Saturday, 9 July 2011

Choosing The Best Online Trading Platform For Your Needs.

By Wandaka Kayaes


The invention of the Internet roughly fifteen years ago made a massive difference to the way people trade virtually any market instrument. Within a year or two traders suddenly had a wealth of information to their disposal ' sometimes it felt like information overload. Online trading services became the preferred way to trade for most traders. Choosing the best online trading system is sometimes difficult, because there are simply so many of them.

One of the most important considerations when choosing an online trading service is the cost per trade. A brief look at a few of the most popular services brought to light that they charge between $4.95 and $9.95 per trade. Unless the more expensive one provides more and better services, go for the cheaper one. If you are a day trader you hope to make numerous small chunks of profit and paying too much per trade could well turn your system into a losing one.

Another factor to consider is the range of investments which you can trade through a particular service. All the top services offer trading in stocks, mutual funds, options and exchange traded funds. Many of them also offer exchange savings plans and retirement accounts. The ability to trade forex is not offered by the majority of them, so if you want to trade in currencies it might be better to find a service that specializes in this.

All the top trading portals also offer a whole range of tools to make your trading life easier. Strangely enough, only two of the ten most popular portals offer virtual trading ' the ability to trade in virtual money. If you are starting out, we highly recommend that you select a trading portal offering virtual trading ' this is simply the only way to get to know the market without losing any money.

A trader without charts is a lost trader. Charting software is an absolute must when selecting a trading portal. Without graphs you will end up trying to make sense of rows and rows of data and inevitably make mistakes and lose money.

There are numerous other features that are important to traders, but the ones mentioned above are a few of the most important. Choosing the best online trading platform means doing your homework and knowing what you need and what is available.




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