Forex otherwise known as Foreign Exchange Market is an international currency market where money is being sold and bought. The person putting the money INTO the Forex (the investor) has one main objective and that is to profit from foreign currency movements. In a way I guess its sort of like an investment or better categorized as "stocks" since your trading, buying and selling. Personally I think this stuff is really incredible but it really confuses me. This is where Forex Brokers come in. A Forex Broker by definition is a person or company (firm) that acts as a middle-man in the financial markets. There are two types of brokers, Market Makers and ECNs.

A Market Maker is a middle-man between the interbank and the user. The Market Maker charges commission to its clients in the form of spread or direct commissions to provide them access to trade-able prices in the currency market.

A ECN means Electronic Currency Network. A ECN directs a client through the interbank market.

Hiring on a broker sounds like it would be a good idea if you were new to this game or wanted someone to make all the moves for you. The thing you don't want to do, is just pick ANY broker. With anything else online involving or not involving money there are always those certain sites or people that are scammers. I know I sound like a broken record when I say this, but RESEARCH everything. Every person, every company, every review. Check it all out. Even if it takes you months to check everything out, wouldn't you rather be safe than to lose hundreds of thousands if not millions of dollars of your hard earned money? The answer should be, yes you would rather be safe.

If theres anything I learned from working online is there IS money to be made online. Sometimes it comes easy, sometimes it does not. In a sense a Forex broker is a teacher. They might not teach you everything as they go but you will ultimately learn things you didn't know before. I'm sure there is a way to go about this with out the middle-man aka the Forex broker but with other things involving property, or money, I'm not too sure I would like to handle something like this on my own. An even better reason to hire a broker is this person or firm will be working as hard as they can to make YOU money. After all when you make money they make money.

According to FXStreet, a really amazing website for investors, there are a few things your going to want to look at before hiring or choosing a broker. Here are some of the ones listed on the site:

1- Is the broker or dealer regulated. If so, which country?

2- Is the company a broker or a dealer?

3- How reliable is the brokers trading platform?

4- What are the costs?

5- What are the dealing boundaries?

6- Is the platform, user-friendly?

7- Is the broker offering any extra value services?

8- How helpful is the customer support (I base this as #1 on ANY site I belong to)

9- Ask about their margin and leverage policies

All this and more can be found on FxStreet. If I had to pick my top 10 investor websites, this would be in my top five. Lots of really helpful, honest information up for grabs. Check them out online. Heres a few other investor/Forex sites you could check into:

Forex - *This is the official forex website.

FxClub

Investools

ShareBuilder

BusinessWeek

Etrade

Of course theres many other sites out there, but from what Ive read those are a few of the greatest ones. So remember, if your looking to invest online or get involved with the Forex industry always research before doing anything, make sure you pay attention to the guidelines of the brokerage company, and always ask questions. And if you make a billion, send me some too! Good luck...