subject: Forex Trading Platforms - Are You Aware Which One To Use? [print this page] One of the important steps in strating forex trading is installing various forex trading platforms and see which one is the best. You can't skip this even if you have an automated trading system ready because your system will need a tool to access 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 upon the inventor and the purpose; some of them are created solely for certain market, the other cover forex, futures, and CFD markets.
Typically, forex trading platforms are free features from the brokers when you open a trading account. It can be comes in two forms: online platform or a software that you must download and install to your computer. Nowadays, these broker's trading platform provides quite complete features; at the minimum all of them are support basic charting which is the bread and butter of currency markets 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 needs to have:
1. Easy accessibility 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 obtain 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. The means to execute order has to be accessible by various ways.
4. Quick and accurate to execute order. Some forex trading platforms can't fulfill these requirements on a steady basis. Usually, the problem is the trading platform won't execute the order that you have specified; it will display the 'waiting' status while the market price keep moving and make you lose potential profits.
This problem can be caused by connection issues which sometimes also experienced by a good broker, but it can also caused by something worse: you are using scam brokers trading platform. These brokers will have various modifications in their forex trading platforms in order to make you lose a lot. There are times when it won't execute your stop loss order and when you try to confirm it you will only get excuses. If you have experienced this repeatedly, just withdraw your fund and get 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 user interface of the platforms may diverse for every broker, but as long as it's satisfy the 4 requirements that I've mentioned above, it ought to serve you well.
