How To Choose The Best Trading Platform

 
A trading platform is a web-based software tool that allows traders and investors to execute trades to buy and sell securities in the financial markets. It acts as the intermediary between the traders and the brokers. Brokers tend to offer the best trading platform for their services for free.The best trading platforms come bundled with features such as news feeds, real-time quotes, premium research, charting tools, among others. Platforms may also be customised and specifically tailored for specific markets like currencies, futures, options, or stock markets.
 
Picking the Best Trading Platform.
When considering how to choose the best trading platform, it is important to know that traders use a variety of trading platforms based on their trading style and volume. Generally, there are two categories of trading platforms.
Commercial Platforms
Commercial platforms are characterised by ease-of-use. They also come with an assortment of helpful features such as charts, newsfeeds, and premium research tools for trader’s education and research.
Prop Platforms
Choosing the best trading platform to suit your needs can be challenging, especially if you do not know what a good trading platform should provide. So, what should consider when choosing the right one for you?
Research the Broker Behind the Platform
Some platforms are only available for you to use when working with a particular broker or intermediary, while other platforms are noncommittal to specific intermediaries or brokers.Before committing to a specific trading platform to manage your account and execute trades, take your time to research the broker or intermediary the tool belongs to and establish their trustworthiness. Make sure that the intermediary or broker has a good reputation, excellent customer service, and a team of brokers working for them. That way, you will have someone to turn to when you have technical issues with your trading account. You can trade with both cTrader and MetaTrader with CFI.
Fees and Account Transactions
When choosing a trading platform, any fees and commissions associated with your account should be an important consideration. A trading platform with low fees and associated account transaction costs is nearly always preferable because these fees and commissions eat into your profits. However, there may be trade-offs to consider. For example, if low fees mean that the platform provides access to fewer informational resources and features, then the trade-off may not be advantageous.
Reliability
You need to choose a trading platform that is stable and that doesn’t crash or freeze often. A good trading platform should remain stable during the times of global economic news or events. Do not be lured by the look and feel of a platform, especially if you are an aggressive trader, and you like making large and frequent trades. Look for a reliable platform that very rarely crashes. However, if you are a passive and conservative trader, and do not watch the market round-the-clock, you can be more flexible. Depending on your hardware and software features, you may prefer either a web-based application or a desktop application, but the bottom line is that you should be concerned about the reliability of a trading platform, more than its look and feel.
User-Friendly Interface
The best trading platform is the user-friendly one. You should be able to easily and quickly enter or exit a trade, and it should offer easy management of all types of trade orders. The overall navigation of your trading platform should be easy, and any additional features like charts, news feeds, and premium research tools should be easy to access and apply. It should also be optimised in such a way that you can quickly open several graphs at once.
Analysis Tools
Analysis tools come in handy when deciding on when to place a trade. You will not be able to profit regularly if your platform does not provide you with the right tools to analyse your trades before and after they have run their course.A good trading platform should offer both technical and fundamental analysis tools such as charts, economic data, and technical indicators.
Automatic Trading
The best trading platform should allow you to automate your trades through algorithms that give the best trading or investment suggestions for you to consider. It should also be customisable and allow you to enter your own algorithms which place orders automatically when certain set criteria or preloaded conditions are met. Initially, you will need to double-check the suggestions that the software offers you, and when you establish that they lead to good trades, then you can begin to allow it to trade for you automatically at risk-reward values that you define.
Responsiveness
Order execution speed can lead to either negative or positive order spillage, and how responsive a trading platform is can help reduce such instances. If the platform is less responsive, then it means your orders will not be filled at your chosen price, and this can even lead to a worse value during times of high-volatility events which cause gaps in the market. So, you should check to see that your broker’s platform is responsive enough to fill your orders at the most accurate value possible and avoid unnecessary order spillages.
Security of Your Data
The last thing you would wish for is to have your trading data compromised. You need to check the type of data encryption your platform uses to get some idea of how secure your data is, and how it will be protected as it gets transmitted over the internet. A reputable and secure platform should use both server-side and application-level firewalls, as well as two separate synced servers to ensure your data is well secured and backed up. .
 
CFDs are complex instruments and come with a high risk of losing money rapidly due to leverage. The vast majority of retail client accounts lose money when trading in CFDs. You should consider whether you understand how CFDs work and whether you can afford to take the high risk of losing your money.
The Client agrees the Company provides execution only services and that any information, reports, opinions, commentary or other materials received from the Company directly or from its employees or through any analytical tools provided or third party research provided from the Company shall not be deemed as investment advice and it cannot be relied upon to make investment decisions.The Client commits to make their own research and from external sources as well to make any investment. The Client accepts the Company will not accept liability for any loss or damage, including without limitation to, any loss of profit, which may arise directly or indirectly from use of or reliance on such information. The contents of this document should not be construed as an express or implied promise, as a guarantee or implication that clients will profit from the strategies herein, or as a guarantee that losses in connection therewith can, or will be limited.