I’ve been learning about forex for 7 months now, and I think I’m finally ready to open my first live account. The hardest part at the moment seems to be choosing the right broker.
I’ve read a lot of horror stories about brokers being blatantly dishonest and crooked when it comes to smaller accounts. I don’t expect to go far with this initial deposit, but I’d still like my broker to be fair.
Right now I’m looking at Alpari UK and IBFX. Alpari seems fair, but their servers are in the UK so lag may become an issue. IBFX has lower spreads for the pairs I’ll be trading, but the stories I’ve read about them scare me. Are there any other brokers (MT4 platform) that would let me start with $250 and trade 0.01 lots on a mini account?
You just hang a fresh bloody meat 10 cm above shark-infested water, my friend. $250 may not sound a lot, but very few crooks of this world would pass it.
These just my suggestions:
If it’s all you have, then save some more, at least until you have double of that amount. Then you can put $250 with less concern since you still have another to start a new with another broker if the worse come to worst.
If you have more than that, then just pick one and send the money. Because if I, or anyone, say Broker A is good and B is bad, then you have an inconvenient with Broker A, you will also blame me, or anyone else, for recommending that broker in the first place.
Just for you to know, I lost $500 to a scam-broker when I started trading in 2001. I considered it a tuition-fee and moved on.
It is true that $250 is like a flash to attack a fish or to trap a rat into the net. The amount the broker is giving as discount or bonus does not matter. The main thing is the services the broker providing to its clients. The same thing happened with me AVAFX had given me a greed that they will be paying me a signup bonus $100 and I went to them. After going through their services, I found some of the disadvantages of it. They do not have MT4 and they are new to the market. Still their trading platform and dealers are very much experienced. Then I thought what happens if that they are new to the market but their dealers, operators, customer supports are experienced.