Anyone who want to enter currency trading must realize that opening a currency trading account is not as easy as it may seems. Scam brokerage, traders, and trading companies are scattered throughout the internet and without preparations, you will fall to their tricks. Even if you can get a real broker, there are some things that you should check first in order to select the one with the most advantages over the others.

These are several factors that have to be considered when you would like to open a currency trading account:

1. Leverage

Leverage means the usage of a variety of financial instruments or borrowed capital, such as margin, to increase the potential return of an investment. In currency markets, this means a loan that provided for investor by the broker that handling his forex account.

Example: Leverage 200:1 where 1 standard lot is USD10,000. This means that you will need USD10,000 /200 = USD50 in your equity to open 1 standard lot.

Difference in leverage can means different profit opportunity, so make sure you have checked this factor.

2. Spreads

Spread is the different between bids and ask price. Ask is the price when you buy while bid is the price when you sell. Different trading companies offer different spread and get compensation from it. Some other brokerages will charge commissions for each trade in addition from this spread. High spreads will make it more difficult to earn profits for each trade, so make sure you have check it thoroughly.

3. Currencies to Trade

Usually, standard trading account allow major currency pairs such as USD/JPY or EUR/USD, but other currency pairs such as EUR/CAD or EUR/AUD can also offer large profits and you may want to give it a try. It is only a matter of taste; if you don’t find the other currency pairs appealing, then it doesn’t matter.

4. Reliable Support from the Staff

You have to know that you are deal with a true company with actual person behind it so you will need to have direct contact means such as live chat or telephones. This is an vital factor to consider since you can't solve your problem fast if you have to wait for email replies for days or weeks; it is just not how a credible company ways to do things.

5. Software

After you open a currency trading account, there are brokers that will give you the trading or analysis software as one of their features, some others won't. I’ll just go with the free ones.

6. Funding Option

Usually, trading company accept deposit in many major ways such as wire transfer, credit cards, etc; but you should check it too just in case they don't support your preferred method. Use whichever that fit your preferences and comfort.

7. Have Practie Trading Account

In a demo account, you can get access to the trading platforms and start practicing online trading. This demo account can also be used in other ways:

-To facilitate your strategies/trading signals/forex robots testing. Since demo account also uses real market data, you can get accurate test results.

-While using the practice account, you can see if the trading platform is easy to use or not. Several platforms are more hard to use compared to the others.

8. Support Many Languages

If English is not your first language, having an account with your native language can make everything easier.

Opening a currency trading account does not need to be difficult or complex; just be sure that the account support all that you need in currency trading.