the right price, you don’t have time to clicking various button and link across the screen just to make an entry. It should be easily found everywhere.
4. Quick and accurate to execute order. These are problems that experienced by many traders that use various low quality forex trading platforms. Usually, the problem is the trading platform won’t execute the order that you have given; it will display the ‘waiting’ status while the market price keep moving and make you lose potential profits.
This can be due to connection issues which can also be experienced by a credible broker, but there is also other probability: your account is in a scam brokerage. These brokers will have various modifications in their forex trading platforms in order to make you lose a lot. Sometimes it will not execute your stop loss order with various excuses afterwards. If you have experienced this again and again, just withdraw your account and find another broker.
Aside from scam brokerage, there are still many credible forex trading platforms that owned by honest forex brokers; just go with a recommended broker and you will be fine. The interface of the platforms might different for each broker, but as long as it is fulfill the four requirements that I’ve mentioned above, it should serve you well.
