Trading platforms are an important tool for traders who wish to gain access to international financial markets. An important aspect of trading platforms is that they provide traders with the opportunity to trade with the help of intermediaries - brokers. Thus, the best trading platform like po trade broker has various features and capabilities such as quick access to market data for making investment decisions, charting tools and the ability to trade with using mobile devices.

What is trading and why is it important?

Trading is the process of buying and selling financial assets in order to make a profit on price differences. Compared to investors, traders do not seek to build a portfolio of long-term investments, but are focused on making a small profit from each transaction.

Potentially, trading can bring high income, but the probability of losing the invested money is no less high. Therefore, professionals recommend treating trading as a business and recognizing that it requires financial and mental investment, is associated with risks and uncertainty, and also requires experience and skill.

Financial markets are of great importance in a country's economy as billions of dollars worth of transactions are carried out on them every day. Thanks to financial markets, the speed of financial transactions and asset delivery transactions increases.

Through trading, various markets gain significant liquidity. Traders, conducting transactions on financial platforms, send money and its equivalents to the markets, which helps to increase the volume of liquidity in these markets. This speeds up the transaction process not only for speculators, but also for companies that engage in non-speculative transactions.

Traders are also able to inadvertently offset the price movements of certain assets. For example, if the price of an asset is too low, traders begin to buy it, thereby preventing the price from falling. If the price is relatively high, traders can actively launch sell transactions or take profits, which slows down further growth in the price of the asset.

How to choose a trading platform: basic criteria

Nowadays, most trading operations are carried out using electronic trading terminals, and the market offers a lot of software that makes it possible to trade both on stock exchanges and over-the-counter instruments, such as Forex. An experienced trader already knows what features the best trading platforms provide and how to use them to trade effectively. But for a beginner, it can be difficult to sort through the many options presented.

Among the site selection criteria, the following should be noted:

Reliability

When a trader tries to make money on the stock exchange, he is constantly faced with uncertainty, he has to weigh many factors and make difficult decisions. But adding to this the instability and unreliability of the trading platform would be unwise. Many traders often complain about missed market opportunities or even the loss of a significant part of their deposit due to a low-quality trading platform that unexpectedly failed at a critical moment.

Functionality

Another parameter to choose is the functionality of the trading platform. After all, if at a critical moment you cannot simply open an order, then what is the point of “super indicators” and other complex functions? In addition, professionals usually use specialized services for specific tasks, rather than universal multi-tools. The stock trading platform should provide the trader with the ability to track quotes, send orders (market, limit, stop limit), as well as monitor their positions and completed transactions. Everything else, such as graphics and filters, can often be obtained using additional tools.

Access to the trading exchange

In addition, the ranking of trading platforms includes those that provide access to exchanges for trading. Beginners do not always pay attention to this point. Although often, under the pretext of trading securities, clients are offered to buy and sell contracts for difference (CFDs), which are derivatives of the underlying asset. In the area of ​​over-the-counter trading, a trader cannot be sure that he is gaining access to a real market, and many newcomers get caught in the web of unscrupulous companies. Some platforms, for example, process customer orders on their servers, which may allow them to interpret the market situation in their favor and not show customers the real picture.

If a trader wants the best trading platform, it is important to choose one that allows you to immediately send an order directly to a specific exchange. Of course, the fewer intermediate servers and intermediaries on the way to the exchange, the shorter the delay (which is important for intraday trading, because every second matters), therefore, the risk of fraud on the part of the broker when processing his order is reduced to a minimum.

However, one intermediary is still needed - a broker who provides access to the trading platform and exchange. When choosing a broker, you should pay attention to several main criteria:

• Responsibility. You should choose a trusted broker with a good reputation to avoid companies that want to profit from newcomers and take over their funds.
• Commission fees and software costs. Free software may be illegal and may not work properly. The lack of fees may indicate hidden fees that the company charges customers.
• Software quality. The legal program provides direct access to the exchange, and transactions are executed instantly. The terminal does not freeze and works perfectly.