- Location



Always look at where a company is registered. After all if you're going to be sending money to a company in order to start trading, do you really want to be sending it to an offshore company based in some remote part of the world, and can you be sure that you'll be able to successfully withdraw money when the time comes?

- Regulation

Following on from the last point, if they're based in the US or UK, for example, check that they're fully registered with the relevant regulators, such as the NFA and CFTC in the US and the FSA in the UK.

- Reputation

Reputation is another point to consider and again requires a little bit of research. Do a search at your favourite search engine for the company you are researching and see what other people have to say about them. What better way to find out about a company than seeing what other traders have to say about them?

- Trading Platform

If you're going to be using a company's trading platform on a regular basis, then you need it to be easy to use and user-friendly in general so test drive the demo platform if they offer one. Also look to see what extras are included such as charting facilities and news updates.

- Spreads

If you're a short-term trader this is a very important factor. If you're a long-term trader looking for moves of several hundred points each time, then a few extra points spread won't make much difference, but if you're a scalper or short-term trader then it can be the difference between making money and losing money. After all it's obviously so much easier to make money trading the GBP/USD intraday with a 2-3 point spread than a 5-10 point spread.

So there you have five important points to consider when choosing a forex broker. You'll notice I didn't mention margin as a factor. This is because it's far too easy to be attracted to brokers that offer up to say 1:400 leverage, and therefore allow you to take out very large positions with a small margin, but this is a very dangerous game and it's all too easy to over-leverage yourself and wipe out your account completely.