The importance of choosing the right forex broker is often underestimated. New traders with dreams of getting rich quick often look for features that are not important, and can even do more harm than good. In this article, we describe the three most important things to look for when choosing a forex broker.

1. Choose a broker who is subject to strong forex regulation.

The importance of this cannot be understated. Unregulated forex brokers are able to take advantage of you in ways you do not even realize. A prime example is slippage. Slippage is the difference between the price your trade is executed at, verses the price that was quoted when you placed the order. Slippage is a normal part of trading, because prices fluctuate all the time, and can easily move in the short time between when you place an order, and when it executes. However, unregulated brokers can pass the unfavorable slippage on to you, but keep the favorable slippage for themselves. This increases your transactions costs, and the effect can be significant over time, especially if you are a scalper.

The CFTC & NFA have arguably the strictest forex regulation in the world, and they audit their brokers regularly to make sure that slippage practices are neutral. This is just one of many ways that forex regulation can protect you as a trader.

2. Choose a broker who obeys the law.

This may seem obvious. However, it may surprise you to know that as of May 2015 there are only two forex brokers left in the United States who have never been fined by the regulators. The rest have been fined or banned from doing further business. Even in the face of strong regulation and regular audits, forex brokers still try to get away with cheating their clients. Do you want this kind of broker handling your money? Of course not. If you screen for United States forex brokers from this broker review page, you can easily see which brokers have been fined, and which have a clean regulatory record.

3. Choose a broker with low transaction costs.

Transaction costs are a lot lower than they used to be, and you may think this does not matter much to your trading anymore. If so, you are mistaken, and the following example illustrates why:
Say your starting account balance is $20,000. You have a simple trading system with a 30 pip stop loss and a 30 pip take profit level. You leverage 10:1 and you win 55% of your trades. Broker A offers a spread + commission of 2.5 pips, and Broker B offers a spread + commissions on only 0.7 pips. You make 450 roundtrip trades per year, which is just under two trades per day. The following chart shows the results after one year:

The chart shows that with Broker A:
• 83% of your gross profits get lost to transaction costs
• Your net profit for the year would be $4,500 or 22%
With Broker B:
• Only 23% of your gross profits get lost to transaction costs
• Your net profit for the year would be $20,700, or 104%

In this example, you are clearly better off with Broker B. The difference in transaction costs will have the greatest impact to your trading if you trade frequently, or have a narrow trading edge.

This article was kindly provided by Forex Scam Alerts, who provide advice about the risks of forex trading and how to avoid scams.

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