I’m looking at this list of australian brokers.
IC markets for example:
EUR/USD spread is at a low 0.02 pips, should I focus on this as an important metric when choosing who to trade with?
The commission is $7 per trade, I can see a small account (eg, $300) disappearing very quickly even if the trades were otherwise break-even.
How do I perform sound money management when the com is so high? Trades would have to be significantly profitable just to overcome this hurdle…?
IC Markets have commission free platforms.
Thanks i am opening a demo account there.
Do you have a preference between mt4, mt5, ctrader?
Personally, I have been trading MT5 platform for a few years and as the Insert indicators are more up to date than MT4, that’s my preference.
Your choice, though.
ctrader is massively better than the others. I wish somebody had told me that before I wrote all my custom stuff on MT5.
The commission is $7 per lot. You won’t be opening positions that big on a $300 account, it’ll be pennies. But I looked into this years ago. There’s very little between major brokers when it comes to spread + commission. When you add the cost of both together, it basically becomes the same cost per lot on most of them.
This probably stops being true if you’re a professional trader and get reduced commissions.
Massively better?
It’s not too late for me to change then.
Would you care to share a rookie trading system with me?
Try both. MT5 looks like something from 1996 which is about what it is. The other looks modern and has much better features built in with more useful information on the main screen.
I prefer MQL5 for programming, because it’s a familiar language to me, but I’m sure pinescript or whatever it’s called is easy enough once you start.
A simple strategy for me would be draw support and resistance on the daily chart, change to a lower time frame and trade in the direction of the trend when price retraces and bounces off the support or resistance. You can do the same on lower time frames, but daily is the best for determining the true trend
i think you’ve misunderstood - it’s $7 per full lot
if you stick to the (very good) beginners’ principle of trading 0.01 lots (1 microlot) for every $250 you have in the account, then with a $300 account the commission you pay will therefore be about $0.07 per trade
this post may help:
That is the reply I needed!
It seems like commission is per $1000, not per trade.
Many thanks.
they don’t always make it clear … i got a shock when i saw huge commissions on one site, and only realised after reading all the fine-print that they were quoted there on a “per-million” basis! 
Spread refers to commission taken by brokers for each trade opened. Lowering spread is expected.
More important than spread or commission is choosing a broker who is well regulated. Spread and commission are going to seem pretty trivial concerns if you send a thousand bucks to some firm with a PO Box address on some hot dusty island and you never hear from them again and their website’s down and their phone’s disconnected and the regulator has gone marlin fishing.
no it doesn’t, @RosiePalmar - i don’t know where you pasted in this nonsense from, but it’s completely wrong: although they’re both part of a retail trader’s overall dealing-costs, spreads and commissions are two separate, different things
“expected” by whom?
what are you talking about?!
are you from a “forum posting service,” or what?
why do you post here?
clearly you’re not a trader, and (as so often) you have absolutely no idea what you’re talking about
Lol. It’s surely a bot. The inane nonsense that is posted on here time and time again
probably - but there are loads and loads and loads of them, and the whole forum’s gradually filling with garbage, and nobody will do anything about it?!
why do they all pick this forum, to fill with nonsense? it’s not a problem like this in other forums??
sorry, but it’s really got out of hand 
Spread is of two types, including fixed and variable. Some brokers even don’t charge any spread even though I don’t know how they manage their profit.
Yeah 7$ per trade is pretty high compared with other brokers like HFM which charge 4$ per lot round-turn. That’s why you also have to take into account floating part of costs, i.e. spread to make proper comparison.
Yes, consider spread while choosing a broker. Spread refers to the commission taken by a broker and the higher the spread is, the lower the return is.
no, it doesn’t! 
this is explained above - it often helps to read the thread before replying to it! 
there seems to be no way of preventing these ridiculous bots from ever-increasingly polluting the forum with their endless, factually incorrect, drivel? really sad to see the way the forum’s going! 