Best Forex Broker for Beginners and Professional Traders.
If you are here, then you are probably looking for a good Forex broker. Most likely you are confused between margins, leverage, regulations, spreads, and so on. Don’t worry! This is totally normal and we’ve all been there. Here are some major qualities that best Forex brokers for beginners have and we will cover them all.
Only Regulated Forex Brokers
The best Forex brokers on the market are regulated. Regulation is the most important aspect of your research and it is an easy job to find out if a broker is regulated. Is there a governmental body that accounts the activities of your broker? There better be! If a broker is regulated, this means it is ready to take responsibility in case of an irregular activity.
Go to the website of your broker and find out if it is regulated. Most of the brokers share this information in their terms and conditions and even directly in the footer of the website.
Our Favorite Broker
"At Keenbase Trading, Most of our users have chosen ICMarkets as their favorite Forex broker, and after doing our in-depth research, we are fully agreed with them."
This is what the ICMarkets official website states:
- It holds an Australian financial license (#335692).
- It is regulated by the Cyprus Securities and Exchange Commission (CySEC License #362/18).
- It is regulated by the Financial Services Authority of Seychelles (License #SD018).
A simple internet check confirms the presence of these licenses. Then, if you feel that you have been mistreated by your broker, you know where to look for your rights.
Cost of Trading with Forex Brokers
Now that you are sure in the regulation of your broker, you need to consider the cost of trading. You probably know that trading doesn’t come for free, right? After all, your broker needs to stay profitable to exist. This is why Forex brokers most likely charge spreads.
The spread is the difference between the Ask and the Bid price. The truth is that your broker will charge you a slightly higher price than the actual rate and will keep the difference. And that’s how they make money. Best Forex brokers are likely to have tighter spreads and lower fees as they count on the number of clients and transactions.
ICMarkets charge their clients based on the account they choose:
ICMarkets Account Types
Standard | Raw Spread | cTrader |
|---|---|---|
Spreads starting from 0.1 | Spreads starting from 0.0 | Spreads starting from 0.0 |
No commission | $3.50 commission per lot | $3.00 commission per lot |
$200 min. deposit | $200 min. deposit | $200 min. deposit |
The three account variations are a great solution for all types of traders. If you want to do small trades, there is no point paying commission per trade. In this case, the standard account is great for you. If you prefer investing bigger amounts, then the commission plan is better for you.
See, the best Forex brokers will always offer you flexible plans for your trading styles. This way you can avoid unneeded charges.
Trading Platforms
The most popular Forex trading platform for retail trading is MetaTrader 4. The reason for this is that it is extremely flexible, fully customizable, and easy to understand. A good Forex broker will most likely include that platform in its portfolio.
Fortunately, ICMarkets has their Standard and Raw Spread accounts under the MetaTrader 4 and 5 platforms. If this is not enough for you, they have their cTrader account under the cTrader trading platform. In addition, ICMarkets offer mobile trading for Android and iOS on smartphone or tablet, which provides higher convenience of trading.
Both cTrader and MetaTrader are rich on trading tools. You can find there many indicators like moving averages, oscillators, and different trend recognition tools.
Currency Pairs and Instruments
Every good Forex broker will offer you a wide diversity of Forex pairs for trading. Yes, the majors are the cheaper ones for trading, that’s true. But exotic pairs can sometimes provide rare trading opportunities, which can result in catching a big market move.
One of the best things with ICMarkets is that each of their accounts give you access to 64 Forex pairs. And that’s not all. They also support stock trading, commodities, indices, cryptocurrencies, and more.
Margin and Leverage
If you are a beginner, this part is probably a pain in the neck for you. This is where the math comes in handy. The truth is that retail Forex trading can’t be very profitable if you are not borrowing money from your broker. Surprised?
Imagine you have an account with $2,000. Theoretically, let’s say you invest all the $2,000 on a single trade. Say you buy the GBP/USD at 1.3000 USD for 1 GBP.
Then, the GBP makes a big move of 40 pips (0.0040) in your favor. This means that the price has increased by (0.0040 / 1.3000) x 100 = 0.31%.
So, your profit equals to $2,000 x 0.0031 = $6.20. Not much, eh?
Notice that catching such big moves is not a very common occasion on trading. The goal in trading is to beat your losses with profit. So, even if you are profitable and you are making trades like the one above, these trades are likely to be backed by substantial losses.
