How to choose my broker

We find ourselves in a world in which many people want to play Leonardo Di Caprio in The Wolf of Wall Street, in other words, to work on the stock market; but what we do not know is that before starting to work on the stock market, we must find an online broker, with whom we can trade with total reliability and that adapts to our needs.

While there is no sure way to guarantee the return on investment, there is a way to prepare for success, and that is finding a broker that fits our capacities.

To make the best decision we are going to see several guidelines:

FINANCIAL EDUCATION

If we are just starting out, we can prioritize to demand the broker, functions such as basic educational resources, fully indexed glossaries, easy access to the support personnel and the ability to practice before starting to trade with real money.

If we already have some investment experience, what we are looking for is for it to provide us with higher level of education and resources based on the opinion created by professional investors and analysts.

If you are an experienced trader (person who trades daily in the financial market), you will prioritize advanced charting capacity, different types of orders, and the ability to trade different products.

MARKETS AND PRODUCTS

We must know in which markets we plan to trade and with what products (investment funds, stocks, CFDs, Futures, ETFs, options, Forex, etc…), since not all brokers work in all markets and with all products.

REGULATION

We must look for a broker that is regulated by a competent entity, for example, the CNMV (Spain), FCA (United Kingdom), etc…

GUARANTEE FUND

Although it is true that it is what we least look at, one of the most important aspects, is the guarantee fund, therefore each one of us will be covered by the broker in case of bankruptcy, meaning, it would cover a certain amount of money.

For this reason, it is desirable to choose a solid broker with a huge heritage to have a bigger protection of these funds.

COMMISSIONS

This point is very important for the traders since the commission that the broker has can differ a lot from one and other, depending on which product we are going to trade we would be interested in one broker or another.

PLATFORM

Not all brokers operate with the same platforms, it is very important that this platform is simple and easy, since it will be our working tool, the most common one is Metatrader 4.

We must know if the platform allows you to trade during extended hours, or on the contrary, it only allows you to trade for a few hours, it is possible that for the new traders this question it is not relevant, but for experienced or more active traders, it is important to know if they can deal during these extended hours.

It is important that the platform has a number of features, such as charts, what type of traced can we do, if it is easy to customize the charts with trend lines, circles and Fibonacci arcs, etc.

It is also relevant that the broker of choice beside giving us a platform where to do our trading in REAL, also to give us UNLIMITED possibilities to test our trading’s or new strategies.

DEPOSIT / WITHDRAWAL FUNDS

It is also important that the broker offer us the possibility of using different ways to make deposits or withdraw funds, through credit cards, bank transfers, etc…   

CUSTOMER SUPPORT

And last but not least, it is the customer service, which will clarify any possible incidents that we may find, with the broker or the platform.

I hope that, with these small guidelines, it will be easier for you to choose a broker, in order to start working in this exciting world, as the financial markets are.

Juan Francisco Sáez

Manager of the IEC