How to choose the right broker?

The most common and most important question for every trader!
Every broker is good - until you won't make some substantial profit. At that point you will ask yourself whether you chose the right broker because your broker will not pay you the profit or because you will suddenly experience some very strange behaviour when trading. From this point on your account will be 'flagged' and the broker will turn on all add-ons and applications which will trade against you. And there is more! A lot more!

First filter:
If the broker is not ECN/STP then they will trade against you. We call such brokers the market makers. Just read their agreement which you have to sign when you open a trading account with them and you will find that they are a counter party. With your acceptance of their
agreement you actually agree that they will trade against you. When you trade with them you are playing with numbers only and you do not trade on the market at all. If you win - they lose and that is why they will not allow you to make any serious profit.
Unfortunately these days you can find that few of those bucket shop brokers are starting to offer ECN trading too: It could be real but we can't believe them. 99% possibility is - with their
ECN platform they are NOT on the market either. Have they stolen enough money from the traders and can change their ways? NO! They invented one more way to steal your money only!

So there are a few more filters to avoid such scammers:

2. If a broker is offering funding through electronic payment processors like Liberty Reserve, Money Bookers (and similar) or e-gold even - it is not real. There is no market in the world where you can use electronic money to buy stocks or trade with options, futures or forex. All these markets recognize hard cash only. A real broker will not risk the time and unknown and unpredictable costs to exchange that funny electronic money for real money. A real broker has to deposit real money and nothing else to their liquidity provider to cover the margin.

3. Avoid brokers who offer financial bonuses. It is stated in every agreement that nobody can add or withdraw money to/from your account. So how can they add funds to your account?
They will not add a penny. They will only change the Balance number on your trading account. But those are numbers, not money: Don't forget - you are not on the market with such brokers. You just play a game with numbers against your broker. Let us say you have some experience with forex already. And now think: have you ever seen an offer for a financial bonus from any of the real, already recognized safe and reputable brokers?
No? Of course not: They are in business between you and their liquidity provider. They live on a tiny part of spread or commission and not from scamming retail traders. So there is no place for
3 or 5 or even 20% of bonuses on every deposit. Under the same category there is also the too low spread or even zero spread: Those scammers are not on the market so they can give to you whatever spread, even zero. Because they do not pay a commission to a bank, they do not hold your deposits with liquidity providers. Have you
ever heard of any free bank service? No? Of course not! Bankers are the richest in the world because you are paying them all the time! And it is the same with liquidity providers who are paid from spread too so zero or extremely low spreads on the real market do not exist. And a real broker has to live on some part of the spread/commission too. The conclusion is very simple: Spread on eur/usd below 1 pip is a fairy tale or scam. Your broker has a fixed spread? For sure it is market maker then and they manipulate price. On real market spread is changing every second! Spread depends from trading volume: Bigger is
volume - lower is spread. So logically - fixed spread doesn't exist!

4. If you are already trading and are constantly receiving error messages like 'requote', 'wait', 'trading context is busy', 'quote is accepted', 'request is in process' and so on - you are trading
against a classic scamming broker. These errors do not exist on the real market with real liquidity providers. Every liquidity provider tries to execute any transaction instantly and as fast is possible: there are simply always a few traders on the other side who are trying to open an opposite position from you. The part of retail trading is still so small that lot size we trade it seems maybe big for us but in reality on that $4 trillion daily turnover - means nothing. So - if
you are receiving the above mentioned errors it is because the oftware of the trading platform looks for the worst price which can be delivered to you, nothing else. Your broker doesn't allow scalping? Or you have to place SL & TP order 5 or even 10 pips away from market price? They have dealing desk and they trade against you hard!
Your broker doesn't allow Expert Advisors (EA)? Or your EA is working properly on demo but on real account does not? Run away! Your broker is scammer and they will steal your money!

5. Why is there such a small number of ECN/STP brokers on the market? The answer is simple:
95% to 98% of all retail traders are losing only. So if you decide to open a brokerage company - which form will you choose? Why would you choose the hard way of looking for liquidity providers, one where you even have to deposit $10 million on their account just so they are
willing to give you their feed? On the other hand, when you are one of those thief brokers you just need to make a nice web page and buy a license from Meta Quotes€¦ and you are in business! Whichever math you do - the payouts to those 2% of winning retail traders can easily
be covered with 20 or 30% of the losers€¦ and the rest of the deposits are pure profit for bucket shop brokers.

6. EVERY broker is good until the retail trader is losing or he/she is trading with a small account.
But what happens if you make some significant profit with one of those scamming brokers? Below you can read about the experience from only one good trader; we do not want to bother you with many examples. Should we publish all the stories we know from the successful traders
- you would realize that there is no broker - market maker - who will pay you out if your profit is a little bit bigger.

7. We know you have one more question€¦ Most of the brokers who scammed our successful trader from article 6 are regulated by NFA or FSA or any other regulation bodies€¦ How is it possible that those brokers did not pay out the profit? This thing about the regulation is just one
big misunderstanding: if a broker has a NFA number that does not mean any security for your funds at all. Regulators do not deal with your money! Brokers are just members of NFA under some number and all they have to do is accept some rules from these regulatory bodies, which
does not mean they will pay out your deposit or profit. And if broker - market maker - has a NFA number - it will still be your counter party and it will trade against you. And if a broker disappears tomorrow or goes bankrupt - the regulatory will not pay a cent. The brokers know that almost nobody will take legal action against them because it is too expensive, especially if the retail trader is not from the country where the broker is registered.

There is more€¦ but these few filters and facts that we have mentioned above are so obvious that every beginner can recognize them easily. We hope you now know that only ECN/STP broker and brokers with direct access to interbank liquidity are the right choice if you want to
protect your money!

An experience of a good news trader as an example how brokers - market makers are prepared to scam you...
Brokers.......The Good......The Bad......and the Ugly

Hi to all,
who read through my last article "How to choose the right broker?", already knows that the best fx broker for you is only true STP broker with ECN Premier