That’s why traders use margin and leverage. Although these two terms are both related to borrowing money from your broker, they are different. Leverage is the option to borrow the money. The margin is the already borrowed amount.
ICMarkets offer a maximum leverage of 1:500. If we use the example above, with the 1:500 margin, this means the profit will equal to:
$6.20 x 500 = $3,100 from the same trade.
WARNING: Never invest your entire bank on a single trade when trading on margin. Every trade on margin should be backed by a certain amount of money from your bankroll. If you invest all your bank in a single trade, you won’t have money to back your trade and your trades will all get closed on a huge loss. You can destroy your account in seconds.
Customer Support
The Forex market is the biggest in the world and it operates with trillions of dollars daily. Every trusted Forex broker is constantly available to its clients as trading involves risking money. Good Forex brokers are available via phone, live chat, and will reply to your email within a day.
ICMarkets have their support team ready to take your inquiry 24/7. They are available on the phone, via email, and live chat. Their convenient help center contains the answers to almost every question a client can ask.
And if you can’t find an answer to your question, you can use their chat widget in the bottom right corner.
How to Open an Account with ICMarkets
ICMarkets supports both demo and real money accounts. If you are still not confident in your trading, maybe you want to start with a demo account.
This will lead you to a simple registration form where you need to add your names, email, and phone number.
After clicking the green “Register” button, you will reach another page, where you can choose your trading platform, money amount, account type, currency, and leverage.
Now you should check your email, where you will have a message with your login details and platform instructions.
Opening a Real Account with ICMarkets
The real account opening is not harder. You go again to ICMarkets Website and this time you choose the “START TRADING” button.
This will lead you to the first form that you need to fill in to open a real-money account.
Step 1 - Personal Information
You need to fill in your country, names, email, and phone number. Notice that ICMarkets has added a PayPal sign-up form for your convenience. This way you can also facilitate the way you fund your account.
Clicking the “NEXT” button will lead you to another form that requires some extra information about yourself.
Step 2 - Extra Information about Yourself
You need to choose your account type:
- Individual account
- Joint account
- Corporate account
Then, you fill the date of birth, address including city, country, and zip code. Then you proceed to the next form.
Step 3 - Choosing the Trading Platform
Choose one of the three platforms you want to use - cTrader, MT4 or MT5. Then, choose the account commission type - Standard Account or Raw Spread account, and pick up the account’s base currency.
Step 4 - Security Question and Declaration
First, they will ask you to choose the level of your Forex trading experience.
Now you need to pick up a security question and to add an answer. When you submit the form you will be agreeing with the declaration that comes next.
Step 5 - Check your Data
You will see a standard form with the personal data that you’ve just added.
Do a quick check and fill the missing strings if any
Step 6 - Share you Financial Condition
Don’t be surprised by the following questions.
Brokers make sure that you can actually afford to do trading and if you lose your money you won’t stay homeless.
Step 7 - Account Details Check
Just check again if the details are correct.
Correct whatever doesn’t respond to your preferences and put a check mark below the declaration. Then proceed.
Step 8 & Step 9 - ID and Address Confirmation + Account Funding
You choose which step to complete first. Just note that you can’t trade if you haven’t confirmed your identity and address.
Simply upload a photo of a document that confirms your identity. This could be an ID, a driver's license or an ID. You confirm your address by uploading a recent utility bill or a bank statement that shows your address.
You can always ask ICMarkets for help using the green “Chat” button in the bottom right corner.
Fortunately, ICMarkets offers a number of depositing methods, including card payment, wire transfer, PayPal, Skrill, Neteller, Bitcoin payments, and more.
Choose your preferred method and complete the payment. After you do this, you will receive an email with your account information and platform instructions. Pretty simple, right?
Why ICMarkets?
Finding a trusted Forex broker might be challenging. Although regulation comes first, there are other things to look for - cost, customer service, market diversification, and trading tools. If a broker offers you all these on a decent level, then you are most likely approaching a good Forex broker for beginners.
ICMarkets is a highly regulated broker, which manages a great customer support to take care of its clients. Its rich platforms, account diversification, and rapid order execution provides a pleasant trading environment for ever beginner Forex trader.
After all, nearly 1,300 reviewers on TrustPilot can’t be wrong:
So, if you are wondering which broker to start with, ICMarkets should be one of the options. Open your account now and bring your trading experience to a new level!