In order to be able to trade forex online, you need to open an account with an online forex broker. So basically, the broker will become the host of your forex party. Now, attending forex parties hasn’t always been possible for everyone. At the beginning of online forex trading (the early 1990s), it was available only to superrich people who exchanged humongous amounts of currencies through superlarge banks. Retail forex trading wasn’t available to the public until the end of the 1990s, when some smart entrepreneurs took advantage of this new opportunity and started new forex brokerage firms where individuals like you and me could take part in the largest market in the world with small amount of capital. Recently, even some banks have dedicated a department to retail forex trading.
There are many different retail brokers who offer online platforms for forex trading. Some of them have reliable platforms, and some don’t. Some charge a larger transaction fee, and some a smaller one. Some are regulated by reliable authorities, and some aren’t. The list goes on. And in today’s online-search-aholic society, it is important to remember that some of these brokers pay large amounts of advertising fees to the search engines so that they pop in front of prospective clients’ eyes. So you may be asking, how are you supposed to pick from among the many brokers who are trying to host your forex party?
There are different ways to measure which broker is the right one for you, and it all depends on your investment goals and your trading style. You can obviously have different accounts with different brokers to get the best deals on each currency pair as well. We will get into that in a bit.
