A good broker will have a range of accounts to suit different trading styles and budgets. They will offer in-depth market analysis to give traders a feel for what’s going on, and the best ways to make money from it. They should also provide educational resources, including video tutorials and reading material, in order to help you master the basics before you start trading for real money. Here are our five pillars of what makes a good broker.

1. Low Spreads and Fees

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A good forex broker should offer competitive spreads that minimise the impact on your returns from price movements when buying or selling currency pairs. Spreads of between 0.5 and 2 pips are good, but spreads of below 1 pip are preferable.

2. Exceptional Customer Support

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A good forex broker should provide support that is both fast and exceptional. If you need to cancel your order or close a trading account, they should do so without delay or difficultly, or they should offer a decent cancellation fee. Support should also be available 24/7 if you have an emergency.

A good broker will have a wide range of customer service options. All of them should be able to answer you when you call, with the option to wait in queue if necessary. They should also send email messages and provide live chat support, because most traders prefer to communicate with real people rather than automated services.

3. Fast Withdrawals

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A good forex broker should not hold your funds for more than 24 hours, because some traders do not want the risk of the exchange rate moving against them overnight. A good broker should also use a safe and secure platform, and not work with unlicensed, unregulated or rogue third-party providers.

4. Good Trading Environment

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A good forex broker will provide the tools you need to help you make money. In addition to price charts and real-time currency quotes, some of the best brokers will provide you with advanced options trading tools, such as graphical indicators and pattern recognition software. They may also provide stock charts for related markets such as commodities and bonds.

A good forex broker will offer a simple and intuitive trading platform that provides a range of charting tools, such as candlestick charts and oscillators. Some brokers will also provide technical analysis tools, such as pattern recognition software and indicator systems.

5. Regulated

A good forex broker should be regulated by a financial authority, such as the FCA in the United Kingdom, ASIC in Australia or CySec. This means that it will be subject to regular audits and checks, so that you can be confident that your money is safe. This also means that your broker will have to provide financial information to the public, making it easy for you to compare prices.

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Who ticks all the boxes ?

Eightcap has been our primary broker for our trading accounts for over two years. As traders of XAUUSD primarily we find the spreads on all assets to be the most competitive and especially for XAUUSD (Gold) the trading conditions are unparalleled. We regularly see less than 1 pip on a standard account with 0 commissions. Which is rare to see, spreads this low usually come with hefty commissions.

Customer support and withdrawals are quick efficient and timely. Most importantly helpful, this combined with the fact that they have an MT4 and MT5 platforms with crypto CFD's on the latter make it a versatile broker.

Innovation and standing out is important too, a broker that cares about their customers also tries to innovate and we have seen some interesting services come out of the works such as Capitilise.ai, a no coding necessary AI powered trade automator, yet another tool to add to your trading tool box.

With their 4.6 stars on Trustpilot and 4.7 stars on Google reviews its no wonder considering the above why they are loved by so many.

Check them out here.

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-Adrian